EDUCATION IN THE PHILIPPINES

The education in the Philippines is not developed enough to achieve their UN Millennium Goal #2. The Philippines suffer in their bad educational cycle. Not all of the students in the Philippines are getting enough education for different reasons, and the effect of not getting enough education makes the future of the Philippines even worse. The education in the public schools is much weaker than the one in the private schools. The public schools follow the teaching styles of America and Spain, caused by the colonization of those two countries in the past history. (Weinberg 97) The Filipinos start off with 80% of them going to the elementary schools. However, the percentage decreases directly to only 48% of them going to the high schools. It even decreases down to 20% of the Filipinos, who go to the colleges and the universities. Even though students go to the schools to study, the books they use have several errors with unreliable information, grammatical and spelling errors. They ranked 7th place among the 9 Southeast Asian Nations in the area of education and innovation. Out of 138 economies in the world, the Philippines ranked 99th by having 112th place for Science and Math, and 76th place for Internet access. (“ABS CBN News”) There are various reasons why education in the Philippines is very weak. First of all, the country itself is too undeveloped and poor to support the education. The government does not take any care of the public schools at all. They do not give them any supports that students’ parents have to support the schools by themselves. However, most of the parents are not rich enough to support the school by themselves. 80% of the Filipinos live in the rural areas, and they try to survive by 96 pesos a day. (“Josh Weinstein”) It is totally reasonable for them to be not able to support their children’s schools. Since people live so poor in the Philippines, they send their kids to work every day. The kids who are sent to work cannot go to school to study, but they have to earn money to live. This is why the percentage of the people getting education decreases as their age increases. As people get older, their expected responsibility increases, and they must be able to make their living. To live, people earn money by working in their job places, rather than to use money by getting education in the schools. (Hindman 917) Several factors are affected when people do not go to school to get education. People become vulnerable when they are not taught properly. They cannot make up their own ideas or opinions, and other people can easily affect them. They also become useless when they do not have any personal thoughts, and are welcomed in more-narrowed-down areas, because the top classed job places would want someone who is well-educated, and who can lead their companies. Following, they would make lesser money and have hard living, which makes the next generation also impossible to go to school to get their education. Lastly, the possibility of producing a global leader also decreases when the number of people getting educated decrease. Since there is not enough education in the Philippines to produce a global leader, the situations in the Philippines get worse and worse every time. (Ide 509) In conclusion, the education in the Philippines is too poor and undeveloped to achieve their UN Millennium Goal #2. Not many people go to schools to get education, and even the percentage of those who do go decrease as the ages increase. This is because the government does not take any responsibility of the schools and they lay the responsibility to the students’ weak parents. The students chose to go to work to make money for living, rather than going to school to get education. When people do not get education, they are not able to stabilize their own opinions or ideas that they become vulnerable. They are less welcomed inthe society because they do not have a lot of abilities. This makes them to have worse jobs, which leads to their hard living. Lastly, no global leaders are produced when there are not many people who got education. Since no global leaders are in the Philippines, the country’s conditions, including the education get worse every year.