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Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Carvajal: Who needs college?
By Orlando P. Carvajal
It is quite ironic that in this country one needs to have a college education to get a decent job. Yet very few parents can afford to send their children to college. Worse still, many college graduates are unemployable because they do not speak, read, write or compute like college graduates.
If I ask myself what part of my education I could have done without, it would be my college and post-graduate studies. On hindsight, I could have managed to get a college level education even without enrolling in a school for the purpose.
The reason is simple. There was nothing my teachers taught me in college that I could not have picked up by just reading and researching on my own. I feel I could have acquired a solid college level education given the fact that my elementary and high school teachers made me proficient in reading and writing Cebuano, Pilipino, English, Spanish and Latin. The last two were bonuses from going to a special high school, the old Seminario Menor de San Carlos now Pope John XIII Minor Seminary.
Since I could speak, read, and write English after high school, I feel I could have read my way into a college education. Of course, a good school would be a great help. Still, if you are proficient in English, that ability opens a wide panorama of near endless educational possibilities. When you master English, you can access a vast store of knowledge found in books and practically educate yourself.
What am I leading up to? I believe that for the Filipino to get out of the bondage of ignorance, superstition and poverty, he must have a solid no-nonsense elementary and high school education. We need to make it a point that when a Filipino student comes out of elementary and high school, he has the tools, namely reading, writing and arithmetic, to face life whether or not he decides to go to college.
Since many Filipino parents cannot afford to send their children to college, it is imperative that the government should prioritize the provision of free elementary and high school education for all citizens. Next in priority should be the training of high quality elementary and high school teachers.
We should design our elementary and high school education in such a way that nobody should have to have an expensive college education to do well in life. In turn, we should design our college education in such a way that it does not waste the parents’ hard-earned money.
As practiced by the Americans, popular education means a solid elementary and high school education for all. Nobody should have to have to go to college to be literate. Anyway, as it stands now we produce so many illiterate college graduates. So, who needs college anyway?
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (August 23, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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