While the Ink is Drying

Yerica Hannah D. Ramos Editor-in-Chief

The terrains of society are swiftly being cultivated into a technologically-driven landscape. This entails survival of the fittest among nations as drastic changes in the future would challenge people to adapt and be at par with the leading kin. Thus, transformative measures must be employed to gear the generation with the armor necessary to conform to innovations without inflicting damage on oneself. And in the bigger picture, these terrains are the fields where industries and sectors like agriculture, education, production, health services, commerce, and engineering, among others, transpire, flourish, and create an interrelationship between and among the whole nation in a general sense.

Because industries rely heavily on technology and people are on the verge of being replaced by machines, the education sector must adapt to the changing terrain of the global economic environment. The technologically deterministic nature of society foreshadows a future centered on Science, Technology, Engineering, Agrifisheries, and Mathematics (STEAM)— these are the key areas experts locked their eyes on as pillars of the future.

In fact, the Department of Education is urged to prioritize hiring teachers with these specialities due to a shortage of Math and Science instructors. Former Education Secretary Leonor Briones had expressed concern about the need to still fill up teaching items for Mathematics and Science in the K–12 curriculum to make the supply sufficient for the demand of Philippine education despite the hiring of 195,302 teachers between 2010 and 2016.

According to studies conducted across the world, like that of Ejiwale (2013) & Kaing (2016), STEAM education is currently plagued by a lack of competent teachers as well as poor skill and development levels. Worse than the insufficiency of teachers is the plunging quality of Mathematics and Science education in the country, as it plummeted to the bottom at the regional level due to the small number of STEM graduates in the country.

According to the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) research, just 21.10% of STEM majors complete their degrees on average over five years ending in 2016–2017. Specifically, the completion percentage for the sciences was 25.52%, followed by math (21.20%), information technology (19.56%), engineering and technology (18.97%), and medical and associated areas with 14.38%.

EduTECH further supported this situation in 2016 as it discovered that the Philippines has a STEM human capital deficit. The dismaying performance of the Philippines in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2019 emphasized it better. This silent crisis implicitly and explicitly affects the country’s development and puts the future at stake. Thus, interventions must be applied to improve STEAM education, and it must start at the roots of education— teachers.

As the National Center for Teacher Education, the Philippine Normal University must focus on improving its recruitment programs for the specializations aligned in STEAM education like Mathematics and Science and introducing relevant interventions in Teacher Education to the government because, according to the PISA report, the top-performing education systems highlight teachers, pedagogy, and facilities in curriculum planning and development. They allocate enormous funds to school infrastructure and teachers as they ensure that they are offered with high pay scale and a salary structure that rewards those with a track record of excellence in the classroom. Offering competitive salaries for teachers, especially with those specializations, will attract more high-caliber students to pursue teaching careers instead of solely focusing on the popular career paths in the job market. Hence, a recruitment strategizing framework must be created.

In line with this, Tiongco & Japos (2011) recommended using a Geographic Information System to track admissions patterns and improve recruitment strategies

The Unfinished Business

Redefining sexy and delimiting the mold of beauty have lately become the trend in fashion, generating a metamorphic bandwagon pivotal in progressing towards an all-inclusive society. Is it the actual case in pageantry, a business propelled by and dependent on beauty, the same sector that vows to champion women’s empowerment? Even in its efforts to become a relevant, sensitive, and non-discriminatory industry, the Miss Universe rally for inclusivity amassed more criticisms than support.

Following the bland and biased competition during the Donald Trump era that outwardly favored the Latinas and Americans, I, as a pageant enthusiast, felt a revolution when the leading annual pageant served us with out-of-the-box innovations and unpredictable shows on-stage, modernizing its last seven editions beginning in 2015. Over the years, none but Miss Universe had added variations to its competitions; unsurprisingly, it has been a hit. Being the most soughtafter pageant, the new owner’s welcoming trendsetting leaps were a breakthrough in pageantry—a transformative change that the former owners failed to consider.

