WHERE life is tangled in knots and snarls in the marooned mountainous areas in Mindanao, 12-year-old Mel Velyn Escobar of Midsayap, a town in North Cotabato, finds hope in Knowledge Channel to pursue her education.

“[Knowledge Channel] has a magnet. It makes me realize to finish my studies, that schooling is more than just fun,” says Escobar. “In my community where there is hardly any electricity, potable water and money for three square meals a day, it gives me hope for a favorable future.”

In the Philippines, the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao holds the highest dropout rate. It’s also in Mindanao where the completion rate all over the Philippines is the gloomiest—only 12 students finish secondary level out of 100 students enrolled in Grade 1. Add up the fact that the majority of those residing in Mindanao live on less than $1 a day.

Knowledge Channel, through the facilities of ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp. and Skycable, has been bringing basic learning skills designed to advance the value of education and level the learning and teaching grounds to classrooms from Aparri to Tawi-Tawi.

With the backing of the country’s broadcasting giant and biggest cable distributor, Rina Lopez-Bautista and Carlo Katigbak launched the foundation to set up a television channel with educational programs designed toward public schools.

Since its creation in 1999, Knowledge Channel has been servicing 1,800 schools in the country. In 2004 the United States Agency for International Development (Usaid) infused $1 million to Knowledge Channel to provide some 150 public schools in Mindanao with educational television programs.

The three-year grant of the Usaid to Knowledge Channel has recently concluded at the San Isidro Elementary School in Midsayap. So far, 78,529 students coming from the most remote and isolated areas in Mindanao have benefited the yields of Knowledge Channel.

Doris S. Nuval, Knowledge Channel project director for Television Education for the Advancement of Muslim Mindanao (Team Mindanao), says the foundation wants to upgrade the quality of education in conflict-ridden areas such as Maguindanao, North Cotabato, Zamboanga del Sur, Zamboanga Sibugay, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.

Installing Knowledge Channel infrastructure—which includes a television set and a receive-only satellite in every school—to these communities wasn’t easy because they are mired in poverty and even belong to fifth- and sixth-class municipalities, says Nuval.

“No gift is better than the gift of knowledge,” says Department of Education (DepEd) Secretary Jesli A. Lapus. “It’s only knowledge that will be the most effective weapon and instrument for poverty alleviation and peace. Education equalizes everything.”

“Therefore, it’s in Mindanao where we see information-technology intervention. It’s in Mindanao where we’re inspired to reduce its education conundrum through the government’s flagship program on information technology,” says Lapus.

Peace and livelihood

KNOWLEDGE Channel is unique with its 18-hour continuous programming, says Nuval, referring particularly to its peace and livelihood education.

Its 10-episode video series on basic business skills, “Negosyo Ko, Asenso Ko (My Business, My Buildup),” has facilitated the out-of-school youth, aged 16 to 24, to deal with livelihood abilities. It introduces the benefits and risks in beginning a business and essential strategies to tone it up.

Jon D. Lindborg, Usaid mission director, tells that there are more children that are out of school than the otherwise. “With the ‘Negosyo Ko, Asenso Ko,’ we are touching a hundred thousand of out-of-school youth to give them skills to move ahead of their lives,” he says.

In Midsayap, Lindborg notes that everyone hopes on obtaining a college degree. But, in fact, he says there are many good-paying jobs in Mindanao that don’t require college degrees.

Knowledge Channel also airs Salam (Peace), a 10-part TV series which revolves around the lives of four individuals working in the peace-building sector in Mindanao. They reminisce about their childhood in times of conflict and share how they overcame the obstacles to reach their goals.

Salam is the result of Executive Order 570, “Institutionalizing Peace Education in Basic Education and Teaching Education,” which aims to provide mainstream peace education in both basic and nonformal learning curriculums.

Although the setting of these educational episodes is in Muslim Mindanao, Nuval says “the learning objectives of the episodes are applicable to students in the elementary all over the country.”

Most of the Knowledge Channel’s shows, however, are pegged on the DepEd’s curriculum for both the elementary- and high-school levels. “We explain to the teachers that all programs are supported on minimum learning competencies [the least amount that a child must learn in any grade or year level],” says Nuval, who is also the director for Knowledge Channel management.

She adds that the DepEd has previewed all programs. According to the foundation’s 10-year agreement with DepEd, mandatory viewing should be carried out in all schools installed with Knowledge Channel infrastructure.

Pull ahead

LINDBORG says technology has become necessary in balancing the teaching and learning fields. In the education sector, technology is no longer considered an alternative, he stresses.

“We now live in a world of Internet network. Networking is a human need, our economy is a network, information is a network. And, therefore, education is a network,” he says.

With Team Mindanao, the Knowledge Channel is now in the southernmost municipality of the country—Sitangkai, Tawi-Tawi—where schools were electrified with solar panels before the infrastructure was installed.

