Philippine Catholic education leaders warned that proposed reforms to the country’s university General Education curriculum could weaken ethics, humanities, and moral formation by reducing higher education to “functional training” shaped mainly by economic and technological demands.
In a joint statement, the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines and the CBCP Episcopal Commission on Catholic Education urged the Commission on Higher Education to reconsider key elements of its draft reframed General Education curriculum, saying universities must continue forming “the whole person intellectually, morally, and socially.”
The groups acknowledged the need for curricular reforms amid “technological, global, and market transformations,” but stressed that General Education “remains the formative core of the university experience.”
They warned that the proposed framework reflects “a shift in the university’s mission: from the integral formation of the human person to the production of economically functional and technologically adaptable workers.”
While employability and digital literacy are legitimate goals, they said, these “must not eclipse the deeper purpose of higher education.”
The Catholic educators raised concern over the possible marginalization of philosophy, humanities, and the arts, saying these disciplines cultivate “critical reflection, imagination, and civic responsibility,” and warned that their weakening “signals a narrowing of education’s horizon.”
Quoting Pope Leo XIV’s Drawing New Maps of Hope, the groups said educational institutions must resist reducing students to technical outputs or economic units.
The pope, they noted, warned against reducing education to “functional training or an economic instrument,” reminding institutions that a person is not merely a “‘skills profile’ or a predictable algorithm, but ‘a face, a story, a vocation.’”
The statement also framed the curriculum debate within what the groups described as the country’s broader moral crisis marked by “ethical ambiguity, disinformation, and intellectual superficiality.”
In that context, they cautioned that treating ethics as merely incidental across the curriculum risks producing only a “‘thin crust’ of moral awareness: present in language but shallow in formation.”
The groups called on CHED to “institutionalize a coherent approach to ethics in General Education,” both as “a foundational discipline in moral philosophy and ethical reasoning” and as an integrative component across academic fields.
CEAP and CBCP-ECCE also opposed the proposed pilot implementation of the revised curriculum, saying General Education is too foundational to be tested only in select institutions.
“GE shapes the intellectual and moral architecture of all students,” the statement said, warning that pilot testing could create “uneven formation” and prematurely normalize “contested frameworks, particularly those that weaken ethics and the humanities.”
The Catholic education bodies also defended academic freedom and institutional autonomy, warning against what they described as a “rigid, top-down curricular model” that could undermine educators’ expertise and the distinct missions of universities.
They urged CHED to pursue “a more grounded and evidence-based review” of the draft curriculum through broader consultations with students, educators, scholars, and academic leaders across the country.
