Pinoy DLP and American UbD

Of greater concern than the 12-year basic schooling issue is our children's right to the right education. And on this point there is one midnight act of the Arroyo administration that needs reviewing: DepEd Order No. 76, s. 2010, June 4, 2010. This order implements the 2010 Secondary Education Curriculum officially transplanting in our country the so-called "Understanding by Design" (UbD) program.

UbD was developed by U.S. educators to address the problem of American students never really understanding what they covered from textbooks or why they engaged in school activities. Its wide popularity there has led many here to follow suit.

However, copying UbD as the very framework of the new curriculum appears to be another case of downright colonial mentality. Not to mention the hefty fees for UbD foreign consultants and possible junkets abroad by local disciples at taxpayers' expense. Precisely, education has never been for intellectual development alone. In fact, UbD is only one of many aims in schooling as stressed by its very proponents, and it is neither feasible nor desirable in certain instances. ("Understanding by Design," Wikipedia.)

Education, following its Latin origin of educare, is to draw out all the unique qualities, talents, skills and developmental elements of every student for channeling of individual gifts and discipline for excellence in a holistic process and real-life inculturation. And this is exactly what our own Filipino physicists Chris Bernido and Marivic Carpio-Bernido have done in revolutionizing high school instruction in the Central Visayan Institute Foundation (CVIF) in Jagna, Bohol, through their "no-homework," "parallel classes," and low-cost "Dynamic Learning Program" (DLP) begun in 2002. Since then, their students have been excelling in national aptitude tests and gaining admission into top schools like the University of the Philippines.

Amazed with DLP, other schools have made study visits to CVIF, or like Araneta University, have adopted it in whole or in part. FAPE has even partnered with the couple to pioneer DLP nationwide for physics as a start through the "Learning Physics as One Nation" (LPON) project they further designed. Only on its third year, DLP-LPON has well resulted in meteoric leaps in student performance in over 200 participating private schools.

Notably, a 2005 CVIF-DLP honor alumna, Jesha Caseñas, has gone on pursuing B.S. Computer Science now at UC Berkeley which is the number one U.S. school in the field and home to 46 Nobel Laureates. In contrast, UbD America is grappling with a national dropout crisis: nearly 1 in 3 high-schoolers don't graduate each year.