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Blogs by Paul Cuenco
Education and Options
2/11/2012 12:15:11 AM
Education and Options
A friend of mine was looking for a school for his son and he mentioned that this afternoon, they tried exploring a third option. The first option was too disorienting. The second was too big. I thought to myself that at least he has options.
I had options too when I was his age. I took my preparatory at the Ateneo de Zamboanga and when we went back to Manila, I enrolled with the Claretian Brothers. My grandfather Eriong took me out of Claret and put me with the Bedans (St. Bede.) When it was about time to pick my high school, I have two options (although I could have just stuck with San Beda): Philippine Science High School or the Ateneo. In the Philippine Science, a candidate needed to take two exams and other requirements. And in order to take the exams, one must be among the top in their class. I was 36 of about 319. So I qualified to take the first exam. But because this was a national competition to get into the high school, the competition was really tough. To say it, I didn’t make the cut.
The Ateneo took a more romantic approach. A classmate of mine boasted that he partook of the entrance exam at the Ateneo. He described the place like academic heaven – winding long roads to the high school, big and old trees, and wide open spaces and sports facilities. This intrigued me that I ended up applying to the school. I took their entrance test with trepidation for there were rows upon rows of test takers. It’s like the whole elite class of Manila was taking the exam. Then the waiting game started. Did I make the cut or not, I wondered?
My class was made up of about forty students making up nine sections. To the West, these classes were too big. But forty was just right. In the public school system, each class was about 60 students. Besides, my high school was just part of a greater whole. You can start with the Ateneo from kindergarten up to post graduate degree. This was indeed a big, elite university. The best and the brightest attend this school. Granted that there were a few more schools you could bunch them in the elite category, the Ateneo counts among them.
My friend said that the third school was a public school but it has a k-12 (kindergarten to grade 12) orientation. He wondered if it was the only public school in the entire country that has a k-12 orientation. I wondered, too, now that I am more familiar with the U.S. system than with the Philippine system.
Education was a weird anomaly. It should be education was the great equalizer, not solely on financial standing but education for education’s sake. But it seemed to me that education is not so for each individual’s educational pursuit but rather it is based on the wishes and financial acumen of the parent, the child’s choice and their goals. Options, my man. The richer the child’s background is (richer in the sense of financial wherewithal), the more options a child has.
Thus, my friend’s son has more options than the child on the street with poorer parents. There are exceptions, of course. But generally, this is very true.
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