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Congratulations to the hundreds of thousands of Filipino youth who
received or will receive their diplomas in various graduation rites
this March and next month after completing their elementary,
secondary or tertiary education for school year 2007-2008.
Special kudos to James Soriano and the rest of
the Ateneo High School Batch 2008 as they officially bid farewell to
high school life today.
Former US President John F. Kennedy once
reminded his countrymen: “Our progress as a nation can be no
swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our
fundamental resource.”
US educator Horace Mann, the first great
American advocate of public education in the mid-nineteenth century,
put it in this wise: “Education, then, beyond all other devices of
human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the
balance-wheel of the social machinery.”
Everywhere in the world, there is no argument
that education is a key element in emancipating individuals,
families and nations from the bondage of poverty and misery.
This country, in fact, even ordained in its Constitution to give the
highest budgetary priorities in government spending for education.
But it seems that the world, including the
Philippines, is merely paying lip service to the vital role of
education in human survival and progress.
Some global reports and statistics say that
today, there are still 125 million children who never attend school.
At least 150 million children of primary age start school but drop
out before they read or write. The United Nations Millennium
Development Goals Report 2007 notes that based on enrolment data,
approximately 72 million children of primary school age in the
developing world, 57 percent of whom were girls, were not in school
in 2005.
One out of four adults in the developing world
is illiterate. Nearly a billion people entered the twenty-first
century unable to read a book or sign their names. A child in
Mozambique is fortunate to go to school for two to three years while
a European or an American child spends at least 17 years of formal
education.
And yet, according to the magazine New
Internationalist, less than one percent of what the world spent
every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by
the year 2000, and yet it never happened.
In the Philippines, the enrolment ratio of
children going to school seems high. Most of them, though, are in
the public school system presumably because most families are unable
to afford the exorbitant costs of private education. In fact, less
than 20 percent of Filipino children are enrolled in private
schools. And this aggravates the perennial predicament on the
inadequacy of classroom and academic facilities, books, and
qualified and competent teachers that necessitate huge public
spending allocation every year. Worse, it is perceived, and the
perception is most likely true, that there is a great disparity
between the quality of education between private schools and public
schools.
The irony of it all is that the country’s
educational system graduates hundreds of thousand of students every
year, many of whom obviously appear undeserving of the diplomas that
they hang in the walls of their homes. It is a case of education for
diploma’s sake and not for learning’s sake. Thus, it is no
coincidence that the country still nurses a high rate of underemployment
and unemployment. Filipinos use their diplomas simply as a
passport to get a job period. Never mind if their employment is not
necessarily what they prepared for after at least 14 years in
school.
Education does not guarantee success, wealth or
fame. Education offers only the hope and the preparation for the
attainment of human aspirations at the very least. In the scheme of
things, getting educated is certainly most important than just
having a diploma.
The poverty of education looms. The world would
not afford to have tomorrow’s parents and leaders out of today’s
uneducated children and educated derelicts.
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www.soriano-ph.com
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