“Tawi-Tawian children as well as their teachers in the hinterland now enjoy and learn from educational television like their Manila counterparts,” Nuval says.

Meanwhile, she ensures that the achievement level of students in various subjects will pull ahead with the continued use of Knowledge Channel.

For instance, Zamboanga Sibugay’s Habib Moin Anduhol Elementary School, a Knowledge Channel recipient, posted an increase in its division’s achievement test, rising from 25th place in schoolyear 2005 to 2006 to seventh place in schoolyear 2006 to 2007.

Another recipient, Bangkerohan Elementary School, also in Zamboanga Sibugay, dramatically outdid all schools in the division’s achievement test in schoolyear 2006 to 2007, where it ranked first from 27th place in the previous year.

Every school comes up with its own viewing program for its students after the setting up of a television set and a satellite dish. “They could select among the various subject areas. Then we also rerun the episodes in order for the schools to opt the appropriate viewing time for the students,” says Nuval.

By December, Knowledge Channel will start evaluating the improvements of the students all over the country who were given the infrastructure. “We are bullish of the result as we have been confident of the guaranteed impact of our technology,” says Nuval.

Also, the foundation will ensure that the infrastructure is appropriately used. Teachers, says Nuval, are guided in using the television sets and trained in preparing lesson plans even without watching the programs ahead of time.

Enrollment rates have risen in some distant areas. “Television programs spur nosy and amazed children,” Nuval observes, adding that absentee rates in Mindanao have also waned.

Although there are numerous schools requesting the Knowledge Channel to provide them with infrastructure and educational programs, Nuval sighs that the foundation couldn’t muddle through with their requests because funds coming from benefactors aren’t just enough.

Sound investment

IT goes without saying that the DepEd’s P26.48-billion cybereducation project (CEP), which will be financed by a loan from the Chinese government, will have the same impact as the Knowledge Channel, assures Lapus.

Suspended for now, the project will allow 37,794 schools—or 90 percent of public schools nationwide—to receive live broadcast featuring lectures and presentations from master teachers.

In the midst of criticisms that the CEP is one such grand, wasteful and careless public spending, the education secretary takes up the cudgels for the project: The individual success of information-technology projects, like the Knowledge Channel, is a pity if only a handful of the 43,000 public schools throughout the country are benefiting.

“All it takes is to have a framework wherein collaborators will be aggressively involved,” Lapus says. He emphasizes that only the government can invest in a nationwide scale. “No private sector has come forward.”

Lapus adds frantically, “How much are we spending on our feeding program per year? It’s P5 billion. How much are we intending to spend on cybereducation program per year? It’s P5 billion, too. In fact, [DepEd’s] payroll alone is P412 billion a year. So don’t tell us that cybereducation program is grandiose.”

However, the envisioned CEP isn’t going to be a mere government development. “The content could be designed by private partners. We could be outsourcing Knowledge Channel,” Lapus expounds.

The benefit is in the schools, Lapus says. “Not in an invisible backbone, not in an invisible infrastructure,” where 70 percent to 80 percent of investment will be tangible.

Technology connectivity, says Lapus, will allow the DepEd, the biggest department of the country, to prepare 20 million students as part of the labor force until 2060. “Do we need to deprive? Do we need to select who’s going to be in the next pilot?” he asks.

Mario Taguiwalo, a former consultant of the DepEd, however, notes that information-technology intrusion isn’t the main quandary of basic education. It’s about addressing classroom shortage, teacher training, school infrastructure, nutrition and the dropout rate, he points out.

Adventures, of sorts

BETWEEN 2003 and 2011, the Usaid has committed $81 million for education and youth development in Mindanao. 

To date, the Usaid has helped upgrade the quality of education for about 480,000 students in public elementary schools in Mindanao; trained nearly 10,000 educators in the teaching of English, science and math; and provided almost two million books to schools in Mindanao. 

By 2011, the Usaid foresees Mindanao to have 600 more constructed and renovated classrooms, over 300 community learning centers, another 24,000 trained teachers in English, science and math, and 100,000 out-of-school youth who are provided with livelihood skills.

During the Knowledge Channel’s stint in Mindanao, traversing crocodile-infested waters to get to the mountain schools of Zamboanga del Sur and being caught in the crossfire between feuding families in Basilan were just zilch. As Nuval recounts, “We would continue to go where no one dares to tread.”

What was salient, however, was for the Knowledge Channel to see the faces of children glaring with ease and contentment that, at last, technology is at work in Mindanao—at least in the 150 schools whose students never imagined of having.

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WHERE life is tangled in knots and snarls in the marooned mountainous areas in Mindanao, 12-year-old Mel Velyn Escobar of Midsayap, a town in North Cotabato, finds hope in Knowledge Channel to pursue her education.

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