IT’S WEIRD when people in Ateneo ask “What high school are you from?” My response is usually, “Just somewhere in Pasay.”
Answering feels pointless since they wouldn’t know my school even if I said so, and it feels a bit shameful not to come from a big, well-known one. Although it’s harmless, you can’t help but feel like an outsider once the topic heads into “Weh, so do you know *insert name* from AHS?” or perhaps Miriam, Xavier School, De La Salle, Immaculate Conception Academy, La Salle Greenhills, or Poveda—or whichever big school in Alabang, Makati, or Quezon City. Kulang nalang is for Ateneo’s college application forms to include a multiple-choice of those schools.
I’m not here to attack the “privileged.” Openly discussing inequity is far better than an eat-the-rich sentiment that only feels counterproductive or self-serving. Still, it stands that many Ateneo students do come from big schools in Manila. Is it surprising? Not at all, sadly because affording those schools meant affording Ateneo as well.
When talking with fellow Ateneans, it’s strange hearing them casually say how many of their batchmates went to the University of the Philippines (UP) or tagged along with them to Ateneo, or perhaps they themselves passed UP but preferred Ateneo. Either way, both schools seemed like such feasible prospects for them—an expectation even. Outside those circles, it was a question more of being able to pass or afford these big universities rather than a matter of preference.
Perhaps many who got into these big universities did “deserve” it out of sheer hard work and intellect—except I don’t want to entirely believe that. Will that mean that some old friends, schoolmates, and thousands of other students weren’t as hard-working and smart? This is not to put those schools on a pedestal—in fact, ”top” schools shouldn’t even be a thing—but it’d be also naïve to ignore that other employers have their favored schools. In this case, it’s undeniable that some people do have a monopoly on these big schools more than others.
I recall a class when our professor talked about how there are always vacant chairs in any section. “That chair could’ve seated one more student, and that chair, and that…” He’s right—we could’ve hypothetically filled each classroom. What ultimately kept someone from taking that seat aside from logistical reasons were the lack of resources and opportunities to do so.
“That is a very expensive chair,” he remarked. We were all sitting on very expensive chairs, not just in terms of tuition. But in reality; a life’s worth of costs that it took to sit on those chairs.
It’s not that people from exclusive schools don’t deserve their slots just because someone less fortunate did. It shouldn’t even be a debate of who’s “deserving” of slots. Isn’t it ridiculous that education is a contest for slots—so, ironically, you could better compete for the later contest for jobs?
The point for us Ateneans is to start wondering about a lot of things, like why we “men and women for others” aren’t representative of the “others” we claim to serve. Perhaps there’s something skewed with the very system of education that brought us where we are. Many of us likely came to this school seeing it as a stepping stone to our own success, but we simply can’t graduate from here just stuck at that.
To quote Hannah Arendt: “Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it.” On the same note, we, who were lucky enough to sit on expensive chairs, owe it to the people born with few choices to push for changes in our world—so that one day there wouldn’t be any more exclusive, expensive chairs.
George D. Kho is a Political Science senior at the Ateneo de Manila University. He is also currently a Beyond Loyola staffer of The GUIDON. You can reach him at george.kho@obf.ateneo.edu.
