Tuition fee increase

I am deeply saddened by the realities that haunt the average Filipino student nowadays. The cost of education is now so lavish that it forces students to drop out or gamble to the cheaper but incompetent schools for diplomas’ sake.

In line with the recent rising of the commodities of living, education too has skyrocketed from affordable to extravagant. It is almost unbearable for an average Filipino family to cope up with a 250-300% percent increase on tertiary education cost this school year and I am fearing that this year’s sudden and untimely tuition fee increase would increase the number of out of school youth within our country due to the incapability to finance tertiary schooling, thus, would become again a grave problem if these youths will subject to delinquencies.

Our school had not increased in it’s per/unit price, but who knows, we may be waking up next morning and knowing the worst that our school too has implemented this kind of inequity.

Rumor has it that USM will have the tuition fee increase in the near future, maybe next year, or the next two years, but whatever moves our school will take will dictate its fate as the once Affordable and quality school.

The reaction of enraged college students all through out the Philippines was heard in this past month’s protest-rallies, saying that education is a right and condemns the anti-student treatment of the GRP.

The ordinary Filipino student is now torn between choices of a Private school education or an SUC’s type of education, but it’s hard to choose now, because both are subject to tuition fee increase that leaves their Fathers and mothers flat broke with the biggest slice of their seemingly mediocre salary going to the educational cost of their children.

The government is said to have no power in controlling this kind of serious issue, CHED announced that they can only appeal to their (private school owners) social responsibility not to hike their tuition fee too much. And this would mean that government SUC’s would witness a flooding of transferees form the private school sector from now on.

I would like to suggest to the concerned persons of this sudden TOFI tuition fee increase, that if you want to get this done, you must first do your obligation of raising the standard of living of our parents, so that they will have money to send us to college.

We understand that the world has changed, and we also understand that you need this tuition hikes to compensate your academic maintenance of schools, but your hasty acts will cause catastrophe to the majority of students who came from the bottom of the middle class line in our caste-like system of society.

This is a plea to the Philippine government to realize the huge subsidy that is allocated for education; we can’t merely feel the improvements that you always propose and yet you just sit there and wait for your large salaries.

It is really dangerous to run a “dumb” country, its even more dangerous if the ones who are tasked to do their jobs to educate, does the dumb thing of neglecting the educational crisis of the status quo.

Education is important, who said it is not? It is our mere escape to our nations lingering poverty, it is the sole treasure that our parents can give us, and they are willing to shed blood and sweat just to send us to one school where they could happily see us finish. It’s sad to see that tertiary education nowadays has become commercial, public schools that are supposed to tend to the needs of the Filipino students, concentrate now to the profit of what they can get in return of their decreasing level of proficiency.

I say that this whole Tuition fee increase is no doubt a step back to the development of our ever beloved country; they always say that we are growing economically; we are not, the only thing that’s economically growing, is the politicians’ wallets and pockets. How can they ever change the incompetent educational system? If they themselves cant abstain from their thievery? How can the “pag-asa ng bayan” change the nation, if they are not able to have proper education due to poverty?

Tuition fee increase makes them even poorer, makes us even more burdened.

A call to mend the fractures of quiescence

Peace with justice is such an odd and ambiguous phrase for me, I think it sounds better if it is written “peace and justice” – like all other peace keeping missions use to state, although the phrase has an intellectual quality, being of its depth in meaning, it is mystified by a fog of intrigue that will keep the reader or thinker give some ample time to reflect and analyze the significant truths that it conveys. It is not easy for a poet or a writer to mend weaves on this theme, especially if your dealing with the most common concept of peace, therefore, it is an investment for us to dig in this subject as people of God who follows the commandments and set morals.

Just like all the great discoveries of great people like Maxim, Pasteur, Freud and Einstein that shaped the world we know today. We also has the capability of unraveling great discoveries in oneself, that there are other things that weighs more than all the worldly pleasures that should be given importance. The ideas I got from “peace with justice” really lunged through my head in an instant, literal brainstorms drenched my thoughts and I was suddenly talking to myself with an outburst of realizations that hit me hard.

We all know that peace is such a very self-explanatory word, you wouldn’t even have to get the dictionary to define it for it is very common, but when we came to realize that words really has two meanings, we came to the conclusion that defining the words alone are not the enlightenments to our queries, we maybe the best speaker or the best writer who expresses large quantities of thoughts and ideas, but we may never compensate the other needs of human existence, things that Jesus himself thought us on the sermon at the mount, to love our neighbors wholly, to be of peaceful instrument to God’s kingdom.

Let’s accept the fact that self-centeredness and greed are still the wrecking force that lashes down the base of society’s pyramid, and Jesus is unhappy with that. Now is our time to turn the tides of injustices.

During my childhood years my concept of peace is very limited; I thought that peace is a hand symbol in the middle of catholic rites in the middle of a Catholic mass. Sometimes peace comes to me in forms of symbolisms with no integral values at all. I reached the stage of understanding of knowing the definition of peace, the high school student in me thought of the peace associated with the wars in Mindanao, the peace that comes after the bloodshed, the deathly peace of corpses in the hands of their mourning loved-ones, and the peace of hiding evacuees in the comforts of slums.

Peace and justice is a state of calm, quiescence and tranquility that enables one to sleep sound at night, not afraid of things borne of evils cradle, When one can hear the chorus of nature in the wellness of his/her backyard, when you are free of debt from an unruly person, when you cherish the times with your family and friends, when you hold no grudge to a neighbor, when you’re contented with what you have and you know in yourself that you are just in the eyes of God.

Real peace comes from the grace of God; we are the bridge in an unbridgeable point in time where evil has a place, it is in our own two hands that we mold red bricks of hope to the purged ones that does nothing except singing sobs of misery. God encourages us to stop this civilized shame, by promoting peace with equity to the less fortunate. Lets us not waste time in things that provoked Adam and eve’s fall, but let us give time to think of the graces that we received from God and its time pay him back with this holy service, If obstacles obstructs us, then lets us not use force in the inquisition of righteousness sake, do not let the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah rise up again in the sinful sands where they came, for we all know that evil shall not prevail through Jesus. Let us favor the condemnation of prostitution, where evil possesses the lustiest thoughts, of slavery, where innocent souls get deprived of their rights as human beings, of greed, where money rules the hearts by making it numb of sympathy and care, of other injustices, where all is a sore loser in the end, these things defines the other side of peace, the peace without justice.

The Gospel teaches us many things that guide us to a happy living; peace is a perfect example of it. If you are in peace but have not loved, it is hypocrisy and it lives with the perished. A poet’s common theme of peace is superficial and artless if he himself has not loved and has no peace. So therefore it is a must to first drop all of our fermented malt and change our evil ways before we go to the peace with justice crusade with our lord Jesus Christ as our general.

We must think of our future, will we let the inequities continue to stain our lives as Christians? We have Jesus beside us, so what are we afraid of? We longed for peace a long time ago during the world wars, but today it is different, instead of bullet and bombs we now face a totally different evil that silences the human race, the time is now for us to make a stand, lets break the quiescence of fear, let us work hand in hand, we are the youth, the morning awaits us with optimism lets not throw it away.

this essay won 3rd place on the UMYFP peace with justice essay writing contest