By MERLINA HERNANDO-MALIPOT
The Department of Education (DepEd) has been asked anew to double check learning materials distributed under distance learning after students and parents discovered a very “alarming” and “inappropriate content” in one of the Self-Learning Modules distributed by DepEd Region 4-A (Calabarzon).
Alarmed by the malicious content of a passage in their Filipino module, a 17-year-old Grade 11 student in a public school in San Mateo, Rizal sent photos of the module to the Manila Bulletin.
The photos showed a module entitled “Komunikasyon at Pananaliksik sa Wika at Kulturang Pilipino” Book 1 and a copy of an exercise page containing a passage with the title “Isolated Camp.” Lifted from pinoyjokes.net, the passage talks about military men inside a camp and what the troops do for “fun.”
The student who sent the photo expressed alarm at the content and urged DepEd to urgently address such errors. “While we knew it was supposed to be a joke, to find this in a module is quite alarming,” she said.
The student who requested anonymity shared that there are only two learning delivery modalities in her school – modular printed and modular digital. “The SLMs were also given to us days before the classes started,” she said.
While answering the module, she said that “one of my classmates sent a message asking if we saw that passage and when checking it, I was alarmed because it was not appropriate for our age especially for the boys,” she said.
Following the incident, she said that one of her classmates showed this to her father. “He complained to the teacher about it, then other parents also raised the same concern, saying it was not appropriate and it sends a double meaning,” she said.
The teachers appealed for understanding of the errors. However, the student noted that there was no specific instruction regarding the inappropriate content in the module. “We thought we would be discouraged to read that part but there is no such directive to date,” she said.
Aside from the Filipino module, she said their class also saw “other errors in some subjects, especially in Math.” She noted that since these are “technical,” they, with the help of the teachers, “just correct these among ourselves and we just ignore most of it.”
While she doesn’t have anything against the teachers, the student urged the DepEd to do a more careful evaluation of the SLMs. “For me, it’s useless to ask the teachers to do the walkthrough because the modules were already distributed and personally, I have nothing against the teachers because I know that they are not the ones who developed the modules,” she added.
