12/05/2026
STATEMENT OF THE DIVISION OF SOCIAL SCIENCES ON THE PROPOSED GENERAL EDUCATION "REFRAMING"
The Division of Social Sciences of the University of the Philippines Visayas strongly denounces and opposes the proposed “reframing” of the General Education Framework by the Commission on Higher Education. Our opposition stems from the diminishing of the importance of the social sciences and humanities in the holistic development of the university graduate and the haphazard attempts to implement such changes without extensive consultation from stakeholders such as educators and experts.
Rooted in the tradition of the liberal arts, the goal of higher education is to cultivate the whole human being, one who has both the specialized skills in their chosen field of expertise and a deep understanding of oneself and their role in society and the world around them. The university graduate is thus both highly skilled and is able to see the bigger picture outside their own specializations.
The claim of a mere “reframing” falls flat when one examines the draft curriculum and its mapping from the old GE curriculum to the new proposal. For example, Ethics loses its independent status under the draft proposal and splits it into three courses (Scientific, Data-Informed, and Ethical Inquiry; Effective, Ethical, and Audience-Responsive Communication; and Ethical Responsibility, Social Awareness, and Sustainability). While these courses seemingly make ethics responsive to global issues at first glance, it also effectively dilutes the discipline and may potentially prevent any conversation about ethics outside these topics, thereby limiting the perspectives through which students can analyze the world and society. Another course is Rizal and Philippine Studies, which crams two very broad courses of study in one course and thus limits any deeper conversations about history and Rizal’s life. Understanding the self also loses its independent standing under the course “Lifelong learning and personal development,” which may tie the conversation about understanding oneself towards achieving goals in “academic work.” The most fatal casualty is Art Appreciation, which was tagged as a “redundancy” without fully understanding that art may be appreciated differently across various age groups and academic levels.
Thus, the “reframing” belies the fact that these courses dictate the limits of how the various areas of human life and society can be discussed in the classroom. Evidently, the social sciences and the humanities have effectively been tied not to global issues per se, but to trends in the job market. Even the claim to interdisciplinarity also fails miserably when, effectively, courses are subsumed, merged, or deleted altogether with no regard to the independence of these disciplines. The proposed “reframing” essentially diminishes the role of the social sciences and humanities in shaping the creative, discursive, and critical skills of the university graduate in favor of making them as efficient as possible in the workplace. This prospect defeats the very origin and evolution of higher education. Furthermore, such is a very dangerous proposition in the age of disinformation and information pollution.
As courses like ethics, history, understanding the self, and art appreciation become compressed and diluted into courses oriented for graduates' eventual roles in the machinery of the workplace, one must critically reflect: does higher education solely exist to mass produce supply of labour force for the job market? How can this extreme reduction of GE units predictably hone graduates as humane, compassionate, reflexive, and critically engaging of social realities?
Public consultation on matters as crucial as the curriculum must not be rushed and instead be held extensively across disciplines and in regions all over the Philippines. A pilot implementation should not even enter the conversation without proper consultation from the experts and teachers who know best what goes on in their classrooms. While we recognize CHED’s mandate to set minimum standards in higher education, it must be done so through fully consultative mechanisms and must not be imposed without substantial input from the academic community.
While CHED has emphasized that the draft curriculum is still open for recommendations and changes, its attempts to reassure the academic community falls short of fully committing to planned and structured consultations as well as rescinding implementation of the pilot program this year.
The Division strongly urges CHED to hold extensive and fully transparent public hearings and consultations with academic institutions, professional associations, and networks of academics, with the intent that any revised GE framework does not sacrifice the students’ interpretive and critical thinking skills. We maintain that this can only be accomplished through the depth and breadth of knowledge provided by the social sciences and humanities to the college curriculum.
We add our voices to the thousands of academics who have manifested the weaknesses and dangers of this draft memorandum, and we demand that CHED should completely discard this draft proposal and replace it with one borne out of genuine and transparent consultations with the academic community.
We stand with the principle that the university’s role reaches far beyond its capacity to produce 'highly skilled' graduates. Higher education is a meaningful experience that can shape the individual to become their optimal self for the service of communities and country. Higher education is a space of diversity and inclusivity, be it for students or for academic disciplines. We implore CHED to help us protect this space by engaging with academics and other stakeholders in developing a GE curriculum that is truly responsive to the needs of society.
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