Free Education: FOR EVERYONE OR POOR EVERYONE?

WRITTEN BY: DESIREE A. GABRIEL

Recently, rumors and news about the plan of providing free education for all Filipino students had been pervasive and without any uncertainties, it had spurred the interest and attention of everyone to the point that we were all expecting that by the next school year, a single penny would not be spent any longer. This has even caused further commotion since most of us believed that nothing can be rendered null and void with respect to our nation’s present administration.

With the fact that our country’s president is absolutely aiming for change and with the visible and felt changes that are being sustained in our country even up to this point, we cannot deny the circumstance that our expectations towards our president’s performance are getting lofty. It had stirred everyone’s hearts and minds to the extent that each one of us is thinking that nothing can be impossibly done with our president’s capacity to lead and take actions to solve every single problem that concerns our nation and countrymen’s progress.

However, despite being blessed with a stately president who has a great sense of responsibility, we cannot roughly say that everything can be in the bag. There are, by a long way, incontestable reasons why it seems unfeasible for our government to pursue its plan of making education financially accessible to every student and here are some of those whys and wherefores:

Overpopulation

Being an overpopulated country with 103,225,899 Filipinos all over the country, perhaps one would not expect that all our needs will be accommodated by a single governing body. Taking into consideration all the state of affairs that constantly put our country on the hook, one should not be self-interested enough to think that his problems should be cracked by merely relying on the assistance and provisions afforded by the government. It’s even nearly impossible for our administration to make all the needs of a certain community available, how much more will the degree of that unlikelihood reach if the requisites that they must look after are the concerns of all the Filipinos around the

country?

Corruption

Then and now, this has been one of the endless issues confronted by our country which in turn generate punitive effects towards the nation’s entire educational system. In fact, this has led to poor provision of resources since the money that is supposed to be intended for one thing will consequently be intended for another. With this timeless issue, how can we even presume that the government has enough funds to send all the Filipino students to schools when in fact it cannot even grant the right amount of salary that teachers do deserve and they cannot even afford their wage at the right time?

Less Priority

Among the three levels of education which are elementary, secondary and tertiary levels, the latter one demands the greatest deal of financial capacity since almost all transactions or endeavors we encounter on this level usually deal with bucks. Nevertheless, due to the fact that our government prioritizes the former since they believe that it is more significant, they apportion more financial assistance for the elementary level which results to their incapacity of allotting more budget for the tertiary level.

Tax Evasion

It is not just the corrupt politicians who must be held accountable for this hard-to-realize dream. Tax payers who are not conscientious enough to respond favorably to their obligation have also undesirably contributed to the educational endeavors of our administration that’s why those parents who have been negligent to their duty as a citizen of our country should, by no means, put all the blame to our government.

Actually, there is a way to get to the bottom of this “impossible dream” and it can be worked out if President Duterte will prioritize the SixWillFix Bill – a legislation that aims to ensure the automatic appropriation of six percent of the country’s gross national product to the budget for education. This aims to ensure free education in all levels

without having its quality and accessibility suffer, and it also targets fair wages for teachers and workers and quality facilities for students. Indeed, if this will be put into place, a lot of people will definitely reap their much-awaited benefit and probably, our country’s administration would encounter lesser setbacks that would eventually pave way to desired improvements.

Nevertheless, in every area under discussion, boundaries are always just around the corner. As much as changes have become prevalent, issues or problems have been also customary in our country. If truth be told, problems are even more consistent than progress.

We are not just drawn against the issues that are concerned with the education in our nation but we are also dealing with numerous glitches that have something to do with other affairs. It is indeed really ideal for a certain country to provide free education for everyone but if a certain administration is not financially ready and capable enough yet, then there’s nothing else we can do but to accept the fact that we cannot twist somebody’s arm to do something he is never capable of doing. In the first place, it is not really the administration’s duty to spend a great deal of money to send us to school. If this could only be taken into account by most of us, perhaps affording free education to those deserving ones alone would not be another dispute confronted by our administration.

We are all given the prerogative to speak our minds and grumble about any matter which we think is not favorable and fair to everybody; however, isn’t it just right for us to consider first if all the people concerned are capable enough of putting our dreams into realization? Think about it.

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PHOTO SOURCES

1 https://c.slashgear.com

2 http://www.pretaportobello.com