Why I believe in free education

MANILA, Philippines -Kristel Tejada is a name that I will remember for years to come, if not forever. Her name takes its place beside that of Mariannet Amper, the 12-year-old girl from Davao City who committed suicide back in 2007, because of her family’s dire poverty. They are victims of a Janus-faced system that, to paraphrase Bill Gates himself, gives more funding to research in averting male baldness than finding a cure for malaria. They are also victims of depression, rooted in innumerable factors we’ll never fully identify or understand.

As her fellow Iskolar ng Bayan and once being a student in UP Manila, I extend my deepest condolences and prayers for Kristel and her family. As we have indeed witnessed these past few days, her struggles and her death are not meaningless — whether they are read from a psychological angle or through sociological, structural lenses. And I hope they are struggles we’ll never forget.

I hope that their struggles and their deaths instill in us a flame to prevent such unfortunate events from recurring. In other words, I pray that their struggles take us away from selfish ideology, the type that says, “It’s her fault, she couldn’t stand the pressures of daily life,” “Everything she ever needed was a hug,” or “It’s already so cheap in UP, you can’t blame UP for her death.” That’s placing her in your shoes instead of placing yourself in her shoes. In not so many words, that’s burgis.

While I’m thankful for six years of UP education (BA and MA), I can’t fathom why it has to cost so much. Sure, you can say that UP, compared to Ateneo, La Salle, and UST, is definitely much cheaper. Way cheaper. You can also argue that there is no such thing as a free lunch, or in this case, a free college degree. But, you see, if we were taught every damn day to try and change the course of things, then why is it so wrong to fight for the seemingly impossible, gargantuan task of making education free?

In the first place, why do we chant such slogans of changing the world, being the “pag-asa ng Bayan,” when we don’t take it seriously anyway? Bakit biglang kambyo pag “change the world” na talaga?

And with all due respect, in no way are we “taking advantage” of Kristel’s death. On the other hand, we are only trying to make sense of this event that we, being her countrymen and women as well as her fellow Iskos and Iskas, are going through. It is only in making sense of life and death that we are saved of an empty and lonely life.

You can’t say that just because you choose to focus on the psychological aspect of suicide, you are different or superior from those who see society’s failures in uplifting the poor. Sociology and psychology are simply two different disciplines offering two different perspectives. For indeed, even psychology can and has been used to unearth the inanities people perpetrate on their fellowmen and women.

The difference lies in what you do to fight for a solution: Do you simply reconcile the individual as a weak and helpless element who needs only affirmation in order to survive in this dog-eat-dog world, or do you invoke the right to self-organize, speak for those unable to speak, and subvert the rule to fight the status quo?

Given this dilemma, I choose to believe the latter, for it empowers, it emancipates, rather than oppresses the individual.

To say that we are using her death to further selfish intentions is to say that the postmodern “I” is entirely free of the invisible and immutable forces of society. But there is absolutely no way that that can happen, even if you’re as rich as Bill Gates. This is not an isolated case but an event where we are all at fault — society is at fault — for not acting on the cancer that has, time and time again, made us frail and weak. 

With or without Kristel’s suicide ever happening, the fact that money, not intelligence, is the prerequisite for a good education is a maddening idea. And with or without her passing, we have fought for greater state subsidy. Kristel’s untimely death only gave us all a name and a face to the many ills our country is facing. And for that, we honor her memory.

It is strange that people make a bigger fuss of the burning of chairs in PUP than the fact that billions have been cut off the education budget and millions are deprived of an education. “Counterproductive” as it may seem (although not really), it serves its purpose as a statement, a militancy that gives attention to the disguised violence the state is inflicting on its people.

The burning of chairs is a solid show of dissent against policies that oppress and repress, and bears the gravitas of all the emotion behind it; a demand for change, though it may come in sporadic bursts. This, a signature campaign cannot achieve. Not on its own. 

In the end, demonstrations are ultimately symbolic, not meant to produce immediate drastic change (unlike EDSA 1 or 2), but are rehearsals of intangible ideas. They are the strongest and most accessible handing over of power, even temporarily, to the students, to the people.

For we know what power poverty has over our lives — more than enough power to claim the life of a colleague — and in that fight, there can be no compromise.

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