|
By Yvonne Chua and Luz Rimban Vera Files
First of two parts
When public high school sophomores get the new
Social Studies textbook next week, they will be holding in their
hands what could be a source of a diplomatic irritant. The book
mentions Taiwan as a “country” separate from the People’s
Republic of China, in violation of the one-China policy of the
Philippine government.
The error apparently went unnoticed by its
authors—17 professors from the University of the Philippines, some
of them with Ph.D.s—and the Department of Education, a government
entity supposedly conscious of the one-China policy.
But the error has already caused a stir. In late
April, Chinese customs authorities seized one shipment of about
400,000 copies of the textbook, which were printed in China, and
threatened to destroy them unless the error was corrected.
The book in question is the 492-page Araling
Panlipunan II textbook, Asya: Pag-usbong ng Kabihasnan (Asia: Birth
of Civilization), produced by the Vibal Publishing House and printed
by the Ningbo Binbin Stationery Company based in Ningbo in Zhejiang
province, China.
Ironically, it is supposed to replace an earlier
error-filled edition entitled, Asya: Noon, Ngayon at sa Hinaharap,
also published by Vibal, a 316-page book containing 430 factual and
grammatical mistakes that had been in use since 1997, and pulled out
after the errors were detected in 2004.
Social Studies textbooks are prone to errors
because they involve “too many details, too many facts,” said
Socorro Pilor, executive director of the Education department’s
Instructional Materials Council Secretariat.
Besides, the department placed “a high degree
of confidence” in the authors who belong to the UP Manila’s
Department of Social Sciences and UP Diliman’s History Department.
Since the textbook also passed the scrutiny of the UP Asian Center,
the Council Secretariat expected Asya: Pag-usbong ng Kabihasnan to
be error-free.
The Education department’s
textbook-procurement program employs a complex mechanism that
includes a four-level evaluation process involving master teachers,
subject area experts, curriculum specialists, language experts, and
representatives from universities and professional associations from
both public and private sectors. Additional mechanisms have been
instituted, and academics from the best schools, such as UP and the
Ateneo, and the National Historical Institute have been consulted.
On the distribution side, civil-society
organizations and parent-teacher groups are involved to make sure
the books reach the schools and students on time.
Errors in public school textbooks have been a
bane of the educational system. But holding people and groups
accountable is something the Department of Education has been hard
put to do. In many instances, authors, publishing houses and
printers have escaped responsibility for such problems.
Government policy
The Philippine government adopted the one-China
policy in 1975 when it established diplomatic relations with Beijing
and severed ties with Taipei. Taiwan only maintains an economic and
cultural affairs office in Manila.
Chinese officials are particularly sensitive to
deviations from the one-China policy. In fact, even if the textbook
Asya: Pag-usbong ng Kabihasnan, is written in Filipino, Chinese
customs authorities spotted the errors.
In April 25, Education Undersecretary Teodoro
Sangil sent a certification to Chinese authorities absolving Ningbo
Binbin of any responsibility in the two-China fiasco found in Asya:
Pag-usbong ng Kabihasnan.
“Ningbo Binbin has no control or participation
whatsoever in the preparation of the textbook and teacher’s manual
as its contractual obligation is limited to printing, binding, and
delivery of the textbooks to the Department of Education in the
Philippines,” wrote Sangil.
He further explained: “Asya: Pag-usbong ng
Kabihasnan is a Social Studies textbook that is apolitical in nature
[and] does not make any opinion on the political-sovereignty issue
between the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan as the
Philippines recognizes the one-China policy and that is the
People’s Republic of China.”
Besides this defense coming from Sangil, the
authors had another argument for including Taiwan as a country. They
said students would be left wondering about Taiwan if it were
omitted from the list, since there is a sizable community of
Filipino workers there.
Last Saturday, the shipment was released by
Chinese customs officials after Ningbo Binbin plastered a sticker of
the Great Wall and Asian temples to correct the book’s original
cover—a map identifying Taiwan as a country in East Asia.
Inside, though, the errors remain. They are
found on pages 90, 92, 94 and 99, which are lists of countries in
Asia, their corresponding land areas, capitals, population and per
capita incomes.
The covers of only one-third of the 1.4 million
copies of this textbook and accompanying teacher’s manual worth
close to P150 million have been corrected.
Two big shipments, with uncorrected covers, had
arrived earlier and are being distributed to high schools in the 26
social reform agenda (SRA) provinces, the poorest and most
underserved in the country.
So far, Pilor said, there is no order to correct
the errors, including the cover, of the first two shipments.
