The new schoolyear starts tomorrow. Ah, the memories... It's actually great to be over all that. What with the rising tuition and expenses nowadays... wouldn't want to put my parents through that anymore. Still I could at least symphatize with the doting parents who need to come up with the scratch to pay for their children's education, some of my friends and relatives bemoan their financial condition during this season (makes me wonder how I'll deal with it when I got kids of my own.)
Likewise, I can't help but feel sorry for the kids whose parents can't afford to send them to private schools considering the quality and condition of our public education system is in. Just watching the news describing their plight makes you wonder how they'll end up... Few schools that most students need to walk several kilometers to reach their classes (barefoot, no less.) Few Classrooms that classes are held in shifts (sometimes three times a day) or classes held simultaneously in the same classroom (of course, some classes are taught in the great outdoors there being no classroom at all.) Of course, sometimes the cause is not lack of rooms but lack of teachers. On top all that they have need to share what little textbooks and school supplies are available to them.
On the other hand, kids from well-to-do family, are being sent to pre-schools as early as two years old (sometimes younger) to get a leg-up on other kids. I'm sure I didn't start going to school until I was almost 5, I mean, why don't we give these kids a chance to be kids for a while longer?
Ah well... what do I know? I'm just happy to see that the back-to-school sales in most bookstores are starting to (or will start to) wind down. That way, all those shiny new school supplies they got laid out in all the prominent places in the stores will be taken down and put back in their usual places, so that the novels (usually the bargain bin stuff) they've displaced during the last two months will start coming back plus the crowd wpuld start thinning out, then I could start visiting these places again. Hey! I always said that I learned more from reading pocketbooks than from school anyway.
Likewise, I can't help but feel sorry for the kids whose parents can't afford to send them to private schools considering the quality and condition of our public education system is in. Just watching the news describing their plight makes you wonder how they'll end up... Few schools that most students need to walk several kilometers to reach their classes (barefoot, no less.) Few Classrooms that classes are held in shifts (sometimes three times a day) or classes held simultaneously in the same classroom (of course, some classes are taught in the great outdoors there being no classroom at all.) Of course, sometimes the cause is not lack of rooms but lack of teachers. On top all that they have need to share what little textbooks and school supplies are available to them.
On the other hand, kids from well-to-do family, are being sent to pre-schools as early as two years old (sometimes younger) to get a leg-up on other kids. I'm sure I didn't start going to school until I was almost 5, I mean, why don't we give these kids a chance to be kids for a while longer?
Ah well... what do I know? I'm just happy to see that the back-to-school sales in most bookstores are starting to (or will start to) wind down. That way, all those shiny new school supplies they got laid out in all the prominent places in the stores will be taken down and put back in their usual places, so that the novels (usually the bargain bin stuff) they've displaced during the last two months will start coming back plus the crowd wpuld start thinning out, then I could start visiting these places again. Hey! I always said that I learned more from reading pocketbooks than from school anyway.
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