Filipinos Return to Classes

Parents once again are faced with the challenges of sustaining their children’s education starting from daily allowance. It is this period that is most difficult for parents since the holiday season is tantamount to nothing but expenditures.

With some 20 million students back to school, I was able to observe that students and teachers alike are disorientated since the three-week break still has its aftershocks. My wife and I roamed around schools in Laoag City to see how things are going on and most teachers are still not in the mood to hold classes. Most of them required their students to clean up the room, the garden, the school canteen and others. When I was an elementary school pupil, my teachers usually assigned to me the garden since I love gardening and I did not complain a bit about the tasks involved in that area. It was a great time of my life since my childhood involved fewer worries and with more time to play.

However, for the modern-day school children, most of them don’t pay heed to their teachers anymore when they are assigned tasks like cleaning the room. While it’s true that in most western countries, pupils and students are not usually burdened to clean parts of the school, here in the Philippines, this practice is just common. I was only wondering how stubborn school children are nowadays which is an evidence of diminishing values unlike during our time when the teacher is treated as a surrogate parent and whose orders were always followed. Maybe these are the changes of our times, changes that I believe are not for the better. I just wonder how they will all grow up to become responsible adults in the future.