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Bella Cariaso - The Philippine Star
May 9, 2026 | 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines — Catholic groups and education stakeholders opposed yesterday the Commission on Higher Education (CHED)’s proposed reframed General Education (GE) curriculum, warning that the reform could weaken holistic education, displace thousands of teachers and reduce higher education into mere job preparation.
In a joint statement released yesterday, the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines (CEAP) and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines Episcopal Commission on Catholic Education (CBCP-ECCE) backed concerns earlier raised by leading higher education institutions regarding the proposed reframed GE curriculum.
“While we recognize the need for curricular reform amid technological, global and market transformations, it underscores that General Education remains the formative core of the university experience. As articulated in Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the university is called to pursue truth and form the whole person intellectually, morally and socially,” CEAP and CBCP-ECCE said.
The groups noted that Pope Leo XIV has reminded educational institutions that authentic Christian formation embraces the entire person and “does not separate science from humanism, technology from conscience or professionalism from ethics.”
“CEAP and CBCP-ECCE, therefore, urge CHED to undertake a more grounded and evidence-based review of the draft curriculum through expanded and structured consultations with students, educators, scholars and academic leaders across diverse institutions,” the groups said.
Concerns were likewise raised over the possible impact of the reform on moral and civic formation among students.
“As Veritatis Splendor teaches, authentic freedom is the capacity to choose the good in truth, not merely to assert preference. In this context, treating ethics as merely diffuse or incidental across the General Education curriculum risks producing only a ‘thin crust’ of moral awareness: present in language but shallow in formation,” the groups said.
CEAP and CBCP-ECCE urged CHED to institutionalize a coherent approach to ethics in GE, both as a foundational discipline in moral philosophy and ethical reasoning and as an integrative dimension across all fields.
The Catholic educators stressed that while employability and digital literacy are legitimate goals, these should not eclipse the deeper purpose of higher education.
“The marginalization of philosophy, humanities and the arts, which are disciplines that cultivate critical reflection, imagination and civic responsibility, signals a narrowing of education’s horizon,” the groups said.
Beyond the Catholic sector, the proposed reform has likewise drawn strong opposition from academic leaders, faculty unions, writers, artists and academic associations.
Describing the proposed curriculum as a “Frankenstein’s monster of a curriculum – stitched together from corporate buzzwords rather than a coherent vision of humanity,” more than 1,500 education stakeholders signed a position paper calling on CHED to junk the proposal altogether.
“The market-driven, job-centric framework of the proposal, which treats HEIs as merely factories of employable workers rather than shapers of socially conscious citizens, does not respond to our people’s needs in a world of wars, genocide and inequality where we need more, not less GE,” the petitioners said.
The signatories also warned that the reform could further weaken the quality of education and displace as many as 90,000 teaching personnel in higher education institutions.
Groups including Tanggol Wika, Tanggol Kasaysayan, the People’s Education Commission, Kilos para sa Makabayang Education and various faculty unions and associations that initiated the petition are set to file it before CHED on May 12.
