DepEd K to 12: A View from Southern Tagalog

On K to 12 first week: Southern Tagalog youth groups launch ‘K-12 Watch’ in Los BañosPosted: June 11, 2012 | Author: ANAKBAYAN UP LOS BANOS | 

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Led by Kabataan Party-list, youth groups launch “K-12 Watch” in Southern Tagalog schools today as they claim that “(K to 12) has wreak havoc in elementary and high schools after a week of implementation.”

The groups affiliated with Kabataan Party-list, League of Filipino Students-UPLB, Anakbayan-Southern Tagalog and Gabriela Youth-UPLB aims to gather starting today feedbacks through a “K-12 Watch Roving Bulletin Board” at Lopez Elementary School in Los Banos, Laguna where parents, pupils, teachers and other concerned post their feedback on the first week of implementation of the K-12 policy.

They also invited high school students, parents and teachers in their “iPose against K-12” photo booth at Los Baños National High School main campus where they pose for a photo with the “No to K-12” thought bubble placards. The group said they will upload the photos on the No to K-12 Alliance Facebook page.

Meanwhile, they launched in Southern Tagalog a more serious signature campaign for the “1.2 million signatures against K-12” campaign. Allen Lemence, spokesperson of LFS-UPLB, said that they will submit the said signature campaign to the House of Representatives through its youth solon Raymond Palatino of Kabataan Partylist.

“We are receiving reports that K to 12 caused heavy burdens to the pupils and students and their parents as well as to the teachers and school administrators. Now, we would like to formalize that into a campaign to finally oppose and call for the junking of the K to 12 program,” Lemence said.

The groups received information that K to 12 has caused confusion among the teachers as to what to teach on the new curriculum. Meanwhile, they also received feedback from parents that they were convinced that the K to 12 program will only give them heavy expenses.

He also stressed that their activities today are just the start of a series of activities that would tackle the worsening state of education and the youth in the region and how they reflect the national situation under the administration of Pres. Benigno Simeon Aquino III.

The group aims to encourage the participation of students, parents, educators, and other concerned parties in open discussions on the status of the first week of implementation of the K-12 curriculum in both elementary and secondary schools in Southern Tagalog to reaffirm the group’s stand against the policy.

“We stressed that this K to 12 program is a pro-imperialist and anti-people policy. The questions to be asked should not only ‘are we ready?’ or ‘how can we make K to 12 work?’ But rather we should question and expose the reason behind its implementation—that this program is yet another manifestation of Aquino’s puppetry to the foreign multi-national corporations,” Lemence pointed out as he also stressed that the K to 12 program is not an education policy per se but a labor export policy.