Teachers’ group bewails lack of reading materials in DepEd for nationalism lessons

MANILA, Philippines—A militant group of teachers on Monday (Aug. 12) decried what it said was the Department of Education’s (DepEd) failure to supply learning materials for Filipino and Araling Panlipunan to the detriment of lessons on nationalism in schools.

Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) also pointed to the irony of such an absence of learning materials for the two subjects as schools celebrated “Buwan ng Wika (Month of Language)” in August.

Jose Martinez, ACT chair, said while Philippine history had been stricken off the curriculum of high school and Filipino subjects were relegated to being not required in college “teaching nationalism is further weakened by DepEd’s failure to come up with official and usable teaching materials for these subjects.”

In a statement, Martinez said this was “neglect” on the part of DepEd of its mandate to promote nationalism among the youth and especially at a time when the country’s sovereignty is being threatened.

“DepEd’s failure to produce these materials after six years is a glaring neglect of its constitutional mandate to promote nationalism among our youth,” Martinez said.

Teaching nationalism among the youth was crucial these days when “our sovereignty is threatened by China’s incursions in our territory,” Martinez said.

ACT earlier demanded an investigation by Congress of a Commission on Audit finding showing error-filled textbooks costing the government hundreds of millions of pesos.

The COA, in a report, said learning materials procured by the DepEd and worth P254 miliion were riddled with errors and at least P113 million worth of books had not been distributed.

DepEd had given assurances it would comply with the COA directive to submit an explanation./TSB