THE heat is on in the academic community. It is because the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) intends to reframe the General Education (GE) curriculum, and it is being rejected — massively.
GE is not merely a technical curriculum requirement, but the intellectual, ethical, civic and democratic backbone of higher education where students cultivate ethical judgment, civic responsibility, cultural literacy and social understanding (Philippine Sociological Society, or PSS). General Education is not a checklist to be completed — it is a formation to be lived; and competencies do not emerge in isolation (Yeban, F).
A draft of the CHED Memorandum Order (CMO) on the Reframed General Education Curriculum (RGEC) was circulated and caused an uproar. Citing the EdCom 2, CHED concludes that there is a strong need to reframe the GE program toward greater coherence, progressiveness and responsiveness. The CMO enumerated objectives, framework, scope and coverage, citing general education outcomes through the five mandated courses with a total of 15 units. It specifies the need for compliance with outcomes-based education (OBE), faculty (which requires a master’s degree) and instructional resource, implementation timeline and transition (which pilot tests this coming school year).
Reframing, in curriculum development, is defined as the process of changing the conceptual setting or viewpoint of an education program to shift perceptions, meaning — making and change — shifting from a given frame of reference to a new, broader frame that fits the situation more constructively.
And the reframing spells trouble for CHED. The consequence is not integration but dilution, cries the GenEd Defenders, a multidisciplinary alliance of educators and advocates. The proposal is legally, fiscally and pedagogically unsound, built on a crumbling foundation (Marasigan, A) and messed with procedural deficiency, statutory conflicts, philosophical incoherence and structural misalignment (Torneo, A). And it is plain unconstitutional (Contreras, A).
There is an influx of position papers that amplify remarkable degrees of intellectual convergence despite differences in institutional affiliation, tone and discipline. Universities, luminaries, thought leaders and politicians join forces in sending the rejections in various platforms. The papers consistently defend GE as a space for critical inquiry, ethical reflection, democratic imagination, historical consciousness and holistic human formation.
Philosophical shift
The proposed RGEC is widely viewed not merely as curriculum reframing but as a fundamental philosophical shift in higher education. The strongest recurring consensus among the papers is the defense of the humanities and social sciences against reduction, compression, merging or elimination. Some question the agenda, the process, the logic.
The reform reframes education primarily in terms of employability, measurable competencies, labor readiness and technical efficiency, rather than holistic intellectual and civic formation. A warning is made that higher education must not be reduced to a mere training ground for industry.
It is noteworthy that the proposed framework favors functional literacy over critical literacy, risking the production of graduates who possess technical competence but lack ethical judgment, historical consciousness and political understanding (the Philippine Political Science Association). Technical competence without critical judgment may produce workers who know the “how” of labor but are dangerously blind to the “why” of its consequences.
The question is “are we really educating people or are we just training them for the world of work?” Technical skills rapidly become obsolete, whereas liberal arts education cultivates enduring human capacities such as creativity, empathy, ethical reasoning, reflective judgment and civic maturity.
