The Choice is Yours

“Educated or Ignorant”
Gemuel Santos

Sigmund Freud believed that Life is primarily a quest for pleasure or a quest for power, as
Alfred Adler taught, and a quest for meaning like what Viktor Frankl said. However, I believe,
Life is a journey of embracing new learnings and education. “Education is the only thing that I
can hand down to you, child.” That is what most of the poor people say. In the rich lands and
lucile water bodies in The Philippines, there are people living at the top of the mountains, willing
to endure the pain of going down the slopes and cross the strong currents of the rivers just to go
to school, because they have a dream, that one day, they will graduate and escape the poor life of
living in a mountain.

In the streets of Metro Manila, you can see the perseverance of the children, not to go to
school, but to survive hunger and steal valuable things for money. Behind the steel-solid bar,
there are people we called “No read, No write” living half of their lives in jail. Not because they
did a sinful thing, but because they signed a paper that they can’t even read and were not aware
of what was in it and they’ll just find themselves sitting in the dark corner of the jail. In the land
of Aklan, there are children who chose to work in the Tubuhan to earn money instead of going to
school to study. What is their reason? “Because in school, we can’t earn money to buy food for
our family, but here in work, we can.”

Based on the 2017 Annual Poverty Indicators Survey (APIS), about nine percent of the
estimated 39.2 million Filipinos aged 6 to 24 years old were out-of-school children and youth
(OSCY). OSCY refers to family members 6 to 14 years old who are not attending formal school;
and family members 15 to 24 years old who are currently out of school, not gainfully employed,
and have not finished college or post-secondary courses. The most common reasons among
OSCYs for not attending school were marriage or family matters (37.0%), lack of personal
interest (24.7%), and high cost of education or financial concern (17.9%). Among females,
OSCYs, marriage or family matters (57.0%) was the main reason for not attending school while
lack of personal interest among males (43.8%) (Figure 1 and Table 2).

Despite many reasons, the root of it is poverty. At this point, you will understand why they
chose the life of a worker to earn money despite their young age. We don’t have the right to
judge them, because we are not in their shoes. If they chose that kind of path, how about you?
You, who are privileged and fortunate enough to study in a public or private school. Will you
choose to be educated or you will embrace ignorance and be ignorant forever?