How far do public school children in the rural areas travel to get to school? Stories of their determination are both heart-tugging and disturbing, highlighting the perennial lack of educational facilities for the hope of the motherland.
In far-flung Sitio Casili in Rodriguez, Rizal, Dumagat children and farmers’ offspring walk for hours or cross rivers using rubber floaters to get to Casili Elementary School, which only recently received the gift of power through donated solar panels. Economist and Inquirer columnist Cielito Habito has written about the difficulties that make up the daily hurdle to learning, such as the 30-minute boat ride that schoolchildren take in Malassa, Tawi-Tawi, or the two-hour walk endured by students in Barangay Bagong Silang, Los Baños, Laguna. The scarcity of schools forces students to cover long distances, but even if there are available classrooms in remote areas, there is the scarcity of teachers to contend with.
The Department of Education continues to look for ways to address these problems (along with the other pressing problem of rebuilding the schools devastated by “Yolanda” and other calamities). Sometimes, it takes something a little different, such as the 47-meter-long footbridge built in Sitio Madlum by the Department of Public Works and Highways and the local government of Bulacan. With this footbridge, the children can now cross the Madlum River safely to get to school, instead of daily risking their lives on a “monkey bridge.” It used to be, said fifth-grader Aldrin Donceras, that his father had to accompany him to school daily just to make sure that he had made it across using the improvised bridge. “This time, we can cross the river safely any time,” the boy said.
Certain private organizations are pitching in to ease the children’s ordeal, building halfway houses and dormitories for them to stay in during the school week so they don’t have to travel daily to and from school on foot, in sweltering heat or pounding rain.
In Barangay Bayan-bayanan in Bataan, Aeta children used to walk 14 kilometers to get to Bayan-bayanan Elementary School, Elizabeth Lolarga wrote in an Inquirer report. They now have Bahay Kalinga, where they can stay during the week instead of having to walk home every day. It was one of Bayan-bayanan’s own, accountant Evelyn Reyes San Buenaventura, who spearheaded the project with help from friends in Quota International and the Rotary Club of Makati-Bonifacio. San Buenaventura continues to work to give others in her hometown similar opportunities. “Education is important for the people to move forward,” she said.
Foreign institutions have also risen to the occasion, such as ING Bank. The Dutch financial institution has donated bicycles to the students of New Taugtog National High School in Botolan, Zambales, to help them get to school “faster and safer.” Before this boon, the students had to walk on rough roads anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour through all kinds of weather in order to get to school. Under its “Orange Bikes” project, ING Bank and its local partner World Vision will give bikes to a total of 590 students of four high schools in Zambales who live far from their schools.
The bikes, painted orange after the Netherlands’ national color, are built to last. Best of all, being designed to carry as much as 200 kilograms and “custom-built for tough rural conditions,” they can be used on nonschool days to help in the livelihood of the students’ families. It’s a significant detail that speaks to what economist Habito had called the “economic impediment” to education: “Parents see sending their children to school as too costly, both because there are costs they must incur, and because they have to forego income their children’s work could possibly contribute.”
Indeed it’s not only the physical distance that certain schoolchildren have to overcome on the way to learning. Public school tuition may be free, but the ancillary costs, no less important, also need to be met so parents can be convinced to keep their children in school. Getting an education is a complex challenge, but how else to break the chains of poverty and ignorance?