President Ramon Magsaysay organized the Social Welfare Administration (SWA). I was then six or seven years old when my mother, Veronica, was recruited to join a training, in Manila, then very far away from our family in Bohol. Magsaysay made my mother among the pioneer batch of “social workers.” I learned, much later, that among the factors why my mother was asked to join the service was her college education. She was not intellectually gifted. Her friends would later tell me that Mama acknowledged that graduating from her courses was a struggle. But, in her desire to get higher education, she finished three college degrees. It was uncommon of sort, in those times, for a woman to pursue collegiate courses. In fact, even when she became a social worker she still pursued her fourth degree relevant to her work.
At home, we always talk about education as a reliable tool in earning a livelihood. The future is better secured by a college diploma. When my parents were still alive, they constantly pushed our limits to complete collegiate degrees. So, up to the present, when my parents are gone, we still bat for good education. To us, an educated citizenry makes a country progressive.
I write today about tertiary level of learning because i have read a startling Facebook post. It reads: “At the entrance gate of a university in South Africa, the following message was posted for contemplation –
“Destroying any nation does not require the use of atomic bombs or the use of long range missiles… It only requires lowering the quality (of education) and allowing cheating in the examinations by the students.
Patients die at the hands of such doctors
Buildings collapse at the hands of such engineers
Money is lost at the hands of such economists and accountants
Humanity dies at the hands of such religious scholars
Justice is lost at the hands of such judges
The collapse of education is the collapse of the nation.
My mother spoke in the positive note. She was right in saying that “education is a key to the future” or words to that effect. In comparison, this supposed FB post is foreboding. It terrifies me by its damning implications, alerting as it does that South Africa is facing serious troubles. That country’s educational system is collapsing! Recent events signal to me that ours too is suffering the same fate. Proof? Here is something worth considering. In the first day of classes, news reports and video footages of Metro Manila scenes detailed how public elementary school pupils, in staggering numbers, have a hard time reading ordinary words. Caught on cameras were faces of teachers shocked by the inability of pupils to read simple words. How could students comprehend what they could not read?
The signals contained in the news reports are manifest. Our education leaders must have also seen those videos. They must be alarmed looking at the faces of innocent children shocked by their inability to decipher what were printed. While the pandemic carries a heavy negative factor in the children’s educational curve, there is no doubt that the system is troubled. The consequence of a collapsing education is, to use a hyperbole, worse than the holocaust! When not addressed this early (or is it this late?) the kind of future accountants, doctors, engineers and lawyers, as the FB suggested, can only trigger the collapse of our country. OMG.