The four-day week plan

Published by the Visayan Daily Star Publications, Inc.

NINFA R. LEONARDIA Editor-in-Chief & President

CARLA P. GOMEZ Editor CHERYL CRUZ Desk Editor PATRICK PANGILINAN Busines Editor NIDA A. BUENAFE Sports Editor RENE GENOVE Bureau Chief, Dumaguete MAJA P. DELY Advertising Coordinator

CARLOS ANTONIO L. LEONARDIA Administrative Officer

So they are going to do it. Reports yesterday said that the Department of Education will adopt the proposal to hold classes on only four days a week in selected schools that will be affected by the ongoing and upcoming road and infrastructure works in Metro Manila.

The report also said that this has already been accepted by the Education Secretary and other officials involved. Their view is that this is the best time to test the four-day week proposal, which had already been presented earlier.

There are now only a few more weeks before classes end in March, and how this will affect the education of the students in the schools concerned is still to be determined.

This is an immediate implementation of what has been believed to be only one of the moves being studied as far as the time for the schooling of our students is concerned. Ironically, however, this also comes at a time when our Education Department is also considering the lengthening of school days, in fact, school years, for our students because of the contention that ours in the only country with an educational system that does not adopt the 12 years of basic education that should bring us up to world standards.

Nevertheless, there is also justification in the proposal to shorten the day of classes to only four a week. The constructions to be implemented on major roads of the city will mean traffic jams that could be more horrendous than any we have experienced. It could mean delays in the travel of students to and from schools, that could affect their mindset for their studies.

We therefore have no choice but to accept the “experiment”, but hope a lot more time is taken to study the benefits of adopting such an abbreviated time for all our students in all the schools of the country.*