Beware these horrors; they could happen to you
Isolated cases? No. These are not isolated cases. One does not need to die physically to know what it is like to be Kristel, Rosanna, Mariannet, Nilna, Prof. Joma or Mark. For we are them. The students of today, the youth of today, those who were unable to continue with their education. We are them.
What could be more morbid than a system that is making a killing out of us? This system is the common denominator of the stories above that you would initially thought of as a work of fiction or the supernatural. But it is the nature of commercialized, colonialized and repressive education system that breeds these horrors.
Origin of Horrors
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In a desperate act to salvage the worsening crisis of capitalism that peaked in the 1970s, world powers or imperialists like the United States engineered a strategy what we call now as neoliberal policies – deregulation, liberalization, privatization and denationalization. They are to be implemented to Third World Countries and the neo-colonies of imperialists. Our country’s leaders, being puppets and vagrants to foreign domination and capitalist accumulation, implemented neoliberal policies to basic social services including education.
Ferdinand Marcos’ Batas Pambansa Blg. 232 or Education Act of 1982 was brought to life and the education sector was never the same since then. It was the stamp pad of the deregulation of the education system. It opened the door to the private sector to education that used to peek only through a keyhole. Government restrictions on the private sector’s imposition on the curriculum and the tuition hikes were lifted, giving capitalist educators the liberty to increase the cost of education upon their whim and made the curriculum very flexible based on the international demand for professionals and semi-skilled workforce.
More than three decades after its passage, tuition fees have skyrocketed and other school fees became part of the lengthy registration or matriculation forms of students who are enrolled in courses patterned to the needs of the international market – engineering and architecture, computer science and information technology, nursing and caregiving up to vocational and technical courses and the likes.
Parallel to this, government funding to education were slashed yearly as foreign debt was increasing. Not only was education deregulated, it was also privatized. Public schools introduced fees and increased fees. Public schools were closed or merged in the guise of “rationalization.” But the end effect was that they could accommodate less and less students per year. This forced poor students to be turned away or to drop out, especially if they could not enter the private schools, where some had the tuition as the “real” admission test. Public education via SUCs are forced to be run like a private entity, opening all possible entries to Henry Sy and his friends in the Forbes list of richest men. To quote the Benigno Aquino government’s Roadmap to Philippine Higher Education Reform Program (RPHER), they are teaching higher education institutions (HEIs) to be self-sufficient and explore avenues to have more income generating projects to compensate for the annual budget cuts.
The new dream killer
[/ult_animation_block][ultimate_spacer height=”250″]Adults say that we are in the “instant generation” – just add water for an instant meal in minutes, instant communication with a touch of a thumb, instant relationships through swiping and, of course, there’s Instagram. The evolution of an “instant generation” has permeated the education system through the K-12 Program, the government’s centerpiece program for education. The aim of K-12? To instantly produce a massive labor force of workers that are young, semi-skilled, contractual, subject to cheap labor, export-ready and honed for obedience in workplaces due to the feudal set-up in schools.
Remember that the goal of big business, of capitalism as an economic system, is to salvage their decrepit existence thus making the labor force malleable through a variety of options packaged under the neoliberal policies (e.g. contractualization, labor flexibilization). In order to create such pool of workers that are readily available, a great investment in a matching education must be predetermined.
Why do we say predetermined when the current K-12 program that will see practice and actual implementation in 2016 offers a four-quadrant option (academic, sports, arts and design and technical-vocational) for senior high school or Grades 11 to 12? According to the Department of Education (DepEd), 48.7% of schools with senior high school are offering the technical-vocational track while 49.7% are offering the academic track, the rest are divided on the remaining tracks. Yet they said we could be anything we want to be in the world.
Moreover, K-12 means more money for the same capitalist educators we’ve been talking about. K-12 was created to also be a predetermined source of profit. In Metro Manila alone, 9 out of 10 schools that are offering senior high school are privately-owned. Estimated expenses per student a year is pegged at P35,000 to P80,000. DepEd recently approved the tuition hike of 1,337 schools across the country.
Colleges and universities have smothered us with tuition and other fees increases. The College Educators Association of the Philippines already admitted that the tuition hikes are part of their preparation for the school years 2015-2017 where no freshman student will enter their gates. To secure profit prior to the implementation has never been this ghastly.
Would they choose to be left behind?
Of course not. These HEIs are now offering senior high school too. And yes, the Commission on Higher Education approved the tuition and other fees increase of 313 HEIs across the country.
Que horror
The festering system of education has become our living nightmare. It is already akin to the fear of getting out of your bed, afraid that a monster will pull your feet and drags you under the bed towards the abyss. Or passing by a big tree terrified that a kapre will make you his wife or the endless “Tabi, tabi po” to the nuno sa punso. It is even more than these urban legends and Filipino mythologies, because these education horrors are true. And they happened to real people.
Fear the living.
The grim reapers of the youth’s dreams are alive but cold-blooded. Their scythes are rusty, but they use it every single time for self-interest. The Aquino administration is today’s grim reaper and its scythe is the rotten system of education, positioned in an angle only a few centimeters away from our carotids and our dreams. The grim reaper and the dream killer rolled in a man cloaked in yellow democracy, but soaked in young, innocent blood.
The myth debunked
[/ult_animation_block][ultimate_spacer height=”250″]What is the answer? What is the alternative?
A nationalist, scientific and mass-oriented education is the answer to a commercialized, colonial and repressive education. And K-12 is not the answer, but an aggravation of the current decaying education system.
A nationalist education shall inculcate the long history of the Filipino being courageous against tyrants who have been and are threat to the country’s sovereignty, that we have a bloodline of “atapang atao” that even a Grim Reaper fears. A scientific education shall instill critical thinking among Filipinos and firmly support the continuous development of agriculture and industries. A mass-oriented education fulfills the idea “education for all”. Quality education is accessible to all.
What we have now is the kind of education that masked leaders’ true ilk, that befuddled the workings of the politics and economics in the country and that had us reduced to believing in ghosts, superstitions and horrors had debilitated us from uniting, working for meaningful changes for our country. We have to go out of our classrooms and really learn.
From there, we could stand up for a better education for ourselves and a better future and life for the nation. One will not happen without the other.
Like the sun
Kristel. Rosanna. Mariannet. Nilna. Prof. Joma. Mark.
Their deaths were unnecessary. Their stories do not deserve to be whispered. They are to be shouted for they were murdered by the system that has failed them.
No. We don’t end this by waiting for the sun to come up, cross our index fingers or gather bundles of garlic and silver bullets.
We end this nightmare with collective struggle. The sun is up for we are the sun.
We are not the walking dead of the Philippine education system. We are the walking little mister and miss sunshine of the society. Well, we’ll walk under the sunshine most of the times but we carry with us the best alternative there is so that we may put and end to this horror.
A young leader once said, “The world is yours, as well as ours, but in the last analysis, it is yours. You young people, full of vigor and vitality, are in the bloom of life, like the sun at eight or nine in the morning. Our hope is placed on you. The world belongs to you.” (Hint: you should watch “Beginning of a Great Revival”).
