Pubmat by Adrianne Coloma

by Giana Bacordo

#WALANGPASOK — DUE TO INCLEMENT WEATHER BROUGHT BY HABAGAT, FACE-TO-FACE CLASSES WILL BE SUSPENDED. ALTERNATE DELIVERY MODES OF LEARNING WILL BE IMPLEMENTED.

Day after day, these are the words that have greeted students from all over the Philippines. 6.5 million learners nationwide have had their education interrupted by Habagat’s relentless downpour. In compensation, many schools have implemented “alternative delivery modes of learning” — as recognized by the Department of Education, these include synchronous or asynchronous classes delivered to students that maintain the learning standard set for the day. But recent discourse has raised a more fundamental question: When a disruption suspends classes, why is it that students are expected to maintain the status quo of their own capacity?

Behind every student attending an online classroom is a network of conditions that make attendance possible: electricity, internet access, functioning devices, a safe home, and enough time and stability to learn. It is within this context that the country’s capacity comes into question. Low-income areas in the country are among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, with resources too scarce to be able to adequately cope. Outside of this, even the aforementioned alternate modes of learning are limited in their viability. Only 28% of households have access to fixed broadband (that is, a high-speed Internet connection), and the country’s overall digital transformation has been among the slowest in Southeast Asia.

These systemic realities only worsen the burdens placed on the common student. With so many affected nationwide, how can learners be expected to cope effectively with their conditions? With national disaster risk reduction insufficient and alternate learning modes altogether inconsistent, the recent sequence of suspensions has left most students to navigate disruptions to their education largely on their own. It is by acknowledging these realities that we ask the question that the Philippines has only just started to address — why must resilience always come from those at the bottom of the system?

As a Country

There are a number of things that citizens should expect from their countries. The first and most basic is safety. If dangerous conditions arise, a government should have the capacity to protect its people. But does this obligation truly manifest in the Philippines? Nearly 1,000 schools in the affected areas have been damaged due to the effects of Habagat. The inadequacy of infrastructure in the country is not merely due to adverse weather conditions. Persistent administrative problems such as misallocated flood control funds and faulty governance shape the severity of how communities experience disasters.

Safety is not the only important dimension of this issue. “But wherever possible, government should invest in citizen capabilities to enable them to provide for themselves in rapidly and continually changing circumstances,” writes lawyer Anne-Marie Slaughter. Education is the core of a citizen’s development. Maintaining inclusive access to it during crises is a matter of public capacity. 

Truly, then, it should be questioned whether Habagat is only the cause of the Philippines’s tumultuous outcome or if it is something else entirely — if it is instead a reflection of how the country has, thus far, fallen short. Inclement weather conditions do not affect one institution at a time. A country’s education system depends on the systems around it.

Uninterrupted education cannot be asked for when the streets are flooded. Neither can it be asked for when a student’s electricity is flickering, the Internet is choppy, and their home itself is not suitable as a learning environment. But none of these conditions are helped by the systemic inadequacies at the root of the issue, and they are only exacerbated by schools that expect their students to sustain their education independently even as the resources around them become increasingly unreliable.

The Filipino Student

Disaster does not affect all students equally. Capacity, as it is defined by the UNDRR, is the combination of all the resources available within a community to manage and reduce risks. However, such resources can be hard to come by, especially in vulnerable communities. Students going home to at-risk situations cannot expect the same comforts in a synchronous or asynchronous learning environment that students with reliable Internet, electricity, and technology can expect. Especially given the possible infrastructure damage incurred by the rainy weather, many learners may be unable to rely on a stable power supply, let alone an Internet connection.

This gap is made even more evident by the growing digital divide. In 2022, Internet penetration in the top wealth quintile of the country rose to 60% while the bottom quintile rose only to 5%. This bottom quintile represents over 20 million Filipinos, all of whom suffer a reality that spells out a lack of access to education during adversity. Indeed, a study by Fabito et. al. shows that one of the top barriers students face in online education is the lack of a stable Internet connection. On top of these conditions, students have the potential to be penalized for absences and missed assignments during these asynchronous/synchronous periods, effectively punishing them for disruptions that they have no control over.

But why is it that these students are expected to bear this burden on their own? Cultural factors also play into this dangerous expectation. Filipino resilience is described as the capacity to recover and recuperate, all while maintaining a sense of optimism. In terms of disaster resilience, rural areas — which are among the most vulnerable — have been reported to demonstrate a stronger sense of “societal resilience.” Such framing can create a standard where people are expected to endure and adapt to hardship of their own accord, even when the causes that have exacerbated such difficulties remain neglected. 

During adverse times, it is often students themselves who are looked to as the primary bearers of responsibility for sustaining their own education. Although some schools have adopted various accommodation measures, these cannot compensate for the unequal conditions under which students are made to participate. It is seen as an obligation to maintain an online learning environment, attend to academic responsibilities, and adapt to external disruptions independently. In this sense, resilience risks become more of a personal obligation upheld by the school: Students are expected to continue learning despite circumstances that may be beyond their control. But when this burden is shifted, it can obscure the responsibility of institutions to provide the support and conditions necessary for learning. 

What Should Change?

Long-term policy is a large part of how the country can expect to cope with this issue. With online learning becoming more and more commonplace globally, the Philippines should work on developing electrical infrastructure and broadband access in more areas. As the years pass, it is continually being proven that a reliable digital environment can play a huge role in empowering education, especially during times of intermittent classes.

Moreover, it should be made standard that students are not penalized for conditions outside of their control. During severe weather, alternative modes of learning should remain flexible, allowing students in difficult conditions to adjust. Asynchronous activities, adjusted deadlines, and make-up sessions are all reasonable accommodations for learners experiencing hardships such as power outages, connectivity issues, evacuation, or other emergency circumstances. Learning continuity should allow students the space to respond to a disaster without compromising their education.

Rather than continually asking learners to adapt to inadequate systems, the country must first strengthen the systems that allow them to learn, recover, and remain safe in the first place.

Habagat will eventually pass. The clouds will recede, the rain will stop falling, and the schools will once again open. But it does not mean that the insights exposed by this rainy season will be rendered obsolete. It only means that, with the changing weather, the Philippines must learn to adapt its systems to the changing realities of its citizens, and work tirelessly to ensure that when the next downpour comes, the same conflicts are not simply allowed to resurface.