THE COMPLAINT of a Grade 5 student from South Cotabato over a self-learning module that depicted gender stereotyping prompted the Department of Education to revise the SLMs.

“The Schools Division of South Cotabato has already convened a meeting of concerned writers, evaluators and supervisors to revisit and revise any module not aligned with our policy on gender sensitivity,” Education Undersecretary Diosdado San Antonio said.

Last week, a letter addressed to DepEd went viral on social media as 11-year-old Miguel Lapid pointed out the gender bias from an activity included in their module for their Health subject. The activity asks students to categorize male or female traits.

The answer key suggests that characteristics like “strong” and “tough” are for the males, while being “modest” and “fragile” were attributed to the females.

“I feel that this is oddly gender biased since some males aren’t strong and tough but some females are. Also, some females aren’t fragile. In fact, many are strong and brave. Being a male doesn’t automatically make you a brave and tough guy. Lots of males are easily frightened and tend to cry a lot,” Lapid said in his letter.

San Antonio thanked Lapid for reaching out to the DepEd to look into the locally developed module.

“This instance is proof that our learners, parents, and personnel are indeed engaged in their respective roles in advocating zero-tolerance against any form of gender discrimination in the community. Nonetheless, the department will not tolerate these kinds of lapses,” San Antonio said.

He reiterated that the DepEd Central Office would continue to monitor and remind its field offices to promote “gender-equality standards and procedures in their development of learning materials.”