Expect more pocket revolts

Last Thursday, we made it to the front page of the Financial Times. There was this five columns by five inches full color photo of laughing children waving from the window of a bus occupying most of the upper fold. A nice publicity shot inviting tourists to visit the land of smiles? Not really. The headline on top of the photo reads: Hostages of hope. Children kidnapped to secure funding for their school.

Another bizarre story from the Philippines? The caption’s final line says it all: Analysts said the drama was evidence that the Philippines’ poor are turning to desperate acts to compel authorities to act on their grievance. Now tell me, why would investors want to risk money in a country like that.

From all the column inches of reports and commentary I have read on that hostage drama, that one line in FT’s photo caption captured the essence of the story. And the message is disconcerting for the investors we are trying to attract, who read the Financial Times. And worrisome for Filipinos too. Ducat is not likely to be the last. Expect more pocket revolts as the pressure to survive intensifies for the country’s underclass.

Remember the SWS survey on how the incidence of hunger has increased in recent times? That’s part of the picture. That hostage taking drama on an excursion bus was about pre-school education, a potent anti-poverty measure that has largely denied our poor. Call Ducat a lunatic, a publicity seeker or worse, a politician. But he touched on a basic need, which incidentally, he already provides those poor children in his own little way.

It was funny that when Ate Glue disputed Ducat’s claims as exaggerated, CNN’s Anjali Rao got a mother in Ducat’s shanty town lair in Parola, Binondo who told the world that Ate Glue didn’t know what she is talking about because she has not even seen their pathetic conditions there. That didn’t do much for Ate Glue’s international stature. Ms. Rao proceeded to show the inside of the humble day care center with its school desks and lessons on the blackboard. If I was watching from New York, I’d be impressed with how they make do.

I am disappointed that all the commentaries, even from people who should know better, treated the hostage drama as a simple police story. Okay, jail the bastard and his accomplice and throw the book at them. As Ate Glue said, his intentions may have been noble but the end does not justify the means.

I agree. This Ducat fellow placed the children in great danger. He may not have intended to harm them but things could have gone out of control. A cop who woke up from the wrong side of the bed that morning could have precipitated an-ill advised confrontation that could have ended tragically. Child endangerment is a serious offence and Ducat must face the consequences of doing that.

Beyond those however, no one took up the main issue he raised: the value of early childhood education and education itself as an anti-poverty measure. Maybe I am biased on this issue because one of my daughters is in early childhood education. And I can see its benefits in my three-year-old grandson who gets it formally in a pre-school managed by Koreans in Orange County and from my daughter at home. By the time my grandson goes to kindergarten at age five, he is going to have a substantial headstart.

Taking an even larger view of Wednesday’s street drama, I would take that Ducat incident as a warning of more such pocket revolts to come. The next one may be about food. Or livelihood. Or health care. Life can only get tougher for our poor as government’s limited resources can only get so far without faster economic growth. We can only push the BIR to meet ever increasing targets but it is easy for them to hit the wall of resistance that is basically the state of our economy.

It does not help to simply call Ducat a nut case… not if you heard all those poor neighbors of Ducat tell CNN’s Anjali Rao and the world why they think he is a hero who is fighting for their welfare. Dismissing Ducat as a lunatic or a criminal accentuates the divide between the ruling elite and the masses of our people… That makes two virtual republics instead of just one real one.

Ducat broke the rules but he caught our attention. Our big problem is, how do we respond?

Early childhood education

I have been interested in the subject of early childhood education ever since my daughter decided to take that up in college. Based on our own experience with our children, it did make a valuable difference in our children’s competitiveness from elementary to high school and college.

We invested heavily in our children’s pre-school education in a top Montessori school in our neighborhood. The tuition cost an arm and a leg, specially for us at the time, given the mortgage payments on the house, car installment, and such expenses typical for families starting up.

There were times when we gave up and tried other pre-schools that were less expensive but we ended up in that top school anyway. Once our kids got into the "big schools" we realized our investment was well worth it.

That was when I started thinking how this pre-school system provides an unfair advantage to those who can afford it. I felt guilty participating in a system that perpetuated poverty. Years later, I was glad to learn that government has started a program providing some form of pre school education too. But then again, if government can’t even do a good job in primary and secondary education, what expectations can you really have in pre school which requires even more highly trained teachers?

How important is pre-school? Studies show that in the US, in every socioeconomic group, four-year-olds have benefited from attending public preschool, researchers at Georgetown University found. All else being equal, for example, a child who went through a year of prekindergarten did 52 percent better on a letter-recognition test than one who didn’t.

Not surprisingly, a New York Times article reports, the gains were largest for low-income children and for Latinos, many of whom don’t hear English at home. At ages three and four, kids can do significantly better if they attend pre-school at least part-time than if they do not. They learn cognitive skills more quickly and do not have more behavioral problems — again, if the care is high quality.

The biggest gains, according to the NYT article, are for children in formal pre-kindergarten programs, in part because of the higher education level of the teachers in those programs. Before the preschool program existed, teachers would celebrate if every student knew the alphabet by the end of kindergarten, NYT reports.

No wonder support for pre-school cuts across some of the usual ideological lines in the US. Liberals like its antipoverty bent; conservatives prefer education to straight income redistribution; and business executives see pre-school as a way to build a better work force.

Deep trouble

President Bush may yet redeem himself for at least not losing his sense of humor. In keeping with the lighthearted traditions of the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association dinner, Bush poked fun at himself.

On the controversy over the Justice Department’s firing of eight federal prosecutors, Bush said: "I have to admit we really blew the way we let those attorneys go. You know you’ve lost it when people sympathize with lawyers."

He also said, he does not think he is a lame duck president now, not unless Vice President Cheney shoots him in the leg.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]