MANILA — A learning material used in a private school has drawn criticism among social media users for teaching insults in slang to students.

A Facebook user, who refused to be identified, posted on Tuesday photos of a Filipino textbook for Grade 8 students, which had an exercise asking learners to identify the meaning of several Tagalog LGBT terms.

One of the sentences read, “Hayun si Alex kasama si Rona na chipipay,” which did not sit well with the Facebook user since it taught students the use of the word “chipipay,” which means “cheap.”

“I was shocked not at the gay lingo but the use of lingo as insult. This is not what we should teach our kids,” the Facebook user, whose nephew—a private school student—uses the textbook, told ABS-CBN News.

“Describing Rona as chipipay? What is the educational benefit of that?” the user added.

A sample item in the exercise also taught students the meaning of “Tingting Cojuangco,” taken from the name of a Filipino socialite which in slang means a very thin person.

“It is body shaming,” the Facebook user said.

Several comments on the Facebook post, which has garnered hundreds of reactions and shares, showed that other netizens were also concerned over how insults were being taught to students.

Private schools do not usually use learning resources from the Department of Education (DepEd) as such institutions are allowed to produce their own materials.

But Ariz Cawilan, director of the DepEd’s Bureau of Learning Resources, said the department’s supervisors can report findings or observations on learning materials during their inspections of private schools.

“This means that if [private schools] are using outdated [or] erroneous LRs (learning resources) or LRs that are not in line with the present curriculum ay puwedeng gumawa siya ng recommendations (they can make a recommendation) for the school to improve,” Cawilan told ABS-CBN News.

Earlier this year, Sen. Joel Villanueva raised concern over a self-learning module that used people’s names known to be Filipino puns alluding to lewd acts.

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The DepEd later said the module was produced by a private Catholic school in Zambales and vowed to make sure learning materials across private and public schools “foster quality education and the best interest of children.”

• Villanueva flags viral private school module with 'dirty names' in DepEd budget hearing

In October, the education department launched formal channels where the public could report errors spotted in learning materials.

• Where can the public report errors in DepEd modules, TV episodes?

— Report from Jaehwa Bernardo, ABS-CBN News