How to Help Solve Minimizing Jobless People in the Country

Who Can Be a Great Help for Your Country?

I was invited to attend a “Moving Up Ceremony” by our school. Since I am an ICT coordinator of our school, I needed to assist them in the ceremony for any technical support I could help. So, I had to go.

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I planned what to wear. I cleaned my shoes. I had to wash my nice clothes fitted to the program. It took a week preparation for me including the printing of the programs, invitations, and the slides that might be needed to be projected. The school was really busy. Everybody was busy. The students were having their practice and they had their final rehearsals. I could really see that everybody was so excited to have the school’s second moving up ceremony.

Philippines has just had the K-12 nationwide implementation. I’m part of the first batch of newly hired teachers to teach Grade 11. At first, some students who were part of the “First Moving Up Ceremony” were a bit frustrated and many of them were excited. Frustrated because for them instead of going to college after they finished their four-year high school to take their career courses in any universities, they have to take two more years to get to college for this new program of the Department of Education. For some, they feel the excitement. They wanted to know this new educational system. They have a positive expectation that this is better than the past generation who experienced just four years in high school. Even me as a teacher now, intended for senior high school, has undergone with so many seminars preparing for this new system, has felt the same way too.

Actually, the Department of Education had this plan for decades now. This just came into a realization last year. The result is positive, I think. The students who took Grade 11 understand that the subjects they took in Grade 11 and the subjects they will take this school year 2017-2018 for Grade 12 are the subjects for the first two years in college if it were without the K-12 program. They knew now that when they get to college, most of the subjects are majors, good for their training for any career they may pursue.

And then, the day of the ceremony came. The students escorted by their parents, the guests, faculty members including me, and visitors where parading to the venue and went to their designated places. Everybody was smiling, so excited and happy to feel the warmth atmosphere of the ceremony. The ceremony started. We were standing a bit far from the stage enough to see the whole picture of what was going on. While the ceremony was on going, I had a goose bum especially when I saw the students belong to the moving up. I had my fellow teacher who is close to me was standing beside me. I just realized that he too felt the same way. And he made a deep sigh. I asked him why. And he said, “I just can’t imagine how our government can provide jobs for them when they will finish their studies. This huge population of students couldn’t just be seen here in our school. There are also students who are going to finish their studies soon.” I was just listening desperately while he made this baffling statement. “Thousands,” he added, “of jobless people can be seen in our country few years later wherein we already have them now. How can our government solve this?” And then something, a famous statement of John F. Kennedy, popped up in my mind when I heard this. “You know what?” I said. “What I always hear from us is that we always think of ‘what our country can do for us’. We always want our country to solve problems wherein most of the times we made it ourselves.” He listened intensely. “We,” I continued, “mostly, don’t think of ‘what we can do for our country’. We even don’t think of our children. We even don’t think of the size of the family we should have, which is basically one of the solutions to many problems our country is facing now. Isn’t that so?” And he nodded with a sigh.

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The awarding came and we needed to go up on the stage. I could see on his face how he was wondering with what we’d talked about just few minutes ago. I do believe he is satisfied to what he heard. And he continued to witness the ceremony helping distributing the awards while I was doing the powerpoint presentation. What about you? What do you think?