ANOTHER YEAR begins without the promised reforms for the education
sector.
The start of classes for primary and secondary education on June
9 and for colleges and universities on June 16 also marks the beginning
of the arduous quest of young Filipinos to get a decent education.
That education as a basic right is guaranteed by the constitution
manifests the importance and life-changing impact of education to
an individual: not only does education make an individual a discerning,
critical citizen, it also increases one's chances of improving one's
lot in life, a possibility denied to many Filipinos.
Yet even this constitutional guarantee doesn't seem to help young
Filipinos in exercising their right to education. Indeed, the hurdles
are plenty: the hardcore traffic one has to endure to go to school,
the ridiculously insufficient textbooks, lacking if not ill-trained
teachers, the annual hike on tuition fees, and the lack-if not absence-of
classrooms and dormitories. The Filipino students, touted as heroes
in many momentous events in our history, from the liberation struggles
against the Spaniards and American to the anti-dictatorship movements
in the '70s and '80s and the ouster of Estrada a few years back, have
often been denied of perhaps the only reliable opportunity to avoid
or escape from poverty.
Reforms in the sector remain distant. If anything is forthcoming,
it is the reality that Philippine education will only receive 96.3
B pesos this year, or about 11% of the total budget for 2003, while
interest payment for our foreign debt will get 28% of the budget.
This is hardly a new issue, yet the trends are alarming: state-owned
universities whose budget for operations (MODE) had been cut, for
instance, are now introducing an orgy of “piecemeal” tuition
fee increases, an additional cost that isn't comforting to many Filipino
parents and students.
There is also an upsurge of repressive campus policies. Student activists
in both private and public schools are being asked to renounce their
“political” activities to be granted admissions this school
year. Some have even unwittingly charged student organizations of
subversion and rebellion for joining mobilizations and protest activities
against Macapagal-Arroyo government, making schools and universities
veritable “authoritarian enclaves.”
Despite the major roles, students have played in our fight for democracy
and good governance; their civil and political rights are being curtailed
in the every arena where they are taught that education should be
transformed into a tool for empowerment and critical thinking. With
the proposal to hold supposedly random drug testing among students,
we expect repressive schools to have a collusion with the police to
curb democratic rights in schools. For such reason alone, the random
drug testing in schools should be proposed.
Every year, students all over the nation go to their schools with
a personal pledge to finish their schooling. It is a pledge that we
wish to share with them, along with our commitment to be in the forefront
in the fight to make education accessible for all young Filipinos.
We challenge the government once again to hold true the constitutional
provision that education should be given priority. We urge the Philippine
Congress and Senate to pass an Anti-Campus Repression legislation
and to put a moratorium in tuition fee increases.
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