Education top priority

Our prayers for our children are simple as we catch our breath at the end of a crowded day. May they be safe, healthy, and loved. And may they know right from wrong.

For the young survivors of Supertyphoon “Yolanda,” our prayers are the same. Each plea is basically a human right recognized in much of the civilized world: the right to security of person, to wellbeing, to be treated everywhere as an individual with dignity. And the right to free education, at least in the fundamental stages of life. The last is why, although food, clothing, shelter and medical care are always tops in our first-response list in times of emergency, education cannot be left out of the critical bullet points for too long.

After the initial shock of having survived a crisis as traumatic as a storm surge or an earthquake, or even the pillage of a once quiet village, returning to a normal routine helps people cope. Shooting hoops, selling Avon, taking selfies—these have less to do with a people’s resiliency and more to do with human nature. It’s intuitive for people to want to take a break from the monotony of mourning.

For school-age children, “routine” means returning to the classroom as soon as it is safe to do so, says Education Secretary Armin Luistro. His standing instruction to principals and teachers is to create temporary learning places in schools, which are also often evacuation sites, as soon as possible. In the Department of Education’s crisis curriculum, the kids do a lot of singing and drawing and storytelling.  Nothing academic, more psychosocial.

The important thing is to put them in an environment where a teacher or social worker can help them process what they have just experienced. Learning, whether in a tent or a makeshift room, can give young survivors a semblance of normalcy and a sense of belonging. There’s safety in numbers, too. Being together in a classroom can shield them, at least during the day, from physical, sexual and other kinds of abuse that can be inflicted on them by adults despairing over their unfortunate situation.

This is also the time for teachers to do what Luistro calls a profiling of the students’ needs. How many didn’t make it, have family who didn’t make it, have physical ailments, have lost their homes? What about uniforms, books, supplies? Not that the DepEd has the resources to address these needs. The best Luistro can do is to give each battered school a subsidy of P20,000-P30,000 to tide it over—from leftovers of his 2013 budget.

If classes are suspended for too long there is a real danger that parents or the students themselves will lose interest in education. Psychosocial first aid may be fine for two weeks, but the academic curriculum should resume soon enough. Luistro knows that 25 percent of those who leave school, even in normal times, never set foot in a classroom again.

To enable student-evacuees to continue their studies for the rest of the school year, Luistro has directed all other public schools to accept them despite insufficient transfer credentials. The school records of the emergency transferees, says the official memo, will follow as soon as DepEd operations in the place of origin have normalized.

Private schools nationwide, from grade schools to colleges, have also been more than willing to accept displaced students. Some have even offered scholarships and financial assistance, especially to those who have lost their parents and, consequently, their source of financial support.

The number of public-school students in the most ravaged areas was 621,522 before Yolanda struck and wrecked 4,492 classrooms. That’s more than half a million kids we should be grooming to be well-educated and visionary leaders for the Visayas.

The thing is, education isn’t just the problem of Luistro or the people in the devastated areas or the national government. We are bound by geography, economy and history to lend a hand. A round of do-gooding is not enough.

We must mobilize resources so the young survivors of Yolanda can thrive in education. We need to recognize creative approaches in teaching that can help all kinds of students in our wounded cities. Mobile learning comes to mind, given that the telecoms were up and running sooner than most utilities. We have to build robust collaborations among government, private entities and advocacy groups, but ask each to focus on a particular area of need. Lastly, we have to keep the issue of education at the top of the national agenda, post-Yolanda.