Remember the first day of school? Not yet saturated with assignments, drills and reading materials, we troop gleefully to our school, catch up with friends and classmates, and look around to scrutinize the noticeable changes that would prevent other people from claiming our beloved alma mater is bulok. It may be new classrooms or freshly painted walls or new models of chairs and desks. If luck is on our side, our school would have also added more books and computers in the library. All these add to the excitement of the First Day High.
Teachers regard the first day of school as the most important day of the school year. Start with a mistake and it will take months before teachers can remedy the errors made during the first day. Perhaps, the worst mistake a school may commit is the failure to excite its students with the physical appearance of the school. If students don’t get excited by the sight of their school, if they feel that this school looks exactly how they left it last March, then what would follow is the gradual loss of enthusiasm and a lack of pride for one’s alma mater. Studies show that poor learning environments translate to low academic performance.
That is why before a school year starts, the Department of Education holds Brigada Eskwela. Already in its 10th year, Brigada Eskwela has become an annual tradition every May for parents, teachers, and community volunteers to march towards the nearest public school in order to paint roofs and walls, pave cement for walkways, remove clogging from water pipelines, repair broken furniture, plant trees and shrubs, and wipe the dust that has enveloped the nooks and crannies of classrooms unused for two months. Brigada Eskwela is also the best time for kind souls to donate books and school supplies so as to increase a public school’s educational holdings with the hope that these new materials will spark a child’s interest in studying.
The current administration has allocated to the Department of Education the biggest share of the national budget. In reality, however, P297 billion is still not enough to wipe out the classroom shortage currently estimated at 40,000 rooms. Additionally, millions of chairs and desks need to be procured. As if that’s not enough, according to a Rappler article, our schools also lack 124,286 toilets and 20 percent of all public schools in the country lack access to running water. On TV, we watch reports of public schools with only two comfort rooms shared by thousands of students. Do we simply shrug off these problems and rationalize that public education is the government’s problem? Answering yes is tantamount to letting millions of children suffer from deplorable situations that demotivate students to focus on their studies. Nelson Mandela once said, “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.â€
The good news is, according to DepEd, six million Filipinos volunteer annually for Brigada Eskwela. This massive turnout enables DepEd to save P2 billion in maintenance and operating expenses. DepEd also saves P500 million as that is the approximate equivalent monetary value of six million volunteers working for a week. More good news as DepEd also estimates receiving about P400 milion worth of books, construction materials, and learning aids every year for Brigada Eskwela.
This massive show of support for Philippine education shouldn’t last for only a week. Throughout the year, many companies and organizations work hand in hand with DepEd in order to raise the quality of education in the Philippines. Philippine Business for Education (PBED) is set to send 1,000 of their scholars to teach in public schools for a number of years. Similarly, Teach for the Philippines starts this year by sending the best of the country’s graduates to serve and teach in public schools. Individuals, organizations, and companies also help public schools through the Adopt A School program.
Taking a step back from all these, it’s essential to remember that the beautification of our public schools is not the ultimate goal of Brigada Eskwela. For this annual event, the pearl of great price is the sense of responsibility and ownership manifested by a community the moment they start supporting a specific public school. It is this sense of stewardship that sustains the continuous improvement of public education, thereby transforming our public schools into clean, attractive, and orderly spaces truly conducive for every Filipino child to start a lifelong pursuit of learning and wisdom.