By HERBERT VEGO
THE officials of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) want us to believe that they are there to protect us parents and children from profiteering colleges and universities. With CHED around, there’s no way these schools could abuse. True? Or false?
Well, if we don’t watch out, they would take us for a ride. For instance, they make it sound like good news that of the 25 schools in Western Visayas that applied for tuition hike this school year, “only 15” have been permitted at an average of 7.7 percent – according to Dr. Rex Casiple, CHED-6 supervising education program specialist.
Obviously, it’s the school owners, not the students, who benefit from this yearly cycle.
The poor parents who break their back working for the same wages are “punished.”
Their sympathetic sons and daughters who are now saddled with two more years of high school – no thanks to the nebulous “K-12” – can’t take it anymore and are therefore forced to stay out of college.
We have yet to hear students lauding the schools for “improved” education standard and facilities because of the added fees imposed.
But we have heard them praise Manny Pacquiao for abandoning school and yet making it.
We don’t think it’s funny that whenever we ask CHED for names of the schools that are hiking fees, we hear the usual answer, “Secret…”
In fact, a news report published yesterday said, “Dr. Casiple refused to name the ‘hiking’ schools.”
Why is that so?
If your guess is because they don’t want us to know which schools to avoid sending our children to, you are probably right.
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Of the 180 barangay captains, 40 have yet to submit their list of suspected drug pushers. PDEA allegedly takes it to mean collusion between the kapitanes and the drug lords.
That may not be exactly correct. While there are really barangay captains in cahoots with — or are related to — drug dealers, others refuse to cooperate with the PDEA because of the fear factor. No way could they defend themselves against ruthless drug lords who are capable of killing or paying killers.
Be that as it may, PDEA 6 regional director Paul Ledesma insists that uncooperative barangay officials of Iloilo City face legal sanctions under Republic Act 9165 or the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.
Moreover, under Memorandum Circular No.2009-09 of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), barangay officials are mandatedto submit data to PDEA and the Philippine National Police, identifying “drug affected house clusters, work places, streets, puroks, and sitios where delivery, sale or use of illegal drugs are conducted.”
Then, too, there are barangay officials who distrust the PDEA and the Philippine National Police (PNP). If they were truly enemies of big-time shabu dealers, why have they not bagged any of the three “kings” it has identified as Dragon, Buang and Bondying?
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I would like to share briefly a few points made by American author Marshall Goldsmith on feedback in his book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There:
Goldsmith acknowledges that negative feedback “can be employed by others to reinforce our feelings of failure, or at least remind us of them – and our reaction is rarely positive. We close ranks, turn into our shell, and shut the world out.”
When Goldsmith was a child, his mother told him he had no mechanical skills. He went through high school believing that, and, when he was 18, scored at the bottom of the entire nation in a test given by the U.S. Army.
A few years later, a professor persuaded him to take another look at his mechanical abilities. That’s when he realized his mother was wrong, and he was “just living out the expectations [he] had chosen to believe.”
And so we hope that people we offend in our critical writings profit from criticism. A negative comment about you or your abilities cannot damage you unless you let it./PN