Having women’s representation in the competition is an admirable response to women’s empowerment. Starting with the inclusion of plus-size women like Top 13 finisher Miss Canada Siera Bearchell in 2016, it grabbed people’s hearts as it aided in addressing fat and body shaming issues. Following this is the groundbreaking for Philippine universities to sustain their student population and attract prospective students for the courses offered. This system uses technology to create a digital cartography of the university’s population sources. It gives insights into the factors that affect the population through the years and determines the cold and hot areas from where the students are coming, giving the management a view on how they can redevelop their recruitment program depending on the emerging trends. The administration may also add majors focusing on Agriculture and/or fisheries and Technology. The Industrial Revolution 4.0 currently leads us to a future that we still have no clue about. A paper released by Dell Technologies and written by the Institute For The Future (IFTF) and a group of 20 Information Technology, commercial, and academic professionals from across the world claims that 85% of the occupations that will exist in 2030 have not even been created yet. Considering the future from a distance, the pandemic that seemingly disrupted the education system and has put an extra burden on students, teachers, and curriculum developers, actually helped us reshape and transform education into something more conducive for the future we are heading to. Since not all instructors are enthusiastic about incorporating technology into their lesson plans, it has been challenging to integrate technology into education for years. While some could be more open to digital solutions, others exhibit higher resistance levels. Thus, it became evident how inadequately integrating technology had resulted in severe learning loss when schools were closed due to COVID-19. admission of Miss Universe Spain 2018, Angela Ponce, the first and only transwoman Miss Universe participant—another step forward in its aspiration to promote equality. Although there were women of color winning even before 2015, crowning another deserving black queen in 2019, in the person of South Africa’s Zozibini Tunzi, had amplified the voices of her oppressed people. Her victory was meaningful as relevant discussions regarding #BlackLivesMatter were at their apex at the time.

This period in time did not damage civilization; it reshaped and transformed it. As we prepare for additional changes that are coming, it has provided solutions to some of the long-standing concerns in education and brought to light actual faults in its systems throughout the world. Therefore, the sector and institutions that are powerhouses of teachers must take the initiative to immunize Teacher Education and the workforce with its first shots at future-proofing education.

Empowering women and creating a culture of inclusivity, however, turns out to be a challenging mission. When the last edition’s winner, India’s Haarnaz Sandhu, exponentially gained weight, the pageant community abruptly criticized the organization, which they accused of not strictly attending to and controlling the winners’ health and nutritional necessities.

The public began to attack the organization more and, sadly, even the queen herself due to their disappointment with the zero improvements in her apparent weight issue after months of following if she could retrieve her winning qualities.

Imagine how confined our human sense of beauty is. Although beauty is subjective, people associate it with the model-esque standards of beauty, and those unfit in these prototypes are tagged as non-beauty queen materials. In my view, if there is a crucial error in the pageant industry, it is the absence of various women’s representation. Before, beautiful was only those that matched the blueprint. Since only the woman that passes the criterion can enter such a contest, those unqualified were not beautiful enough, creating an apparent division among women.

It is saddening that, notwithstanding Miss Universe’s intent to champ inclusivity and redefine the divisive beauty prototype, the same individuals who supported the organization in bringing about a transformative change to the world deserted them in the middle of their rally. With its weakening scaffolding, the owners had to give up their franchise, and Miss Universe is now back to scratch in its movement for women’s empowerment.

It is not the franchise I am sad about, but the promising yet unfinished business. Envision how much change we would see twenty years from now if women less depicted were to be seen, heard, and represented in the Earth’s supreme beauty pageant. It would pave the way for opportunities for these women, considering how far-reaching the platform could be. However, the same individuals who hoped for change took these possibilities away.

If only the public were rational enough to consider the future of many women, regardless of their features, then the world might see a flicker of hope toward inclusivity. Miss Universe should be a safe space for women, and by women, I mean unrepresented women included. The new owners have giant shoes to fill.

Society pushes that teachers hold a vocation rather than a profession, but if this is a card to deny the entitlement to optimum treatment, then it is better to stop dreaming of becoming one.

Teachers’ Month is no longer qualified as a celebration because it is turning into a romanticization, harshly veiling public school teachers’ unending, overlooked, and gaslighted sacrifices on the field. Let us encapsulate these harrowing situations using the three domains of learning. Still, as far as teachers’ struggles are concerned, it is better to be called as domains of misery—the cognitive, the affective, and the psychomotor.

With an increase of PHP 77.3 billion, DepEd is set to manage PHP 710.6 billion for School Year 2022–2023. This much budget yet teachers are not even sure to have an adequate slice of the pie, and they are already losing their voices—not because of teaching, but because of their long-standing demands for higher pay.

Nestor Reyes, a public school teacher, featured by the Philippine Daily Inquirer, earns PHP 32,000 monthly. However, only PHP 5,000 is his take-home pay after deductions from his taxes and current loans. Due to this, he chose to be a part-time call center agent and an on-call motorcycle driver during the height of the pandemic.

This narrative of the teachers on the ground is not worth celebrating, and honestly, expressing words of gratitude is not enough to comfort their broken affective walls. Political or any other type of speech has little to no effect on their plight. Disappointingly, we still lack strategies and actions to address this concern fully.

Moreover, 50% of the 1,200 respondents surveyed by Pulse Asia in June 2022 said that teachers in the country are underpaid, while 37% agreed that teachers receive an adequate income, 3% thought they were overpaid, and 10% were unsure of their opinion.

Teachers spend from their own pockets to