GMA couldn’t go to say goodbye to Reagan or hello to Dubya

Alikabok infomed this writer yesterday that, while she briefly toyed with the idea, La Presidenta decided that this wasn’t the right time to go off to Washington, DC – either to attend the funeral rites for the late President Ronald Reagan, or secure a photo opportunity with her erstwhile phone pal, US President George W. Bush.

To begin with, Bush – who once again got pissed off with France’s President Jacques Chirac on Sea Island in Georgia, where the two clashed anew at the G-7 (G-8?) summit – would be too busy for more than a handshake or a buzz on the cheek. By the time Reagan’s closed coffin arrived to lie in state in the Capitol before today’s church rites and his being flown back to California for a sunset interment, Washington "within the Beltway" was already awash with Presidents, Prime Ministers, and other dignitaries – including an ailing former "Iron Lady", Ba-roness Margaret Tatcher, who, despite a series of previous strokes, insisted on going to the ceremonies to deliver an eulogy to her longtime ally and personal friend, Reagan.

Chirac, it’s reported, skipped paying his respects to the late American icon and former Chief Executive and zoomed out of the US from the just-concluded Sea Island summit. Perhaps, for "The Bulldozer", dealing with more than the American President within the same week, whether living or dead, was just too much.

In any event, is it true that President GMA – despite the fact that the congressional canvass is still ongoing, at a snail’s pace at that, and she isn’t assured of "proclamation" . . . yet – has already ordered her inaugural gown from couturier Inno Sotto?

I’m sure there will be some flap over this, but so what? A gal has the right to try to look her best – and ball gowns or inaugural gowns take some time to design and execute. One thing about gowns is that they can be used for any occasion – except wakes or burols, of course.

So, I trust the news about Inno Sotto’s contract (you can’t keep secrets in the tattle-tale world of fashion and dugong verde) won’t provoke opposition Senator Aquilino "Nene" Pimentel into launching himself into another four-hour speech, this time attacking GMA’s prematurely-ordered inaugural gown as "proof" the ruling K-4 has cheated its way to "victory", even before the ballots are pro-perly vetted and canvassed.

If Pimentel never says another word in Congress, he will still be remembered to talking too long and too much. Fortunately for us all, his voice gave out, otherwise he might have delivered a six- to eight-hour filibuster. What Nene busted, alas, was his own reputation as well as every listener’s or observer’s patience.

I see that the television studios continue to stubbornly keep their cameras switched on to broadcast "live" the silly comedia going on in the congressional canvassing chamber, with so many politicians persisting in getting their pompous remarks "written into the record".

Don’t our TV editors realize that most of the public have already switched to other channels – where at least they get honest "entertainment", not low comedy disguised as news?

Ho hum. Pardon me while I yawn.

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It’s not surprising that hundreds of thousands of our sixth-grade "graduates" flunked even a disgracefully low "30 percent" passing mark in tests imposed to determine whether they were qualified to enter high school. Susmariosep, judging from their performance, most of our sixth graders are not even qualified to enter Seventh Grade – if there were still a Seventh Grade.

I’ve always believed it was a mistake to remove Seventh Grade. What kids require is more schooling, not less – and don’t give me the tired, old baloney that poor families can’t afford more study (with additional years tacked on from both a "pre-school" class and Seventh Grade). Poor families cannot afford not to send their children to school.

The worst scam of all would be to provide the kids who get to go to school at all with a shoddy education, provided by teachers who’re not qualified to teach, or have neither the training nor the inclination to earnestly "educate" the pupils placed in their care. It has long been no secret that kids are pushed up to the next grade, whether they deserve to be promoted or not, so that the inadequate classroom space which exists can be given to the next batch. If that’s the case, why pretend to hold classes, or operate schools at all? Better a nation of peasants, farmers, laborers and menial workers than a nation of bums and ignoramuses, brandishing useless scraps of paper representing "grade school certificates", "high school diplomas", or, sanamagan, college "degrees"! In the old days, you could buy a fake college or university diploma for a new bucks in Plaza Morayta. Certainly, in this era of P80 to P90 fake or "pirated" DVDs, such counterfeit sheepskins are readily available in many other places.

