MANILA, Philippines—Spiders are not insects, Paoay is not a province and Robert Louis Stevenson did not write a novel titled “The Kidnapper.”
Vindicating “sick books” crusader Antonio Calipjo Go, the Department of Education (DepEd) has released a 28-page “Teaching Notes” to correct more than 450 errors found in 10 English textbooks issued last year for use of public school students from Grade 1 to Grade 6.
The DepEd also urged the country’s 500,000 public school teachers to be “critical” of the textbooks they use and to be vigilant in spotting errors.
Education Undersecretary Vilma Labrador said the Teaching Notes was the summary of feedback from private individuals, DepEd reviewers, and the authors and editors in cases where their inputs were necessary.
“This is provided as your guide in improving conceptual development and organization of the lessons and in correcting errors that may be [found] in the textbooks you are using,” Labrador said, referring to the teachers.
English for carabaos
It was Go who exposed the errors in English textbooks when he wrote an article in the Philippine Daily Inquirer titled “English for Carabaos or Flip-glish” when the school year opened in June.
Go also listed scores of errors in books for public schools a few years ago.
Education Secretary Jesli Lapus acknowledged the errors in the textbooks and promised to issue corrections.
The “Teaching Notes” corrected “errors” found in S.D. Publications’ “English Expressways I” and “English Expressways 5” and Book Wise Publishing House’s “English For You and Me” textbooks (for Grades 3, 4 and 6).
Feedback from users
Labrador said the textbooks and teachers’ manuals passed the four areas of content evaluation and were reviewed by an editorial board before these were printed.
“However, feedback from stakeholders and users necessitates the issuance of this Teaching Notes,” she said.
Labrador said the Teaching Notes contained the page numbers and the specific part on the page where the recommended revisions were needed. “More importantly, the revisions are very specific,” she said.
Be critical
“We hope that the Teaching Notes will not only serve as your guide, but will also serve as a challenge for you to be more critical of the contents of the textbooks you use. We invite you to inform the DepEd of your comments and recommendations on all the instructional materials the department has provided to your schools,” Labrador said.
“Let us work together for the good of the children under our care,” she added.
The “errors” corrected by the Teaching Notes ranged from poor word choices, awkward sentences and typo errors to redundancies, wrong prepositions, wrong verb tenses, wrong sources, conceptual errors, wrong illustrations, and factual errors.
One factual error the DepEd found was the description of spiders and insects in “English For You and Me 3.”
Spiders not insects
Contrary to popular belief, spiders are arachnids and have eight legs and two body segments, while insects have only six legs and three body segments.
In another page of the book, crickets were correctly described as insects, but the sentence expressing this fact (“Crickets are another kind of insects.”) was grammatically wrong.
Another factual error was the statement on Page 90 of “English for You and Me 6” that Paoay is a “province.” It is actually a town in Ilocos Norte province.
Then on Page 101 of the same book, it was erroneously stated that Robert Louis Stevenson wrote “The Kidnapper.” The same error was repeated on the next page. The novel was actually titled “Kidnapped.”
Bonifacio Day
“English Expressways 5” mistakes Bonifacio Day with National Heroes’ Day, while “English for You and Me 4” missed a date by a century. Instead of the 16th century, the book said 15th century.
Other books contained redundancies, such as the “Chinese of China,” wrong prepositions like “He walks on his crutches” (it should be “with,” not “on”), wrong number of noun, such as “a box of crayon” (it should be crayons), and wrong subject-verb agreements, such as “Which of the following sentences tell about the first paragraph of the story?” (It should be “tells.”)
Orchids, echo
For “English for You and Me 3,” reviewers suggested deleting two entire sentences on Page 107 because they suggested growing orchids from seeds.
“It is not realistic to grow orchids from their seeds,” Teaching Notes said.
The experts noted a wrong choice of word on Page 114 which said that an echo could be “heard a few minutes after one shouts.” They suggested replacing “minutes” with “seconds.”
Another wrong choice of word appeared on Page 69 of the book when one sentence read: “I don’t think somebody is here.” It should have been “anybody.”
For “English for You and Me 2,” the reviewers suggested deleting “tall and” from the sentence “This little clown is tall and strong.”
World Bank-funded books
In his article, Go said Book Wise’s “English for You and Me” series was published under a loan agreement between the DepEd and the World Bank.
He said Director Socorro Pilor of the DepEd-Instructional Materials Council Secretariat mentioned in June 2008 that “21,285,425 English textbooks for Grades 1 to 6 were purchased by the DepEd for school year 2008-2009 for the amount of P666,677,231.00.”
The government paid P383 million for six books from Book Wise, Go said.
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