MANILA –After years of being put in the back burner, the subjects on Good Manners and Right Conduct (GMRC) will now be back in the curricula of elementary schools in the country after President Rodrigo R. Duterted signed into law, Thursday, Republic Act 11476, or the GMRC and Values Education Act of 2020. It can be recalled the GMCR was dissolved as a subject under the K-12 program in 2013 under the administration of President Noynoy Aquino.
Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel F. Zubiri, principal author of the senate version of the said bill thanked the president for taking prompt action to the proposed law. “The signing of the GMRC and Values Education Act is really timely, and I thanked the president for his swift action on this important measure,” Senator Zubiri said in a statement.
The senator also urged the Department of Education to hasten the formulation of the required implementing rules and regulations of the new law so that it can be integrated in the curriculum when school year 2020-2021 will officially open on August 24.
“Kids are going to be at home all day, learning in isolation from their peers. They’re not going to have the natural avenues for emphatic learning that springs from personal inter-action with their classmates and teachers. Hopefully, a strengthened GMRC and Values Education will make up for that.”
Based on the new law, GMRC and Values Education program will now be reintroduced in the K-12 curriculum, replacing the current Edukasyon sa Pagkatao Curriculum. GMRC will be incorporated into the daily activities of Kindergarten pupils and will be taken as separate subject from Grades 1 to 6 while Values Education will be taught in Grades 7 to 12 under the K-12 Basic Education Curriculum.
Sen. Zubiri further said that they drafted the law because they thought it was important to bring back this subject that would arm the children with stronger moral codes in this highly changing and technological world. He concurred the passage of the law was just on time because the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic would move all interaction online and he hoped the law would eventually serve school children who are holed most of theur time of the country.
