If the Americans had never committed genocide against the Indians; if they had never incited wars of annihilation between the native peoples of the land, if there had never been a Trail of Tears; if America had never organized and commercialized the kidnapping and sale into slavery of a gentle and defenseless African people; if it had never developed the most widespread brutal, exploitative system of slavery the world has ever known; if it had never sundered and torn and ground Mexico into the dust; if it had never attacked gallant, defenseless Puerto Rico and never turned that lovely land into a cesspool to compete with the cesspool it created in Panama; if it had never bled Latin America of her wealth and had never cast her exhausted people onto the dung heap of disease and ignorance and starvation; if it had never pushed Hiroshima and Nagasaki into the jaws of hell - if America had never done any of these things - history would still create a special bar of judgment for what America did to the Philippines.

- Nelson Pery, Black Fire

Filipino education

After nursing, call centers and medical transcription, another outsourcing job has been added as a career option for young people.

Demand for “closed captioning” professionals is expected to rise this year after the US Congress started to push for the implementation of a 1998 law which requires captioning of all new English-language television programming. Captioning is implemented to allow the hearing-impaired to enjoy a program on television or a video film by reading the dialogue spoken at the bottom of the screen.

While this is a positive development for a country which suffers from job scarcity, the Arroyo government’s thrust to give more emphasis on the generation of overseas and outsourcing jobs only does more harm than good for the local economy.

The ‘overproduction’ of professionals and skilled graduates for these vocation at the expense of other vital courses creates a disturbing imbalance in the education sector and the labor force and further encourages the migration of professionals out of the country.

While remittances from overseas workers help augment the country's deficit, the long term effects of an unbalanced pool of professionals and the continuous brain drain are more devastating to the local economy.

The government and the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) should focus more on courses which serve the local needs of the economy and not the demand of the international market.

We should produce more teachers, entrepreneurs and agriculture graduates and invest heavily on education reforms in the said fields which match the needs of the economy.

Our Education and government officials should put more emphasis on courses which correspond to the needs of the local economy instead of banking on 'popular' courses determined by prevailing international trends.

Renato Constantino further described what kind of education Filipinos must have:

“…the education of the Filipino must be a Filipino education. It must be based on the needs of the nation and the goals of the nation. The object is not merely to produce men and women who can read and write or who can add and subtract. The primary object is to produce a citizenry that appreciates and is conscious of its nationhood and has national goals for the betterment of the community…”

Reunions

All good things must come to an end…and so are the bad ones. Yeah, I know it’s a mortal sin for bloggers not to update their blogs… well at least I’m back and hopefully I can make up for all the lost days and catch up with everything that had happened.

The past month (since I last updated this blog) was actually a time of reunions. It has been three years since I last attended the annual convention of the College Editors Guild. Fortunately, I was invited as one of the resource speakers in this year’s Congress in Albay and got reunited with old (literally, hehe) friends during my days as a campus journalist. Mayon is still breathtaking (and so was Parh, hahaha, ang diyosa ng Mindanao).

The last time I was there was in November for a meeting. That was the time when I met Cris. He was the one who fetched us, but it was rather a brief encounter. I no longer saw him when I came back last May. Cris Hugo, the coordinator of the League of Filipino Students in the region, was shot dead last March 19. He is the 33^rd activist killed this year under the Arroyo administration.

It has also been years since I last saw my elementary classmates (I haven’t seen some of them for a decade). We recently had a reunion and the stories were simply endless. I was actually mean to some of my classmates and teachers (particularly Mrs. Corpuz, our Science teacher) then, thanks to Crisanto Cada (my mentor, hehehe). I was tactless and often got myself reprimanded by our adviser or scolded by the tita or mother of some of my classmates (mga sumbungero kasi). I think I actually developed my determined, aggressive and sometimes stubborn mind-set during these formative years. Supposedly, we have swimming get-together last weekend, but I guess everyone was busy or we all forgot.

The last one was a date with my ex, Diana. Finally, after several futile attempts, we had a decent, personal conversation last week. It has been four years since we broke up and we really did not have the chance to talk about it. We became friends again a year after the split up but we were just ‘civil’ then. We only got to see each other during our high school barkada reunions. We never had the opportunity to spend time together and settle things (without the group). I actually miss her company, our seemingly endless conversations, and of course her letters. I don’t have a partner right now, but I think the prospect of us being together again is bleak.

Sigh…how time passes by so swiftly. I’m turning 23 this year. I’ve changed and so did my friends. But they are still the same persons I knew 5 or 10 years ago…a little different, but still the same.