BALANGA CITY – A youth group slammed the Duterte administration for its “divide-and-conquer” tactics in responding to nationwide calls for an academic break.
Samahan ng Progresibong Kabataan (SPARK), an activist youth organization, targeted the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) in particular for leaving the decision of implementing an academic break to school administrations and local governments.
“From March until November, the story of CHEd has been a story of evading responsibility for students’ welfare,” John Lazaro, SPARK National Spokesperson, said in a statement.
Lazaro lamented that, instead of issuing a decisive memo recommending the suspension of classes, CHEd has allowed school administrations and local governments to make decisions for students that might be hundreds of kilometers away.
“There could be, for example, UP students recovering in Cagayan, and the Quezon City government is meant to suspend classes for them?” he questioned.
“Now, all the horror stories about draconian administrations are coming out by the hundreds, and De Vera is, once again, to blame,” he added.
SPARK also slammed the “narrative of leniency and flexibility” that CHEd and the Department of Education (DepEd) have insisted on, saying that it was a mere band-aid solution to the problems in the education sector.
“Adjusting deadlines just defers the suffering, and extending the semester just prolongs the agony,” Lazaro explained.
“Their insistence on pushing through with the semester got us into this mess, and ‘slowing it down’ is not going to get us out of it,” he added.
SPARK pointed out that the Duterte administration was the main culprit for the current state of the education system. “
It is the failed pandemic response, the failed disaster response, and the criminal neglect that has gotten us into this situation, and it is that same neglect that is stopping us from resolving it,” Lazaro said.
The group warned the country’s top brass that students, teachers, and workers would take drastic actions in order to resolve the issues for themselves.
“We will have our break, with or without Duterte,” Lazaro concluded.
SPARK has launched several campaigns regarding the conduct of distance learning, including issues such as the inaccessibility of online learning and the rising trend of student suicides.
It continues to advocate for a nationwide academic break in order to implement policies such as subsidies for gadgets and Internet connections and nationalizing the telecommunications industry, which it sees as necessary for a “better normal for education.”