NewsRecord Weekly Publication

No Baby Talk

By Georgene Rhena P. Quilaton-Tambiga

Students = Stakeholders

The press in the Philippines is generally adversarial. I told my campus journalism class during our first meeting for the semester.

Further, I went on to discuss that, ironically, what now opposes this journalism principle was also conceived in our country. Development communication is the press orientation that our economically strong Asian neighbors use. They borrowed it from us. Their leaders believe that a press that promotes development and encourages people to participate in and contribute to it becomes a nation's indispensable tool for the climb to progress. I agree.

But given the engrained adversarial culture of our media the thorny challenge is to strike the balance between development reportage and adversarial function. Thus, the press should also take on its shoulders the burden of teaching people that development is not the responsibility of government alone, but of every citizen of a nation, young and old, male and female.

We all have a stake for development and our students are not exempted. 

Popular opinion says that Kindergarten plus 12 years of Basic Education will only make attaining education more expensive than it already is. Just like every other measure of the Department of Education to improve the Philippine Education system, this program has its set of supporters and critics.

However, what many of us fail to realize is the fact that it actually matters less what system our schools adopt because what matters more is how we respond to every opportunity to attain education.

Let me then address my dear students who, unlike the millions of impoverished out-of-school-youth, are so lucky to be in school. While pointing our fingers back to government is totally free, it isn't totally productive every time.

What is a student supposed to do? Simple! Value that fact that you are in school. Attend classes not because of your allowance but because being present in just one school day is already a giant leap to becoming an educated, more productive person. Treat school as a playing field where there is fun as much as there should be effort. This way excitement for school goes beyond June and extends till March.

I often lament that most students miss the point of reading assigned texts, answering homework, and making projects. The mentality today is that for as long as the output has beaten the teacher's deadline it is fine. But the point is not the output. It is the process you go through in order to come up with an output that matters most because in that process there is learning.

But a student's life does not only exist in school. The world is a bigger, tougher, and more effective classroom. The sooner you can get your feet on the street of the world the better. Every student should not miss a work opportunity while studying. According to a viral Facebook post, Bill Gates recently addressed a high school in the US. Rule number five out of 11 is, "Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity."

You see, a student is not a lame duck in a society. But for decades and decades we have mistreated them and thought they are the burden of government. We fail to recognize all along that they are stakeholders in development, too. In the process, we produce one too many by-standers out of college and high school graduates because our culture and system never taught them to take responsibility. It is time we give them their own hammer to drive the nail with.

There. I have once again tried to strike the balance between adversarial function and development reportage. With fingers crossed, may this touch the heartstrings of students particularly in our local colleges and schools.