Enrolment is now again upon us or about to be. A lot of parents are scrounging for cash. While payment of enrolment fees is a big priority, the more important thing is the guidance of parents.
So many kids will enroll blindly without proper advice. Sometimes they will just go along with their friends as to the choices of school, courses and even dorms or boarding houses. Little do they know about what are the best for them.
Back then, many parents just brought their kids to the bus station to travel to the city where colleges and universities or even high schools were found. With whatever amounts they had, they would find their way with the help of relatives or family friends on how to get enrolled. Everything was a shot in the dark. The parents back home will only know how things turned out about their kid through a note sent through whatever available public transport, or the snail mail, or by word of mouth.
Now things are different. People are better educated thus kids should be guided the educated way.
The answers to what, when, why, where, how, etc., should have been properly evaluated or vetted before the send-off.
Sadly, this is just an imagination. For many parents are poorly educated, if at all. They don’t know how to answer those questions. So their kid, chances are, will be left to the mercy of the streets. If he is a probinsyano like millions of others, he will have to rely on those who do not know any better. The result is the perpetuation of the wide disparity between the learned and the majority on the other side. In the long it will mean the perpetuation of the ever widening gap between those who have and those on the other side.
For justice to be attained, it behooves the educated ones to lend a helping to the kids of those have less in that respect. It would not be just teaching the kid how to fish because he might end up teaching the same to others.
Yet all the fingers are pointing to the government. It is its bounden duty to provide the best education to citizens. And, by God and by golly, it can comfortably do so. But it is not being done. For the nation’s coffers are full of holes with hoses attached that go to the pockets of politicians and those who already have.
The only hope is education, the great equalizer.
Parents have to find opportunities for their kids to go to school. If they cannot get it through their own means or scholarships, then they should eye the state schools. Otherwise, with beg-borrow-or-steal determination, they must find other means. **