Today’s column by Atty. Raul Pangalangan ended this way:

I know a young boy from a poor family who, to my delight, qualified as a Physics major in University of the Philippines. But he eventually dropped out, and when I asked his father why, apparently the boy had some difficulty in his sophomore year, lost his scholarship and, in order to re-enroll, was required to refund his earlier subsidies, a legal way of saying, “Get lost.” Last I heard, he was working in a factory, possibly a future Filipino J. Robert Oppenheimer sentenced to the assembly line.

It reminds me of Antoine de Saint Exupery‘s book, Wind, Sand, and Stars. The second to the last paragraph goes this way:

I went back to my sleeping car. I said to myself: Their fate causes these people no suffering. It is not an impulse to charity that has upset me like this. I am not weeping over an eternally open wound. Those who carry the wound do not feel it. It is the human race and not the individual that is wounded here, is outraged here. I do not believe in pity. What torments me tonight is the gardener’s point of view. What torments me is not this poverty to which after all a man can accustom himself as easily as to sloth. Generations of Orientals live in filth and love it. What torments me is not the humps nor hollows nor the ugliness. It is the sight, a little bit in all these men, of Mozart murdered.

Indeed. As a former educator, I should know. I saw a lot of young people missing their true vocations, of parents imposing upon their children their dreams and frustrations, of parents not guiding their children in choosing careers, of young people whose dreams are crushed by poverty.

The NCAE is great, but in the end, it will be just like the old NCEE.

Tech/voc education is OK for me; I know that not everyone is suited for university studies. Besides, not everyone can be a lawyer or a doctor; we need technicians and people who will drive the industries. But if what we offer welders and lathe machine operators are minimum wages that can only feed one person, I cannot blame people if they would rather get a college degree.

It is a sad story that seems to have no ending. Mr. Willy Prilles laments that we always shoot ourselves in the foot, and that maddens him. Can’t blame him, because it really makes your blood boil. Read that blog post and weep.