Tagoloan, Misamis Oriental—Giving quality education to Filipino schoolchildren starts by listening to them.
Dr. Milwida Guevarra, president of Synergeia Foundation, said that listening to children is very basic to Synergeia because children’s responses to basic questions on education is the foundation of crafting a program designed to give them quality education.
“What is our dream for our children?” she asked during the launching July 21 of the Tagoloan Reading and English Proficiency Program of the Steag State Power Corp., Synergeia, Xavier University and the Tagoloan local government unit (LGU).
Synergeia Foundation is a coalition of individuals, institutions and organizations working together to improve the quality of basic education in the country. Its chairman is Fr. Bienvenido Nebres SJ, recently retired president of Ateneo de Manila University.
Guevarra said this question should be answered honestly by parents, educators and local government officials because this is fundamental to how education is being administered in the countryside by the Department of Education (DepEd).
“The Synergeia reading program in coordination with the local government unit starts with listening—to the children first, the parents next, and the teachers also,” she said.
Fr. Roberto Yap SJ, president of Xavier University (XU)-Ateneo de Cagayan, said it is very important to cultivate the art and science of listening, which he said is being neglected by adults.
“Sometimes, in our busyness in pursuit of our jobs and livelihood, we neglect to listen to our children. But if we want to really know how to adequately answer the question of Dr. Guevarra, we should start to listen to them,” he told the BusinessMirror after the program launch.
Yap, who replaced Fr. Jose Ramon Villarin at XU after Villarin was transferred to Ateneo to replace Nebres as president, said that giving quality education to children needs the support of all stakeholders.
“It is really difficult if only one sector will work on it. All stakeholders should pool their resources together for the children’s education,” he said.
Guevarra narrated that before the formal launching, she asked several schoolchildren their dreams. And most of them answered that they want to finish at least Grade 6.
“In the Philippines and in Misamis Oriental, three out of 10 students who entered Grade 1 will not be able to finish Grade 6,” she said, citing a study conducted by Synergeia.
She also said that giving quality education to the children “cannot be done by the DepEd alone.”
“It takes a village to raise a child,” she said, quoting a saying popularized by Hillary Rodham Clinton, US Secretary of State.
She said Fr. Nebres conducted a study and found out there are only two differences between a good school and a bad school “and these are good teachers and very good parents.”
That is the task of Xavier University: provide quality training to the teachers of the 10 public schools involved in the project through its College of Education. XU has been doing this kind of training to public elementary school teachers all over Mindanao for the past six years.
Its partnership with Synergeia, Steag State Power and Tagoloan LGU is just an extension of its thrust to also help give quality education to all Filipinos.
“It’s a very good program because it brings together the different parts of the community. You cannot really address this question of education just by the school system. We need the parents, the local governments. We need also the private sector to come together and help. That is the power of Synergeia: it brings together different stakeholders to uplift education,” he said during the interview.
Washington Sycip, chairman of Steag State Power, said the Tagoloan Reading and English Proficiency Program is Steag’s way of giving back to the community where Steag is in.
Sycip, who was educated in the public-school system, said the role of Steag is just to bring together various stakeholders—like Synergeia, Xavier University, the DepEd and the LGU—to give quality education to Filipino children.
He said he hopes in his lifetime he will be able to see the “miracle in education” started by this program.
“It is the dream of Mr. Sycip to see every Filipino schoolchildren finish Grade 6. And hopefully high school and college,” Guevarra said.
Dr. Bodo Goerlich, president of Steag State Power said the program is just the “fulfillment of our promise” at becoming a “good neighbor by helping improve the quality of life of the people especially in its host communities.”
“Steag also re-affirms its commitment to its host communities here in Tagoloan by heightening our social investments in the areas of education, environment and health. For this reason, I am pleased to announce that Steag is setting aside P2.69 million to support various education programs in this town in the next three years. This amount represents about 40 percent of our planned social investments in this community which in total would be around P6.74 million,” he said.
Steag hopes that through the program, there will be “an improvement in the reading and English proficiency of our students hoping they will have better grasp of equally important subjects like science and mathematics” within three years.
“Ultimately, we want our students to excel in these fields and for them to be more prepared as they aspire to become more globally competitive,” he added.
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