Vox Populi
ksantiago@theguidon.com
Statistics from TeachForThePhilippines.org show that by the time a Filipino child reaches Grade Six, he would have dropped out of school because of his inability to read. Called “frustrated readers,” two-thirds of our system’s current enrollees would have stopped school altogether.
Growing up, I listened to my grandmother’s stories about her teaching career back in the day. She started out as an elementary school teacher and progressed to working as a principal in many of Manila’s public schools. “Teaching requires commitment,” she said, and true enough, her entire life was a testament to that. My mother used to tell me about how my grandmother would spend weekends on campus, putting work over family simply because the school needed her more.
It was then that I decided that teaching would never be a career for me. Senior year, however, turned things around.
Last semester, I enrolled in the Theology 151 class under Ray Aguas, PhD. I entered the class expecting to learn nothing new because I thought, what else is there to learn after 16 years of Catholic education?
However, as every discussion related to liberation theology, it opened my eyes to the state of our nation today. I learned that to help solve the crisis of our nation, it’s not so much of “going down the hill,” but striving to create a level ground for all people. I began thinking about how I could help the Philippines and realized that my former goals seemed all too shallow now. At first, I didn’t want to entertain the thought of entering a career in the academe, but as the weeks progressed, I found myself leaning towards pursuing teaching as a career.
Education in the Philippines is a dying system. With corruption taking away crucial funds from this sector, less and less college graduates choose to go into teaching. The younger generation today is afraid of receiving flak from peers and parents, who say: “Magti-teacher ka lang? Sayang naman ang inaral mo sa Ateneo.” This, alongside the low pay, subpar classrooms and hectic teaching schedules (with volumes of pupils coming in per batch), is definitely enough to drive away young professionals and keep them from even considering this option.
The root of this problem is the lack of quality education in the country. We need people who have the ability to decide on their own. The majority of the voting population must have a voice in society that is not dictated by the politicians who constantly bombard them with false propaganda. Decision-making, which is important in choosing the nation’s future leaders, is coupled with the capacity of a person to think critically—a skill one develops while going through years of education.
It’s funny, though, that the upper classes are the ones complaining about the faults of the system: too many squatters all over the Metro, too many street children, too many poor people who aren’t paying the taxes just like the rest of us—the list can go on and on without them really trying to see the deeper issue at hand.
We don’t have faulty systems and masses who allow themselves to be puppets of the unjust government—what we have is an undereducated population in need of someone to help them up.
This is why I want to become a teacher. If we want brighter days for the next generation of Filipinos, we need to pay attention to what they need: an education that will help the nation get back to its feet.
