this story originally appeared in the philippine daily inquirer on July 16, 2009.
School days are here again. As I watched reports about the school opening, I remember the days when I attended a public high school.
In grade school I studied at De La Salle under conditions that were conducive to learning. I had my own chair and desk and my own books to read and study for the rest of the year. There were projectors, audiovisual rooms, and well-stocked libraries. A shortage was unheard of when it came to school supplies or clean bathrooms.
But for my secondary education, I decided to transfer to a science-oriented high school to prepare for my long-term goal of becoming a doctor. From sheer luck and industry, I was admitted to the Manila Science High School.
The experience was an eye-opener for me. Each classroom was equipped with one rickety oscillating fan. Our books were mostly tattered, so we had to buy foreign made books especially for our science subjects. There was only one restroom in the whole building open to students. (There were others, but they were locked and reserved for the use of the faculty only.) So one can imagine the stench of all the fluids excreted by the whole student population coming from that one toilet.
Adding another hindrance to learning was the noise of the traffic on Taft Avenue and the flood that inevitably came even with just a moderate downpour.
My new school was completely different from the one I had gotten used to in my younger years. Still I realized how lucky I was when I saw how bad other public schools are. In some, smallest of nooks have been transformed into classrooms. Students are cramped into shifting classes. Teachers barely have a space to walk in front of the blackboard. School authorities just cannot refuse admission to their already congested schools.
In one news report that I watched on TV, students were shown hopping over the tables to get to the back row because the desks had been placed side by side without any space between them for walking. One room had been divided in two, with the wall right smack in the middle so that a single rotating fan could service both sides.
I pitied a boy who was close to tears when he could not find a chair to sit on, but then two or three of his classmates were sharing seats that were built to accommodate a single student. Who knows if he even had a decent breakfast. And what could he learn that day under those circumstances?
I would not fault him if he would lose the drive to learn for I too would have felt the same way. He was not asking for an air-conditioned classroom; all he needed was a small chair.
The teacher certainly needed a less cramped classroom to practice her craft better. She was a professional who would have wanted a workplace that offered a little more dignity.
The school principal looked so helpless amid the chaos. She needed a lot of spiritual strength to overlook the physical difficulties and carry out her responsibilities.
Gone are the days when public schools lorded it over their private counterparts when it came to academic performance. My parents told me that during their time, a stigma was attached to any student who had to pay tuition to go to school because it meant that he failed to measure up to the standards set by the public school system.
I am outraged by the fact that the Department of Education receives the biggest chunk of the national budget and continues to be considered as one of the most corrupt departments of the government. The shortages—be it in the form of classrooms, teachers or supplies—have always been an issue, but no one has come up with real solutions to these problems. I am angered by senators who, instead of focusing on the most pressing issues such as this, would rather spend their time on investigating sex video scandals as if they had the moral ascendancy to do so. They bask in the limelight lecturing about respect for women, although some of them are well known as womanizers. I recoil at the sight of congressmen who have the last say on where school buildings will be constructed, and put them not where they were needed most but in the towns and cities they favored. It is despicable to see those for whom the people have voted depriving their children of the opportunity to get a decent education.
“With great power comes great responsibility,” Spider-man said, but these officials only follow the “golden rule” that says he who has the gold makes the rules.
