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Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Malilong: Overcoming government neglect
By Frank Malilong Jr.
The Other Side
I remember my grade school days. Our Grade I teacher was a kindly lady who, 35 years after, still remembered the boy who wept shamelessly in the corner because he did not get his share in the “exchanging gifts” during their Christmas party.
The medium of instruction was Bisaya; our textbooks were in that tongue. It was only in Grades 3-4 that we were taught English. Tagalog, which is now being passed off as Pilipino, was unheard of until we were Grade 5.
I spent my first four grade school years in our barrio. It was called a primary school. The teacher-in-charge was my mother’s brother, which was why I went to school at the early age of 4. The school had to meet a minimum number of pupils or face closure. My cousins and I had to be enrolled by our parents as a matter of consanguine duty.
I’m not sure if the structure where we attended classes could rightly be called a school building. The flooring was made of gravel with a thin limestone overlay.
The walls and the roof were made of woven coconut leaves. Whenever the roof sprung a leak, my uncle would ask the PTA to repair it. Repair work was usually done on Saturdays in order not to disturb classes. At the sound of the budyong, the fathers would descend onto the school with bolos, chisels, saws, freshly cut wood and coconut thatches in hand.
When the school population grew, our fathers and other adult male members of the community did the same thing. We never got help from the government, as far as I can recall, but we never had to hold classes under a tree.
In fact, we felt very little, if at all, government presence during our grade school years. About the only time that we became aware of a classroom authority besides our teacher was when the dentist or the doctor would make their once-a-year visit which was also when more than half the class would suspiciously become sick.
We had neither electricity nor water. We did not receive bags or anything from our congressman or mayor. Our teachers used cue cards instead of computers. The supply of chalk often ran out and the replenishment took so long to arrive that many times our teachers had to use limestone to write on the board.
Most of my schoolmates never obtained high school education because they couldn’t afford it. They became farmers and fishermen, got married and sired children whom they sent to our old school. None of them robbed, stole, raped or otherwise ran afoul of the law.
When I open the newspapers these days, I get a dizzying dose of complaints about the lack of teachers and school buildings. People rant against the government for failing to address these decades-old problems. Government neglect is nothing new but if our parents and grade school teachers overcame it during our time, why couldn’t today’s parents and teachers do it now?
(fmmalilong@yahoo.com)
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (June 7, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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