When education gets all the blame

As a teacher-educator, I have always scanned the news for reports about education. Over the years, I have grown accustomed to finding mostly bad news.

Children cannot read with comprehension. Students perform poorly in mathematics and science. Young people drop out or graduate without the expected competencies. Each report makes Philippine education appear like a school building being swept away by our rampaging floods.

Why does education seem to generate an endless stream of bad news? One reason is that we expect schools to do almost everything. They must produce young people who are literate, employable, globally competitive, civic-minded, technologically capable, morally upright, and resilient. Yet they must accomplish this amid poverty, hunger, poor health, overcrowded classrooms, teacher shortages, weak connectivity, linguistic mismatch, corruption, and constantly changing policies.

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When learners struggle, we call it an “education crisis,” even when its causes began long before the child entered school. A hungry child cannot concentrate. A sick child cannot attend regularly. A family displaced by flooding cannot prioritize homework. A child taught in an unfamiliar language must learn the language and the lesson simultaneously.

The second reason is the gravity of inequality in the Philippines. Wealth, political power, and economic opportunity remain concentrated within a relatively small circle of families and networks. Upward mobility is severely constrained, and many Filipinos feel that unless they carry surnames such as Ayala, Zobel, Gokongwei, or Razon, their only realistic means of moving up is education.

For ordinary families, a diploma is more than a credential. It is their hope—for escape from poverty, low-paid work, and inherited disadvantage. Education is therefore expected to compensate for an unequal social order and solve unemployment, crime, misinformation, political polarization, and weak citizenship.

But we should not place all our hopes on education. Schools cannot become the great equalizer when nearly everything surrounding them remains profoundly unequal.

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Education does not operate outside society. For learners to succeed, we must create the social, economic, and cultural conditions that make learning possible: adequate food and health care, secure housing, decent work for parents, safe communities, accessible transportation, stable internet, respect for learners’ languages and cultures, and institutions that reward ability rather than wealth or connections. These are the “conditions of possibility” without which even the best curriculum or teacher will struggle.

Here lies another striking contradiction. Philippine education is constantly portrayed as failing, yet Filipino nurses, teachers, engineers, seafarers, caregivers, and technicians are trusted and valued worldwide. Our service and business process outsourcing also depend on educated, multilingual, and technologically capable workers.

I am not promoting labor export or suggesting that Filipinos should have to leave their families to earn a decent living. Our failure to create enough secure and adequately paid work at home remains a serious national problem.

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But if Filipino graduates are employed, trusted, and valued around the world, then our schools, colleges, training institutions, families, and teachers must be doing something right. Behind every Filipino succeeding abroad are schools and educators who helped develop that person’s knowledge, discipline, language, and skills.

Many education champions have tried to improve the system. The problem is that reforms are repeatedly changed before they mature. They are often tied to presidential administrations and political appointees rather than sustained by professional civil servants with long-term expertise.

A new secretary arrives with a new slogan, curriculum, program, or organizational structure. Teachers receive inadequate preparation. Materials arrive late or not at all. Implementation is uneven. Before a reform can be properly evaluated, another one replaces it.

There are accomplishments worth remembering. Our public-school system now reaches almost all remote communities. Millions of first-generation learners have entered school. ALS mobile teachers bring education to workers, Indigenous communities, persons deprived of liberty, and learners with disabilities.

Schools must be accountable—but so must the institutions responsible for nutrition, health, housing, employment, transportation, social protection, and public finance. Education can expand people’s possibilities, but it cannot, by itself, create a just society.

We should continue demanding better from our education system. But every now and then, the country should also pause and tell its teachers and education workforce: Thank you. Despite inadequate resources, unstable policies, and overwhelming expectations, you have helped educate Filipinos whose competence is recognized around the world.

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Maria Mercedes “Ched” E. Arzadon, LPT, Ph.D., is a professor at the University of the Philippines, Diliman (College of Education).