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Public schools were built so that individuals who cannot afford to pay expensive tuition fees for private schools can have a chance to be educated too. These public schools must have quality education in order to have equality among job hunters when it comes to the industry. But the truth is, today, it seems that for an individual to be competitive in job hunting, he/she must come from a university with expensive tuition fee because it is an impression that if you pay more, the greater the quality of education you can get. But this must not be the case. How about the ones belonging to the lower classes? They cannot afford to pay these tuition fees because they are poor. They will be left out jobless and helpless forever if the opportunity for quality education will only be existing in expensive universities. And the scenario much much worse is that, even if public schools are existing, many are still not able to go to school due to extreme poverty. They cannot even send their children to public schools because they do not have enough money to serve as allowance or fare for transportation for their children.
The result is, they sacrifice education so their stomachs can have something to digest. Poverty has become the main reason why the quality of education declined drastically. Even public schools that are subsidized by the government experience poverty. I can say this because I was once giving literacy service in Calo Elementary School in Bay, Laguna because of my Literacy Service Training 2 (LTS2) class. I had many realizations from this experience because I was exposed at how public schools were performing regarding quality education. I must not criticize the servants of education presiding their because I understand that it's not their fault why quality education never existed there. The rooms were dark and hot,not a good environment for learning, books were not enough for the number of students(I wonder if they really use those books), and the way of teaching was (although not that bad) not very commendable. As we can see, poverty really affects not only the literacy of poor people themselves but also the education system as well. Poor quality of education means poor supply of teaching paraphernalia and lack of facilities for learning.
If this scenario will continue, the gap between the rich and the poor will be bigger because companies will surely hire individuals that are highly educated. Logically speaking, if quality education can only be obtained from expensive universities and the poor will not study there, then they will not be highly educated. Therefore, they will not be hired. They will not have a job, if they will have one, their salary will only be enough for their daily food expenses. That is why something the government must do something to public education to match or even surpass the quality given by private universities. In that way, the poor will be more competitive in finding jobs. Poverty will be lessened, or eventually eradicated.
"Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave."
-- Henry Peter Broughan
***The pictures were taken at Calo Elementary School during our fielding. My students really made a great impact to me. I think they imparted more to me than what I imparted to them. I value my education more than before. I learned to value everything that I have now. for when the time comes that I don't have it anymore, I will not be disappointed that I never gave it an importance before.
--==Jaymie Sandro R. Gomez==--
POSC1 B
