Almanzy
Jun 7, 2001, 11:13 PM
OUR FIXATION ON ELITIST SCHOOLS
Let us face it. Many affluent Filipinos are fixated on elitist schools. The presumption is: high tuition fees mean quality education. In truth, what most elitist schools produce is not quality education, but a status symbol, a badge which rich students wear like expensive dental braces.
Elitism breeds individual smugness and social indifferentism, two disastrous attitudes for nation-building. When graduates of elitist schools acquire positions of power in the government or industry, they usually limit their field of close collaborators to their fellow elite. While they lip service to the welfare of the poor, it is the moneyed class which they promote and protect.
Elitism even turns competition among schools into a “class war”. Many rich students are sore losers and haughty victors. During one basketball game in the UAAP fiercely contested between UST and an elitist school, a student from the latter had a poster that read: “Ang tuition ninyo, baon lang namin” (Your tuition fee is equivalent only to our daily allowance); “Uwi na kayo, wala nang jeep” (Go home, there are no more jeepneys), an insinuation that students from the elitist school drive their own cars, while those from UST take jeepneys. Anyway, during the same game, one UST student waved a banner that read: “Blessed are the poor”.
When the competition is between two elitist schools, the struggle for glory becomes even more agitated. Defeat is unbearable because it unmasks their illusion of supremacy. Elitist parents, alumni, and TV commentators join the fray and become more involved that the players. Sometimes, the arena is no longer the basketball court but newspapers and television, where accusations of misconduct are endlessly repeated by paid hacks in the media.
The sad thing is, even the government seems to encourage elitism in education. Bienvenido Oplas, Jr. of the Congressional planning and Budget Office reports that a big proportion of students who enter the University of the Philippines, especially in the Diliman and Manila campuses, are from the middle income to upper income group. In the first semester of school year 1998-1999, 75% of UP Diliman's’19,320 students belong to bracket 9 of the socialized tuition fee and financial assistance program (STFAP). According to his report, this bracket includes the “richest” group of students subsidized through the STFAP.
It is almost obscene that rich students are being subsidized by taxes paid by parents whose children are not qualified to enroll in UP because of the deplorable system of public basic education. As it is now, parents who send their children to private schools suffer from a great injustice: they pay for the education of students in public schools while they receive no help in sending their own children to school.
If educational institutions are to be agencies of progress, they must produce Filipinos who are willing to build up their country, and not be more projections of their elite class or elitist school. The government must also rethink its practice of subsidizing heavily state universities and colleges (SUCs), many of which are mere white elephants or have become havens for the rich.
MANILA BULLTIN article
September 30, 1999
Let us face it. Many affluent Filipinos are fixated on elitist schools. The presumption is: high tuition fees mean quality education. In truth, what most elitist schools produce is not quality education, but a status symbol, a badge which rich students wear like expensive dental braces.
Elitism breeds individual smugness and social indifferentism, two disastrous attitudes for nation-building. When graduates of elitist schools acquire positions of power in the government or industry, they usually limit their field of close collaborators to their fellow elite. While they lip service to the welfare of the poor, it is the moneyed class which they promote and protect.
Elitism even turns competition among schools into a “class war”. Many rich students are sore losers and haughty victors. During one basketball game in the UAAP fiercely contested between UST and an elitist school, a student from the latter had a poster that read: “Ang tuition ninyo, baon lang namin” (Your tuition fee is equivalent only to our daily allowance); “Uwi na kayo, wala nang jeep” (Go home, there are no more jeepneys), an insinuation that students from the elitist school drive their own cars, while those from UST take jeepneys. Anyway, during the same game, one UST student waved a banner that read: “Blessed are the poor”.
When the competition is between two elitist schools, the struggle for glory becomes even more agitated. Defeat is unbearable because it unmasks their illusion of supremacy. Elitist parents, alumni, and TV commentators join the fray and become more involved that the players. Sometimes, the arena is no longer the basketball court but newspapers and television, where accusations of misconduct are endlessly repeated by paid hacks in the media.
The sad thing is, even the government seems to encourage elitism in education. Bienvenido Oplas, Jr. of the Congressional planning and Budget Office reports that a big proportion of students who enter the University of the Philippines, especially in the Diliman and Manila campuses, are from the middle income to upper income group. In the first semester of school year 1998-1999, 75% of UP Diliman's’19,320 students belong to bracket 9 of the socialized tuition fee and financial assistance program (STFAP). According to his report, this bracket includes the “richest” group of students subsidized through the STFAP.
It is almost obscene that rich students are being subsidized by taxes paid by parents whose children are not qualified to enroll in UP because of the deplorable system of public basic education. As it is now, parents who send their children to private schools suffer from a great injustice: they pay for the education of students in public schools while they receive no help in sending their own children to school.
If educational institutions are to be agencies of progress, they must produce Filipinos who are willing to build up their country, and not be more projections of their elite class or elitist school. The government must also rethink its practice of subsidizing heavily state universities and colleges (SUCs), many of which are mere white elephants or have become havens for the rich.
MANILA BULLTIN article
September 30, 1999