The RH bill and education

In the midst of the controversy on RH bill, one congressman has come out with a statement that this proposed measure is not necessary since population management has long been a government policy. We are referring to Congressman Karlo Alexei Nograles of Davao City who is one of the sensible legislators who oppose the enactment of this anti-life bill. Indeed, why craft a law that would divide the nation and arm-twist a people to control birth?

Condom, which is the popular means of controlling birth, would be freely distributed by government health workers because huge funds would the earmarked for the purpose once the bill is passed. In fact, this year, even with the bill still pending enactment, the government is setting aside – hold your breath – P3 billion for information campaign on contraceptive use.

In its premise the RH initiative purports to encourage the use of natural and artificial means of birth control. Yet there are provisions which mandate the government to shell out millions of pesos for buying anti-pregnancy materials for distribution to the general public. Once passed, this legislation would therefore abet the use of artificial means of spacing birth, a position the Catholic Church vehemently opposes. The reason is by now clear to most Filipinos who have followed this issue: Using contraceptives aborts life in the mother’s womb. It’s murder pure and simple. If this is encouraged by the state, where’s the constitutional declaration that we are “imploring the aid of Almighty God” in governing this country?

There is no question on the need to control population growth. But the answer, like the answer to almost all of our social problems, lies in education, general education including an expertly managed sex education. Raise the level of the educational attainment of the 92 million Filipinos and population growth tapers off. But leave tens of millions of these under the “scratch and dig” state they now endure and babies would continue to tumble out by the dozen from many households.

The trouble is there is no money for education. True, we have a compulsory basic education. But how many manage to finish high school? Not even half of the school age youth. This means that only about 50 percent of Filipinos are functionally literate. Yet even this state is not yet a guarantee for gainful employment because in today’s world a higher level of schooling is a must. Hence, there’s a huge mass of poverty stricken warm bodies whose urgent concern is survival and to whom family planning is a meaningless thing. If only we have a no-nonsense anti-poverty program. If only we can better educate our people there would be no need to spend billions for birth control.

But there’s no money for education, for good education, that is. For years we have run our school system on a “puwede na” mentality – puwede na even if one classroom is used by two or three classes, puwede na even if only one textbook is available for three or four students, puwede na even if many high schools are manned by “casual” teachers, puwede na even if mere pictures of equipment are used in science classes, etc.

The irony is that there’s money for other less critical purposes. Pork for legislators, to name one, gets billions from the national coffer. Superfluous infrastructures, to name another, drain the same coffer of more billions. And of course, corruption has leeched this nation into its current anemic state.

Education? It’s the boast of politicians that this program gets the lion’s share of the budget, but this happens because it has the most number of personnel. The bitter truth, however, is that only a meager 15 to 16 percent of our GNP is shelled out for education. Compared to other Asian countries, most of which spend 20 to 25 percent of their budget for education, we are the miser in this regard.

Our failure to spend enough for our school system could be the reason why we have remained the economic poor boy of Asia. Years were when we were the envy in this part of the world for education and progress. But we must have been asleep (like Rip Van Winkle?) all these years because many of our neighbors like Indonesia, Vietnam, India and others, which used to be in the backwaters of development, are now looking down at us.

What will wake us up? Education, of course, because education is the engine of growth and development. But as long as we treat our schooling system like decrepit barangay schools we will remain half awake and problems such as poverty and its companion goblin of high population growth rate will always haunt us.

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