The couple Christopher and Ma. Victoria Bernido, both with Ph. D. in Physics, won the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for 2010 in the field of education. They were among the seven who were selected by the Foundation for this year's equivalent of the Nobel Prize in Asia for introducing a cost-effective method of teaching science and non-science subjects in a school that was about to close before they took over. In citing the Bernidos, the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation said the husband and wife tandem of Christopher Bernido and Maria Victoria Carpio-Bernido is recognized for “their purposeful commitment to both science and nation, ensuring innovative, low-cost, and effective basic education even under conditions of great scarcity and daunting poverty.”

The Bernidos completed their doctorate degrees in physics from the State University of New York. In the 1980s, they headed the National Institute of Physics at the University of the Philippines, where they were also recognized for excellence in teaching and research. It would have been safe and very comfortable to just stay at U.P. and continue to be the leading personalities of its Institute of Physics. But no, the call of greater services to the country, just like the call of the wild prevailed upon them. In 1999, to the surprise of their colleagues, they packed up and relocated to Jagna to run the Central Visayan Institute Foundation (CVIF) owned by Christopher's aging mother. It was a choice between good life and the opportunity to come to terms with the problems of basic education in the country.

It was there where they started the CVIF Dynamic Learning Program (DLP), an innovative methodology that limits teacher participation by devoting seventy percent of class time to student activities with specific learning targets. In his response at the testimonial dinner tendered by the provincial government of Bohol Friday night, this was the bypass that he referred to in addressing the lack of textbooks, the lack of classrooms, and the lack of teachers that now bug our educational system. The program makes use of a parallel class scheme in which three classes are held simultaneously by a teacher and assisted by facilitators. Both representatives of students and teachers, and yes, the parents who one after the other gave their own testimonies after dinner, admitted to the effectiveness of the program. Since the start of the program, the 500 students who attended the program showed significant improvements in their performance in national scholastic aptitude and university admissions tests. 

I'm glad the Department of Education, even if it was only represented by the Schools Division officials were around at dinner. Now we can start the nationwide campaign to adopt the same teaching methodology that has proven effective in the kind of environment that we have in the countryside. It's time for government to listen more and more to living heroes who only have the interest of the country in their heart and less and less to politicians pretending to be experts but who only have their own selfish interest to protect. The Bernidos have shown the way to a successful and effective education for our children. Let's not waste time with useless debates. Let's make DLP a national program of government.