Filipino education

After nursing, call centers and medical transcription, another outsourcing job has been added as a career option for young people.

Demand for “closed captioning” professionals is expected to rise this year after the US Congress started to push for the implementation of a 1998 law which requires captioning of all new English-language television programming. Captioning is implemented to allow the hearing-impaired to enjoy a program on television or a video film by reading the dialogue spoken at the bottom of the screen.

While this is a positive development for a country which suffers from job scarcity, the Arroyo government’s thrust to give more emphasis on the generation of overseas and outsourcing jobs only does more harm than good for the local economy.

The ‘overproduction’ of professionals and skilled graduates for these vocation at the expense of other vital courses creates a disturbing imbalance in the education sector and the labor force and further encourages the migration of professionals out of the country.

While remittances from overseas workers help augment the country's deficit, the long term effects of an unbalanced pool of professionals and the continuous brain drain are more devastating to the local economy.

The government and the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) should focus more on courses which serve the local needs of the economy and not the demand of the international market.

We should produce more teachers, entrepreneurs and agriculture graduates and invest heavily on education reforms in the said fields which match the needs of the economy.

Our Education and government officials should put more emphasis on courses which correspond to the needs of the local economy instead of banking on 'popular' courses determined by prevailing international trends.

Renato Constantino further described what kind of education Filipinos must have:

“…the education of the Filipino must be a Filipino education. It must be based on the needs of the nation and the goals of the nation. The object is not merely to produce men and women who can read and write or who can add and subtract. The primary object is to produce a citizenry that appreciates and is conscious of its nationhood and has national goals for the betterment of the community…”