Poverty and privilege

As I check 250 English-exam papers across five sections of third-graders, I reflect upon the students’ test scores and my experience as a public school teacher. It still puzzles me why a lot of the students prioritize coming to school only on test days. I wonder why they bother taking a test which they are not ready for. They probably just prayed for a miracle to happen to help them pass.

When I was five years old, I wanted to become a teacher. When I was nine, I wanted to become the president of the country, to help the unfortunate have easier lives. I guess it was these thoughts that led me to where I am now—a public school teacher in Quezon City. I teach 50 third-graders in Pasong Tamo Elementary School, from 12 to 6 p.m. Monday to Friday. Every day, I teach English, “Makabayan” (the equivalent of social studies), math, science, and Filipino.

It is my first year out of college, and my very first time to be immersed in a public school as a teacher. During the first quarter, I found it extremely difficult to adjust to the culture. I come from a privileged background, and the schools and the culture that I grew up in were far from what I have experienced in the public school. When I was a student, my parents sent me to private schools and paid my tuition. They made sure that I was healthy enough to attend school every day, and that I had everything I needed to receive a proper education. For my parents and me, education played a significant role in my everyday life. We believed—and we still do—that education is the key to a successful career and a fruitful future.

I was completely dazed when I realized that most of my students and their parents have a totally opposite outlook on education. A lot of the parents basically see education as a financial burden to worry about, and leave it at the bottom of their list of priorities for their children. Some parents also see sending their children to school as a barrier to planned family outings. For instance, I often receive letters from parents asking that their child be excused for being absent in the past few days, because they did not have money to give their child for transportation fare or for snacks. I also have parents who ask for permission to collect their child before class dismissal, because they have to attend a concert, or go on a trip, as a family.

I guess a lot of the people in public schools do not see the relevance of school, but it should not be so. Schools were built to develop people into full-grown and functional adults, capable of thinking, making choices, and acting in a way to coexist with others systematically and peacefully. In school, students learn what is right. The school community nurtures each individual’s will power to do what is right. This is because if all individuals act properly, we will be able to affect each other positively, and contribute to an improvement of the systems and social structures that make up our reality. So overall, schools are institutions that give the younger generations an avenue to think about the world that they live in. It gives them the opportunity to analyze the systems that govern society, as well as their own individual actions. It allows them to identify and think about the current problems of society, so that they can generate innovative ideas to resolve these.

Teaching carefree third-graders makes me feel like a professional babysitter at times. Despite this, I know that I am not simply looking after children every time I teach. With my college degree, I could have chosen to go corporate because that is where the money is; instead (and to my mom’s disappointment), I chose to teach in a public school in a low-income community. Whenever I put on the uniform of a public school teacher, I carry with me not only my values and my beliefs but also my socioeconomic status. I chose to teach in a public school precisely because as an educated middle-class citizen, I see that the majority of Filipinos are poor and that the disparity between the rich and the poor is huge. I see this as a major problem of society that I can help fix.

I know that many poor Filipinos did not inflict their situation upon themselves; instead, they were born into a system that made their parents poor, and will keep themselves poor.  We live in a capitalist society, where the few people on top of the pyramid have access to resources and wealth, while the majority work for these people, but stay poor because their resources remain limited. In addition, we live in a country with a lack of leadership in government. Our government officials are able to get away with graft and corruption, precisely because the bulk of the population is underprivileged and uneducated. With little privilege and little to no education, most citizens do not question the government enough, and do not voice out their discontentment with the administration in place.

One of the most relevant lessons that I learned from school is that inequality in the distribution of wealth is a major problem in our society. Poverty has been afflicting the country for a while, and will not disappear without people’s voices and actions. I believe that we can change the capitalist structure that we as citizens make up, especially if we know that we are the privileged people. Having privilege should not excuse us from public work that helps the poor. Rather, it should call us to be more involved, because we have the resources to support ourselves, and help those in need. We know that we have much, and they have little. Thus, our privilege entitles us to help out because WE CAN. We could step out of our comfort zones, engage the marginalized in discourse, and even teach them.

Like my absentee students, we can always pray for miracles to happen. We can pray that somehow, and in some way, our country progresses and catches up with the First World countries. We can pray that slowly, or instantly, all of the informal settlers will disappear. We can keep on wishing that the public parks and schools will be in a condition that even people with money will want to use them. We can keep hoping that thieves, drug addicts and kidnappers will disappear from our cities. We can pray for all this, and hope they just happen. Or we can take the situation in our own hands, and make things happen.

Anne Brigitte U. Lim, 20, is a teaching fellow of Teach for the Philippines. She graduated from Ateneo de Manila University with a degree in management of applied chemistry. “I believe that self-expression is the best asset of a teacher and the most important lesson for a student to learn,” she says.