Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel F. Zubiri. FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines — Schools are once again going to have Good Manners and Right Conduct (GMRC) classes, as Republic Act 11476, or the GMRC and Values Education Act, was signed into law Thursday.
“The signing of the GMRC and Values Education Act is really timely, and I want to thank the President [Rodrigo Duterte] for his swift action on this important measure,” said Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel F. Zubiri, principal author of the Senate bill.
“I hope the Department of Education can work on the IRR in time for the opening of classes come August,” he added. “With many schools set on implementing distance learning, it’s going to be even more vital that we give our students formative guidance through GMRC and Values Education.”
“Kids are going to be at home all day, learning in isolation from their peers. They’re not going to have the natural avenues for empathetic learning that springs from face-to-face interaction with their peers and with their teachers. Hopefully, a strengthened GMRC and Values Education program will make up for that.”
The law institutionalizes a comprehensive GMRC and Values Education program in the K-12 curriculum of the Department of the Education, replacing the current Edukasyon sa Pagpapakatao curriculum.
The GMRC will be integrated into daily activities in the kindergarten level, and then it will be taught as a separate subject from Grades 1 to 6.
Grades 7 to 10 will be taught a Values Education subject, into which GMRC shall be integrated. For Grades 11 and 12, Values Education shall be integrated in all subjects under the K-12 Basic Education Curriculum.
The GMRC was previously dissolved as a subject under the K-12 program in 2013.
“When we drafted this law, we thought it would be important to bring back GMRC because it would arm our kids with stronger moral codes that they would need in order to navigate this increasingly technological world. We didn’t anticipate that the world would basically grind to a halt, and all our interactions would move online. So the passage of this act is quite timely, and I hope it serves our students well,” Zubiri pointed out.