I don’t know if I can afford one if ever I will have kids in the future given the K+12 Law and the commercialization of education. It is a sad and infuriating fact that education should liberate us from the quagmires of poverty but it is the one thing which drives us to despair knowing that our children and our children’s children may never get one.
By BEVERLY ANN S. MUSNI, YR.
Davao Today
I always get nostalgic when I see a public school. I grew up in Villanueva town in Misamis Oriental and was raised by my Lola Azon who was a public school elementary teacher. She had no house helper, thus, she would always bring me to school and leave me in a huge Home Economics classroom where I was left to draw flowers, rainbows, nipa huts and whatnots on the blackboards and the walls beside it.
I was a shy girl so I was left to play on my own. But I always envied those who ran outside the fields playing luksong-tinik, Chinese garter, siatong, piko and other really fun childhood games our generation knew. Back then, the Nayong Pilipino was a sight to behold and quality education was actually taught by strict but great educators.
The other day, I saw the enrollment form of a friend for her sixth grade son and I nearly fell off my chair. The tuition and other school fees cost at least 16 thousand pesos! And that’s excluding the textbooks for the school year. That’s equivalent to my tuition fee way back in college!
Parents would then have to scrape the bottom more and toil with sweat and blood just to get their children through college, if and only they get to college. And I blame that partly on the K+12 program which was recently signed into law.
K+12 Law is a brutal degradation of the system of education. It imposes another burden to the parents who are heavily struggling to financially provide for the education of their children. It is a framework of exploitation subjecting them to cheap labor upon graduating high school. Most of all, it contradicts the supposed efficiency of the program due to lack of budget for education.
The commercialization of education which is manifested through the yearly increase in tuition and miscellaneous fees, both in private schools and state colleges and universities, is an aspect which the Aquino administration failed to address.
For how can students and their families be able to benefit from the program when the number of dropouts increases every year as the tuition fee also increases? Out of the 100 children who enter Grade 1, for example, only 14 finish Grade 6. With this, the K+12 program would provide a legal solution in excusing the high illiteracy rate due to dropouts and the costly fees.
Telling the public that the students will be able to be efficient and be able to find jobs even if they have not yet entered college or tertiary education undermines the standards of labor in allowing semi-skilled workers as young as 18 years old for employment. As they have not yet finished a degree, which is the standard basis for employment, it creates a system of exploitation which would in effect lower wages for the employees and workers. It will further legalize contractualization of workers, as their failure to acquire a degree may be one of the bases of discrimination from other degree holders. This is contrary to the law on security of tenure and is clearly an attack on the standards of labor on wages and benefits.
How can President Noynoy Aquino sign the K+12 Law when education is not even a priority to him? Aside from the very insufficient budget in education, you just have to look at our public schools to know how pitiful our educational system is.
Everywhere you look there are dilapidated schools, old textbooks and even no classrooms in most areas. Fifty to 60 children are cramped in a small classroom taught by one teacher alone. And teachers don’t get compensated enough for their work. How then can you provide quality education which would supposedly benefit the students, their families and their future?
The longer years you have in school is not relative to the quality of education you acquire. Adding years in grade school and in high school does not guarantee a bright future. It does not even guarantee an employment status.
Looking at the public schools right now still makes me nostalgic. But I know that there is a high price to pay for education, whether be it a public or private school.
I don’t know if I can afford one if ever I will have kids in the future given the K+12 Law and the commercialization of education. It is a sad and infuriating fact that education should liberate us from the quagmires of poverty but it is the one thing which drives us to despair knowing that our children and our children’s children may never get one.
The mis-education of Juan continues, attending classes in decrepit classrooms and poring over old and torn secondhand textbooks and paying sky-rocketing tuition fees for an education which would further take him to the pits of destitution.
Beverly Ann S. Musni, Yr. is a free spirit. She is a wanderlust, a dreamer and a frustrated rock star who dreams of travelling the world one day. She is a world peace advocate.
Education, education budget, K+12 Law, Misamis Oriental, noynoy aquino, pnoy
