Beyond math, what students learned in school

President Aquino’s remarks in his State of the Nation Address against rallying students were clearly condescending and contemptuous, further alienating him from a generation sensitive to the nuances of lying, cheating and stealing.

By simple arithmetic, there has been no cut in the education budget—a fact that 20,000 of us out in the streets last year failed to notice, he said. He summed it all in black-letter, rote learning-style—an education paradigm we left behind decades ago in favor of critical thinking and discovery.

The education budget increase is misleading. Most of it goes to teachers’ pay due to the Salary Standardization Law. When capital outlay for 2011 was almost zero, it’s easy to claim that the 2012 education budget ballooned 16 times over. But what use is all this money if the policies to liberalize and privatize education remain?

We’ve done our math and found the education budget wanting, not simply quantitatively, but also qualitatively. The budget isn’t translating into better services and facilities, into more classrooms—much less into lower fees and tuition. Look at UP, which got the lion’s share of the allocation. It’s a ludicrous true story, but freshmen iskolar ng bayan have to prove they are poor, otherwise they pay tuition at P1,500 per unit.

We’re not asking for the money per se, we’re asking for long-term relief. Perhaps it’s because Mr. Aquino doesn’t really know what to do, let alone what the problem is, that he gave us more years in school instead of putting more substance into the years we already have. This naivete is, in essence, what he displayed in his July 23 Sona.

Our Sona consisted of rallying and more street protests. These are perfectly natural expressions of disgust and rage over the poor alibis of a government that has been found wanting. Mr. Aquino was correct to describe us all as militants, but he was wrong to say we were all students. Last year our professors, staff members and administrators joined our walkouts, and out-of-school youth were with us. Verify on Facebook.

We’re rational, discerning, academic and responsible. We know that the classroom doesn’t hold all the truths in life and by itself won’t make us better persons. It’s that we can’t take comfort in the institutions of power: the Supreme Court has decided the Constitutional provisions on education’s budgetary priority is merely directory (Guingona v. Carague and Philippine Constitution Association v. Enriquez); and Congress hasn’t made good on its promise to repeal the laws that hurt education, and to pass the ones that protect us.

So we take to the streets when government cannot give us what we need, and certainly, when government isn’t listening to us, or when it starts choking off dissent. It’s our natural human right to seek redress of grievances. That’s what we learned in school.

—KRISSY CONTI,

UP College of Law,

former UP student regent,

krissy.conti@gmail.com