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Pinoy Magsaysay awardees oppose 12-year basic education cycle


Filipino educators Christopher Bernido and Marivic Carpio-Bernido, the husband-and-wife team who received this year's Ramon Magsaysay Award for their work in providing quality education to poor high school students in Bohol, disagree with the Aquino administration's plan to extend the basic education cycle to 12 years. "If you go from the 10-year to the 12-year cycle, it's like jumping from the frying pan to the fire. It will be a complete disaster," said Christopher Bernido. He said the debate over the additional two years in the Philippine school cycle just "distracts [Filipinos] from the core problems" that face basic education, such as the lack of quality teachers and resources. The Bernidos, the only educators and the only Filipinos to be named among this year's seven recipients of the Ramon Magsaysay Awards, spoke at a news conference Friday. Other 2010 awardees include a Japanese advocate for nuclear disarmament, three Chinese environmentalists, and a Bangladeshi advocate for the empowerment of differently-abled persons.

Filipino educators and scientists Christopher Bernido (left) and Marivic Carpio-Bernido are the two Filipino winners among this year's seven Ramon Magsaysay Awardees. Pia Faustino
The annual awards, considered as Asia's equivalent of the Nobel Prize, recognize individuals or organizations that have made extraordinary contributions to human development in the continent. The Bernidos were honored this year for "their purposeful commitment to both science and nation, ensuring innovative, low-cost, and effective basic education even under Philippine conditions of great scarcity and daunting poverty." Since 1999, the Bernidos have been running the Central Visayan Insitute Foundation (CVIF), a small private high school in Jagna, Bohol. The couple has developed a learning system in which students spend at least 70 percent of their time doing independent activities, and the rest interacting with teachers. Christopher says the DepEd needs to focus on improving the quality of teaching before adding years to the cycle. "It's better to have no teacher than [to have a] bad teacher. Let's repair what's wrong with the 10-year cycle, and then when we are good with it, then we can extend it or even reduce it to eight [years]," he said. "With the lack of qualified teachers, lack of resources, then extending the cycle might compound the problem," added Marivic. The Bernidos appealed to the DepEd to "give more time to study carefully the issues at stake ... before making any drastic decision, because that decision would entail millions or even billions of dollars. Now, if that doesn't work, then the future generations will be paying off the loans for a failed program." Quality rural education The Bernidos both received their doctorate degrees in physics from the State University of New York in the early 1980s. Over the next two decades, they served as respected professors and researchers in several academic institutions, including the University of the Philippines and Mindanao State University.
The Bernidos run the Central Visayan Institute Foundation, a high school in Jagna, Bohol. The school employs a "dynamic learning program" that emphasizes independent learning over teacher lectures.
In 1999, the couple surprised colleagues when they assumed the challenge of running the CVIF in Bohol. The Bernidos say their school believes in "learning by doing," an approach that differentiates them from traditional schools, where teachers spend more time lecturing to the students. "If [students] are dependent [upon teachers], then they don't exercise their neurons. So the learning is superficial," Marivic said. Many of the CVIF's nearly 500 students come from humble backgrounds - they are children of tricycle-drivers, farmers, laborers, and market vendors. While studying in the school is not free (tuition is around P10,000 per student per year), the Bernidos strive to provide a quality of education that will prepare the students for fruitful careers after graduation. Since the Bernidos started their "dynamic learning program" at CVIF, the students' performance on national achievement tests has vastly improved. The couple also noticed that more and more of their graduates are going on to college. For winning the Ramon Magsaysay Award the couple will receive a cash prize of $50,000 (P2.27 million), a certificate, and a medallion. The couple says they will use the prize money to purchase books and computers, and improve their school facilities. Other 2010 Ramon Magsaysay Awardees are Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba of Hiroshima, Japan, for his work to create a world free of nuclear weapons; Chinese photojournalist Huo Daishan, for his work to save the Huai River in China from pollution; A.H.M. Norman Khan of Bangladesh, for his efforts to mainstream differently-abled persons into Bangladeshi society; and Chinese public servants Pan Yue and Fu Qiping, for their advocacy of environmental protection in the world's second largest economy. The awardees will be formally honored at a ceremony on August 31 at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. - YA, GMANews.TV
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