Mandatory schooling for children

Published by the Visayan Daily Star Publications, Inc.

NINFA R. LEONARDIA Editor-in-Chief & President

CARLA P. GOMEZ Editor GUILLERMO TEJIDA III Desk Editor NANETTE L. GUADALQUIVER Busines Editor NIDA A. BUENAFE Sports Editor RENE GENOVE Bureau Chief, Dumaguete MAJA P. DELY Advertising Coordinator

CARLOS ANTONIO L. LEONARDIA Administrative Officer

The pressure is now on for parents who, for one reason or another, fail to send their children to school as soon as they reach the proper age. The Secretary of Education himself has announced his backing for the bill introduced by the congressman from Cagayan de Oro seeking to penalize parents who fail to provide their children with education.

The bill filed by Congressman Rufus Rodriguez also provides stiff penalties for such failure. The negligent parent will face six years imprisonment or a fine of P100,000.

These may be considered too harsh, especially for parents who are themselves uneducated, and who have no means of getting a stable income and survive only from one meal to the other. So we cannot expect that, even if it is passed – granting that there will be enough members of Congress present to vote, much less deliberate on it – that there will be immediate compliance with its provisions. And, for sure the main reason to be given by those who violate the law, granted it is passed, will be poverty.

But, as both the congressman and the Education Secretary have pointed out, poverty is not acceptable as an excuse for failure to send one’s children to school. The government has been providing free elementary education for several years now, so tuition and former fees charged by public schools have been removed, with the state answering for them. Some schools, in fact, there is now a growing number of them, also provide meals or, at least, supplements so the children will not go hungry.

The officials must have taken note of the fact that some parents fail to send their children to school because they take advantage of them by making them help in earning for the family. So we have very young children working in the fields, in factories, in jobs that adults should be doing.

But what the bill is proposing may entail problems that the poor cannot solve without help from either the government or from the private sector. The Education Department and Congress, therefore, must also introduce ways through which this proposal can become doable.

Ironically, the announcement of this measure also comes with the one confirming increases in tuitions for the country’s private schools. Indeed, education is very hard to come by for the poor.*