One day, I was chatting with a group of friends from high school — classmates of a younger brother, and I’ve known them all since high school in the early 70s.
Enjoying our senior discounts and over cups of coffee, we naturally reminisced about those bygone days. The discussion inevitably turned to, “si kwan bala, di-in na?” (Where is him/her/they these days) To which, one replied with feigned nonchalance and a hint of bitchiness, “Indi bala sa lower section ina sya?”, (they were in the lower section, is it not?) and we erupted into peals of laughter.
“Lower section” then, in our Catholic high school, implied separation and distance — from the “upper section” or as others prefer to call it, the “star section”. The “upper section” was where we snobs were put into by school authorities at the beginning of the year, based on higher grades.
Though there were between five to seven sections of students (40 to 45 per section), there was the “Upper section” where those with higher grades, and presumably more talents — campus press writers, literary-musical contest standouts, the PMT/CAT [Preparatory Military Training/Citizen Army Training] commander, the class presidents were usually placed.
In the pre-K to 12 era, freshmen, sophomore, junior, and senior classes in high school would have the learners distributed in this manner, to compete against each other for honors and awards. Inevitably, the periodic honor roll, typed on onion-skin bond paper and posted with thumb tacks on the school bulletin board, or printed in the high school publication, would be crowded with names from the “upper section” — making up at least 90% of the honors list, while only two or three names from the rest of the other five sections appearing sporadically.
Discrimination and differences?
I wonder what the effects of these on the psyche of our year-mates in the “lower sections” were. Never really thought about it — ah, the pleasures and blinders of privilege. For practical considerations, if a sophomore-year class had 250 students, they would be in six sections of about 40. Administrators would classify students into sections, according to their grades from the previous year. But one high school classmate, who I met recently, 51 years after our high school graduation, told me he had been so terrified of being in the “upper section” that he begged and pleaded with his mother to transfer him to a “lower section”; if not, he would rather run away or transfer school, saying that if he were in the “upper section,” he would be always at the bottom of the class and the butt of jokes!
So perhaps for some, being put into the upper section was intimidating. Never mind that he is now a successful professional in the US — what he recalls is that how he did not feel comfortable at all with being placed in the “upper section.” On the other hand, it could be likely that one did not need to study too hard, or too desperately, if one were in the “lower sections,” and there could be less competition for grades, or pressure to be on the honor roll.
Did our teachers then treat students in the “upper section” differently? Did they try to challenge them more, have more difficult assignments and examinations? For the “lower sections,” were they more patient, lenient? Did they spend more time giving explanations and coach more? Did their expectations differ? What did they think was the impact of this on the learners? I never really thought about this, but I managed to chat with one of my teachers from high school, who is now in her nineties, but still sharp as ever.
She recalled that, “students who are from the so-called lower sections, once said, ‘ano gid bala ang amon masarangan kay sa lower section lang kami.’” (What can we really do, we’re just from the lower sections). She also mentioned one reason also for having the students with higher grades in the same section is that they can have the same set of teachers, as teacher variability is also a factor in giving grades.
Those in the upper section were expected to be better behaved, less rowdy. When the high school sports fest came around, the lower section teams had extra motivation to beat the “upper section” teams. She also observed that if girls and boys were put together in the same section, the boys were better behaved!
In a 2019 opinion piece about class sectioning in the Pampanga Sun Star, Laila Gomez of Pampanga National High School notes that this sectioning system created a social hierarchy system and biases. Higher sections or first sections are expected to perform well in academics and are considered good students. Those placed in the lower sections are stereotyped as hard to teach, rarely interested in academics, and “probably with the worst discipline (sic) in their level… It not only had a negative impact on the lives of an individual student, but also on the teaching and perspective of their teachers; with the adverse effect of negative labeling of people….”
Traditionally, class sections may be labeled in several ways: alphabetical and numerical (i.e. Year IV-A, B, C, D, etc.; or IV-1, 2, 3, 4. In most cases “A” and “1” would be considered the “upper sections” particularly if those with higher grades were put in there. Hence, there are also jokes about being in the last section of the series, because that would imply that these were the dullards. “Daw Grade one section 10 ka imo” (You’re like someone in grade one, section 10) would be a retort if one seemed slow to understand the lesson or to get a joke.
Gomez notes that some schools have tried to remedy this, devising different systems of sectioning. Though there are still considerations for academic performance, schools have tried to balance the distribution of students in each section, trying to build an atmosphere where no section could point out that others are lower than them. This could also encourage students in need of more motivation and guidance in their academics, feeling that they are in the same level as other students, and expected to and can actually perform as well as the others.
Other ways of grouping students are by their alphabetical surnames rather than by their grades; randomized assigning, purposeful mixing of students (often with expectations that those who are better performers will support their other classmates, or motivate others to study harder). Assigning names to the sections, such as names of flowers, or native trees, to minimize impressions of hierarchy is also done. So if you were in III-Sampaguita or in III-Rosal, there would be no distinctions. The school my grandniece attends has sections named after stars, so you will have II-Orion, II-Pegasus, etc. That way, everyone’s a star!
A major concern is the poor performance of the Philippines in the Philippine International Student Assessment or PISA rankings. According to a Philippine News Agency Report, the 2022 PISA results showed that the Philippines ranked third from the bottom in science with an average score of 356, sixth from the bottom in mathematics with an average score of 355, and sixth from the bottom in reading with an average score of 347. The country ranked 77th out of 81 countries included in the study — a minuscule improvement, if one may call it, from 2018, when the country was dead last (78th of 78).
Of course, these years may not be strictly comparable, as it is possible that not all the same countries were part of both assessments.
It might be useful to know if there is disaggregated data on the country’s PISA performance: according to sex and gender, rural/urban, by region/province, by economic status, by type of school, and of course, by “star/upper” section versus the non-starred; because in the end, for the country as a whole, improved performance of the “average” students should be more important than having brilliant outliers or topnotchers. – Rappler.com