The Department of Education, as the recent test debacle has demonstrated, has proven itself the worst fake of all. One thing former Education Secretary Raul Roco has to his credit (although he became the most unpopular man in what’s now known as DepEd) is that he dismantled the long-running "textbook racket". Substandard textbooks? Worse than that – most of the textbooks were trash.

Then there were the trashy teachers hired – but, after all, on the kind of skimpy budget public education was given by our lawmakers as politicians, why should better-quality teachers seek jobs in public education? These may be hurtful words, but these are times in which our youth, our people, and our nation as a whole are hurting. This is not the moment to go pussy-footing around just because a few sensibilities and egos could be bruised.

My late father and my late mother, and, indeed, my wife – now a Doctor of Education herself – all came from the public school system. In my parent’s time, our public schools were the very best. Where have we gone wrong?

As for this writer, and my brothers, we were working students who worked our way through high school and college – and I mean really worked as porters, messengers and clerks.

* * *

For one thing, when you examine our Philippine Expenditure Budget allocations, you immediately spot that our government is giving less and less to education, and more and more to "interest payments".

In 1997, 20 percent was allotted to education, while only 16 percent to interest payments. In 2003, 16 percent – already a reduction – went to education, while 28 percent was devoted to interest payments. In 2004, this year, a measly 16 percent – salamabit – was doled out to education, while interest payments ate up the major part of the budget, or 31 percent.

This is a graphic picture of a Republic which is falling to pieces, and has gotten both its resources and its priorities screwed up.

In peso terms, it might seem that what’s assigned to education "went up" in total amount, even if only slightly from year to year.

In 1997, the education budget was P93.5 million (P74.2 million went to interest payments). In 2003, education got P130 million (interest payments were allocated P230.7 million). In 2004, education was given P134 million, while P271 million went into interest payments.

When you convert those peso amounts into US dollar terms, that’s when you realize how dismal the situation is. Converting to US dollar value informs us that in 1997, only 3.6 percent went into education; in 2003, only 2.5 percent; in 2004, again a niggardly 2.5 percent. In sharp contrast, 2.8 pecent went into interest payments in 1997, 4.5 percent in 2003, and 5.1 percent in 2004!

No wonder we’re shockingly dropping in "international competitiveness", according to figures culled from the World Competitiveness Yearbook.

In the Year 2002, the Philippines already ranked an embarrassing number 18, while Malaysia enjoyed a ranking of number 6, Taiwan number 7, China number 12, Thailand number 13, and India outpointed us with number 17. The following year, 2003, we dropped even lower. We descended to number 20. Malaysia, on the other hand, went up to number 4, Taiwan to number 6, Thailand jumped up to number 10, while China remained, at least, static at number 12.

India, too, fell, but still outpointed us, with its number 20 rating. Colombia, on the other hand, improved from number 20 to number 16.

Let’s face it. Our educational system has abysmally failed. We’ve not kept up with our burgeoning population at all – and the end of this downward spiral, this dizzy toboggan ride to the bottom, is not yet in sight.

It’s par for the course. We used to have some Spanish – and we lost it. We used to be able to speak English, now very few do. The English "advantage"? It’s gone. Everybody’s speaking Tagalog, or some semblance of Tagalog, or Taglish. And we call that "nationalism".

In the meantime, as I’ve said before, 200 million Chinese are diligently learning English everyday. They’re preparing for the 2008 Olympics, the 2010 Shanghai international exposition, and other international events designed to underscore the growing importance of China not only in our region but in the entire world. The Sleeping Giant is not only awake, it’s learning the world language (and the language of cyberspace), English – while we’re forgetting it!

Education, anyone? Sad to say, in our country, it’s becoming a joke.