I admire VP Sara’s “radical” pronouncements as the Secretary of the DepEd.
Worth mentioning are the following: the wearing of school uniform will now be optional and all classroom-related deficiencies like chalks, erasers, blackboard or whiteboard should be shouldered by school officials, not the parents.
Let us discuss these issues.
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The optional wearing of uniform is grounded on solid grounds – everybody is still recovering from the havoc caused and will be caused by COVID. The economy is still reeling and obviously, she wants more breathing space for the poor and the oppressed, especially the parents.
Who can argue against that?
This means that parents will no longer worry about their children’s uniform, they can already skip that from the budget preparation. Instead, they can direct their worries to other mundane matters like daily survival.
This also means that inside that pretty head is a mind that cares, a mind that is sensitive and a mind that feels the pain of the poor.
And her heart is firmly planted in favor of the masses.
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The wearing of uniform after all is just superficial, it does not have any bearing at all to actual learning.
What the child learns from the classroom has nothing to do with what he or she wears. After all, the child’s first taste of instruction is in the home, where he or she is wearing anything comfortable or anything available, no uniform whatsoever, while the mother, or the father, starts tweaking their child’s mind.
The removal of the uniform from the family budget is definitely a big help.
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The other “radical” policy pronouncement is one that really defines the personality of VP Sara.
She knows the perennial problem of parents – shouldering school expenses that are not supposed to be theirs.
By asking parents or guardians to “donate” school-related deficiencies, public school officials are diverting the burden to the parents, not to school administrators.
Some school officials have become experts in “exploiting” or “abusing” the kindness of some parents by asking them to “donate” school needs that are not being addressed by the government.
Of course, some parents do “voluntary donations” not because they want to for that reason alone but because they want their children to be given top honors or awards, or even make them pass, out of that donation.
In other words, they have another agenda, selfish agenda, for doing so.
These are the kind of parents that “buy” their children’s graduation, even if they are not really deserving of it.
So they are complicit in this issue.
Now, VP Sara wants to put an end to this.
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I hope she would really make sure to put an end to this “donation” thing because this is definitely an anomaly that needs to be stopped.
How to do just that, remains to be seen.
You know why?
I know of a certain BIR Commissioner who once told her colleagues in the bureau to shape up or ship out.
Let us do away with corruption, blah, blah, blah, she passionately told the men and women of the bureau.
And one policy she strictly implemented was – no one should apply for a position because that was one shortcut to corruption in the bureau kuno.
Let the top management kuno pick the men and women to sit in the regional and district offices, nobody should apply.
And so, that’s what happened.
And many people thought, wow, a reformist in the BIR, finally, malimpiyo na gyod sa corruption ang maong opisina.
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But things changed when it was discovered that the same BIR official was “coddling” the country’s top businesses that were not paying the taxes due them.
Sumangil ra diay tong iyahang anti-corruption stance.
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Another thing too, while there was an attempt to address corruption, it was found out that it was only good in papers, in the real world, it was completely different.
Padayon gihapon ang pang-warta ug pangurakot sa BIR.
How?
Kay mao ra man gihapon ang sistema, ang dako nga tax assessment himuon nga gamay, for a hefty consideration.
Ang hefty consideration didto paingon sa bulsa sa taga-BIR, imbes adto sa national treasury.
Dihay negosyante nga naglibog.
Ang iyang tax assessment nga moabot of 10 milyon, nahimo na lang 700,000. Giunsa kaha to nila noh, nakapangutana siya sa iyang amigo.
Of course, he shelled out “hefty” pahinungod to his BIR-friend.
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Let’s go back to VP Sara’s no more “donation” for school needs.
There is no doubt that she means well. Her heart and mind is for the poor, she knows their problems and she wants to help them.
Ang pangutana – mapasunod kaha na niya all over the country?
Buot ipasabot, mahunong na ba gyod ang naandan na nga mga kalihokan sa eskuylahan nga pa-doniton ang mga ginikanan sa kakulangan sa eskuylahan?
Kon dunay gusto mo-donate, balibaran na lang ba sa eskuylahan?
Kon pananglit ang PTA o PTCA, nga maoy kasagaran gamiton aron mahimong tulay sa “donit-donit” og mga butang para sa eskuylahan, ang gusto nga mohatag sa kakulangan, balibaran ba kini sa Principal?
Well, for sure, there are more good news that are in store for public education with her at the helm.
One of that is the K to 12 basic education program, though at this point in time, nobody is certain about the future of the program, padayonon o undangon?