Track record
This isn’t the first time the Department of
Education is taking the fall for erroneous textbooks. Last year, the
Instructional Materials Council Secretariat published a booklet of
corrections on 150 errors found in seven new titles used in grades 1
to 5 of Social Studies or HeKaSi (Heograpiya, Kasaysayan at Sibika).
The mistakes were detected by Antonio Calipjo
Go, director of the Marian School, who had also spotted the blunders
in Asya: Noon, Ngayon at Sa Hinaharap in 2004. The books were in
Filipino and errors were grammatical as well as factual.
The suppliers of the HeKaSi 1 to 5 textbooks
were Vibal, Watana Phanit and Daewoo International Corp. The
Education department shouldered the cost of printing the 70,000
copies of the corrections booklet sent to public school teachers all
over the country.
Ningbo Binbin’s contract for Asya: Pag-usbong
ng Kabihasnan is a supply and delivery contract. The company chose
from a set of titles, paid royalties to Vibal Publishing, and took
responsibility for the contents of the book. But rather than make
the company accountable for the mistake, department officials
absolved it of blame for the two-China slip.
Bidding controversy
Asya: Pag-usbong ng Kabihasnan and two other
Social Studies textbooks are in fact two years late and the bidding
fraught with controversy. The bidding started in 2005, when the
Education department sought suppliers for HeKaSi 1 to 6 and Araling
Panlipunan I to IV. The contracts were funded from loans from the
World Bank’s National Program Support for Basic Education and the
Asian Development Bank’s Secondary Education Development and
Improvement Project.
All bidders for HeKaSi 6 and Araling Panlipunan
I to IV, however, failed the content evaluation on the first try. On
the second try, five suppliers took part in the bidding that started
in December 2006: Ningbo Binbin of China, Alkem Co. of Singapore,
and local publishers Anvil Publishing, Rex Bookstore and JTW
Consortium, which is part of Vibal.
The bids were opened on December 27, and a
decision was supposed to have been arrived at in April 2007. But a
complaint lodged by Alkem hinting of manipulation by content
evaluators forced the Education department to hold the awarding of
the contracts.
Alkem, which submitted the lowest bid for all
the titles, questioned the failing mark it got for the design of its
HeKaSi 6 teacher’s manual. The company submitted the same book in
the 2005 bidding and passed the design evaluation.
In October, the Education department eventually
awarded Alkem the P64.7-million HeKaSi 6 contract after the
evaluators discovered a miscomputation when they were recalled to
review the manual.
Also, shortly after the bids were opened, a
series of text messages posted in the Education department’s
internal website and sent to several officials alleged that the
Instructional Materials Council Secretariat, which coordinates the
content evaluation, and its external evaluators, had been bribed.
Screen shots of the text messages circulating as
part of a white paper within the department show a certain Council
Secretariat official demanding and accepting payoffs at various
stages of the four-level evaluation process. The Council Secretariat
official purportedly asked for P30,000 per title to pass the
evaluation and P300,000 per title to ensure that the bidder would
clinch the contract. The bribe was referred to as “anda,” which
is street lingo for grease money.
The official involved denied ever meeting with
suppliers. But she admitted showing up at a restaurant in Pasig City
sometime in December 2006 on the invitation of a former Education
department employee now working for one of the textbook suppliers.
She said she thought she was being set up for a
blind date. The date turned out to be one of the bidders who offered
her money to make sure the titles would pass. The Council
Secretariat official said she was “shocked and refused
outright.”
In a memo dated June 13, 2007, Pilor asked the
department’s legal division to investigate the text messages but
she has received no formal response.
Civil society
The issue has reached the civil-society
organization G-Watch (Government Watch) of the Ateneo School of
Government, which monitors government procurements. G-Watch said it
will ask the legal department for an update on the bribery reports.
Civil-society organizations have been helping
the Department of Education, but their participation is limited to
the distribution of textbooks.
Redempto Parafina of the Ateneo School of
Government, which runs G-Watch, has suggested letting civil-society
organizations have a hand in the evaluation of textbook content.
G-Watch also suggests a mechanism where the Education department
could blacklist evaluators who approve error-filled textbooks and
suppliers of these titles.
In the meantime, non-government organizations
helping the Education department distribute erroneous textbooks are
faced with a dilemma. Parafina said: “Are we helping spread around
the poison that are bad textbooks?”
To be continued
Editor’s note: VERA Files is the work
of veteran journalists taking a deeper look at current issues. Vera
is Latin for “true.”
|
