The private sector backed advocacy group, Philippine Business for Education (PBEd) recently urged government to leave it to school officials to decide whether to retain visual aids on the walls of classrooms for the benefit of their students, as it weighed in on the directive issued by Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte for public schools to strip classroom walls of visual aids, including photos of national heroes and presidents, supposedly to help students “focus” on their teacher and their lessons.
PBEd Executive Director Justine Raagas said that while they support the initiative to declutter classrooms to help students focus, there was also merit in allowing teachers to keep certain learning tools highly visible.
Department of Education Order No. 21, or the implementing guidelines for this year’s ‘Brigada Eskwela’ campus cleanup drive, said all schools should ensure that campus grounds, classrooms, and other facilities are free of unnecessary artworks, decorations, tarpaulins, and posters.
DepEd spokesman, Undersecretary Michael Poa, said the order stemmed from Duterte’s observation from her rounds of public schools that many rooms had kept years-old visual aids that were already “distracting” to the students.
Aside from the issue of visual aids, the PBEd said it is also important to ensure that the classrooms are conducive to learning, which means they should be well-ventilated, have enough space for students, and safe from harsh elements.
Stripping classrooms of visual aids and decorations can help students “focus” on their lessons could be an idea that can be considered if the classrooms are already as comfortable and as maximized for learning as possible, and making them extra distraction-free provides that additional push to squeeze out the most of the educational experience. However, that is barely the case in Philippine classrooms, which for starters are already suffering a shortage in the hundreds of thousands. Whatever our students and teachers have to deal with are still mostly crowded, poorly lit and ventilated, which are part of perennial classroom conditions that are infinitely more distracting than picking on decorations and visual aids.*
