Separated by Clingwrap and perplexed by the Philippine testing and evaluation system

( This was my ingus regarding the 2009 NAT when I was still teaching at Iloilo National High School- Special Program for the Arts, first posted as a note in Facebook on 12 March 2009)

Clingwrap is the newest evil thing that separates, albeit temporarily, foodies like me from the sugary and creamy wonders of fruit salad; in the same way as frivolous testing preparations which are in truth only face-deep and nothing but 'for formality's sake' are the dark curtains that separate well-meaning and eager-to-help school teachers, and most especially, jumpy and paranoid student-examinees who did their best in reviewing and studying from the ugly faces of misguided DepEd officials and public school administrators and their misconstrued view of the National Achievement Test.

Yesterday, I was one of the proctors for the National Achivement Test (NAT) for Second Year students. The INHS group was deployed to be proctors at Pavia NHS and so we all went there and as we were told in our brief with the INHS testing committee, "systematically" and "religiously" followed everything that was written in the booklet. (Included there is "Say the following: 'Good morning. I am (State your name). Before you take the test there are some things that you should remember. First...' " and so on).

For lunch, we had fruit salad inside a small white specimen cup covered with Clingwrap as dessert. The orange papaya and peach pieces, pineapple slices, yellow corn kernels, one small cherry half, all smeared in a bath of condensed milk and cream, along with nata de coco and buko cubes hiding in the cream's whiteness taunted me with their assumed sweetness and creaminess from beneath the smooth and transparent sheet of Clingwrap while I wait for one last examinee to finish answering her test for the morning. Finally she stood up. My heart, along with my taste buds, lurched. And then she sat again. She forgot to answer the difficult items she skipped. How many more? "Ten pa, Ma'am."

Haay. And so, my agony continued. Until after thirty minutes I was able to sit down and eat my lunch (chopsuey and estofadong manok) and me and my fruit salad finally got to tongue-lock.

The whole thing about the NAT examination and our tasks as proctors for me is just like my Clingwrap situation.

Of course, the National Education Testing and Research Center has nothing evil in its purpose. As an entity under the Department of Education, I know that the center is honest in its endeavor to measure the kind of education that the Filipino students are getting. Identifying which high school would be the best such provider, and who ranks second, third, fourth, or fifty-seventh to her is simply the DepEd's way of encouraging those bottom-placers to improve their instruction strategies. But, for crying out loud, is there a provision buried under the memos and resolutions regarding the NAT that says "Superintendents and School Principals are encouraged to encourage, even promote, sharing of answers (euphemism for outright cheating) so as to guarantee his/her division/district/school a place on a higher rung of the National Achievement Tests achievers'-cum-cheaters' ladder"? Will somebody tell me, is there any?

It's just surprising to learn in our briefing the day before yesterday that one of our higher officials in the division actually said not to be "too strict" on the examinees, following the claimed cheating complaints by the INHS proctors last year which were eventually ditched by the said office.

What is the world going to? I laud Sir Manny Mezias for remarking, "Ti sige ihatag na lang namon sa ila ang answers eh! (Okay, so we'll just dictate to them the answers then!)". Everybody laughed at his remark, but dear ladies and gentlemen, saying it's okay to allow kids to cheat in an exam (and a national exam at that!) is certainly not a laughing matter! Laughing at the idea that an education official would allow such a thing is certainly an ugly symptom that our education system, if not our country is getting sicker and sicker by the minute and that the cure for it is out of reach, masked by a thin, shiny, sheet of frivolousness.

Hopefully, we all can get rid of that Clingwrap of idiocy so that we can enjoy the fruits of our students' diligence.

This is actually a fruity refrigerator cake and not a fruit salad. The photo's from a recipe post at www.elvirasroundabout.blogspot.com