“Only for peninsulares, insulares” went the broadside of Boy Sili against the De La Salle University. What was wrong with this claim is not that he got it wrong that the Spaniards were the ones who established the school, but the insidious populist attempt to draw another line against perceived “elites” It could be worse than red-tagging. It is an old Communist line that could endanger lives.
History recalls how the young People’s Republic of China persecuted the intellectuals, the learned and the educators in their society, erroneously blaming them for the ills of the country. This tact fomented hatred and caused deaths. And, indirectly, resulted in the early setbacks in their economy.
What is probably worst in our country is the glorification of the myth that it is alright not to have a diploma just because an important person botched and lied on his. Not everybody could be a Steven Jobs nor an Albert Einstein. For each one of these geniuses are thousands who are deprived of opportunities because they stopped going to school.
It takes a great mind, an enormous talent, plus fate’s toss of the coin to defy a system that has produced outstanding engineers, doctors, lawyers, and artists. Even sportsmen have to undergo the rigors and discipline of learning.
My dear friend Tato Malay of Kamalayan advocates said that he learned more out of school than in it, but that is because he had the privilege and wherewithal to enroll. And he goes around teaching that learning is essential like lugaw.
Make no mistake about it. There is a running elitism in our education as there are in the whole world. Graduates of UP, Ateneo, LaSalle, and UST get first dibs at jobs. Or it becomes a peacock matter to claim you have a diploma in Oxford or Stanford. And there is MIT, Harvard, Wharton, Beijing University, Nanyang of Singapore, or Sorbonne.
But the “elitist” schools in the Philippines have themselves established programs to be inclusionary. UP, for instance, has an admission scheme that allows for more honor graduates in the provinces to be prioritized. Ateneo has scholarships for the disadvantaged.
So, instead of raging against the “elitist” and “exclusive” schools, lawmakers must either take measures that more Filipinos get the kind of preparatory education that will get into them, or create more schools that offer the same quality training, or create an environment that would make Filipinos value education again.
Instead of pretending to be incensed at the divide between the rich and the poor, lawmakers must enact laws that perpetuate this, such an razing down nepotism and dynasties.
Lawmakers must not think that the Senate is the movies and make-believe. The reality is that education in the country has been going downhill if we are to take our decreasing literacy as a measure. Wala nang gusto magbasa, lahat gusto lang mag Tiktok.
What will aggravate the situation further is when one drop-out in power and his lip-synching sycophants encourage an anti-school attitude among the masses. When what we really need is for more Filipinos to realize their full potential as individuals.
Education, as we used to know, is a great equalizer. True knowledge is a redeemer. It can lead us to jobs, know-how, and discernment. Finetuned, it can enable us to distinguish false information and lead us to enlightenment and our own power to rise against poverty. At the very least, we must understand why this cycle of destituteness is perpetuated.
Understandably, politicians would not want that. We must understand why they must keep us ignorant.