GOING back to the discourse on education, I contend that it is shortsighted to think our education woes can be solved by building more schools. We have to have fewer students to educate or we will never have enough schools.
In 1950, our population was 16 million. Thailand’s was 20. Today we have 105 million. Thailand, thanks to a massively implemented modern family planning program, has only 69. Of this only 13.7 percent or 9.5 thousand are basic education students.
Yet Thailand spends 5.79 percent of its bigger GDP of 456,322 million dollars for education while we spend only 2.65 percent of our smaller GDP of 380,346 million dollars. Go figure which country is able to “protect and promote the right of all citizens to quality basic education.”
We have a smaller economy than Thailand yet we have more people to house, feed, educate, and provide with jobs. Our economy is growing fastest in the region, but because of a runaway population we have the most number of poor people and the most number of school children as a percentage of the total population.
The Philippines has to bring down its population growth rate of 1.68 percent (Thailand’s is down to 0.03 percent) if its economy is to increase its capacity to house, feed, educate, and employ its people. It has to optimize the implementation of the reproductive health law if it is to protect and promote the right of all citizens to quality life in general, to quality basic education in particular as Thailand has succeeded in doing.
A major hurdle in the implementation and acceptance of our reproductive health law is the opposition of Catholic bishops who hostage poor women with either threats of hell-fire if bishops are not obeyed or with promises of heaven if poor women simply joined their suffering to that of Christ’s as bishops exhort them to do.
Incidentally, the Catholic hierarchy is preparing to celebrate 500 years of Christianity. But what will they celebrate when all they can show for the 500 years is the scandal of a Christian country that has a poor population of no less than 30 million? What when neighboring non-Christian countries take better care of their people than this 500-year-old Catholic one?
The estimated Philippine population in 2030 is 124 million. (Thailand’s will remain at 69 million.) That means 35 million students on the first day of school. I’m sure the bishops will not feed but just pray (for a fee?) for these people. I am sure they will educate only those who can afford expensive private Catholic schools.
It’s time the State defied the Church’s sinister power over the minds of the ignorant poor and boldly undertook a massive modern family planning program starting at the barangay level.