July 24, 2001   *   vol. 1 (4)

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vol. 1 (4)   *   July 24, 2001

Call to Order                          Pres  Richard Dy

Invocation &
   Four Way Test               PP Silver Sarmiento

National Anthem                     Rtn Harvey Tan

Entertainment                                PP Tony Yee

Welcome and
   Greetings                       PVP Tante Licudine

     It has become customary to see parents screw up to save money to send their children, at all cost, to finish a course. It has also been usual, especially among poor families, to hear children dropping out of school or giving up education to prematurely work so that the brightest sibling can finish college. Tradition and culture has imbued upon us that education is the best inheritance we can acquire from our parents, and it is through education that we can be emancipated from poverty, or to put as at par with the rest of society.
     Strict adherences to these ideals have divided our country among educated, uneducated and undereducated.  Functional literacy is important, but the unbridled proliferation of high technological advances has rendered it inadequate. In the new economy, knowledge of information technology is crucial. Underdevelopment and poverty are few of the problems that have continued to deter our present system of education, which have resulted to incompetent work force in the knowledge-based global economy. As immediate reforms that our government may undertake in education will not lead us to instant tangible results, expect "undereducated" to grow rapidly in so far as competitiveness in the new economy is concerned.
     Most progressive societies acknowledge the acquisition of at least an elementary and often even secondary education, as a basic human right, and not much emphasis on obtaining a college degree for their citizenry. Although it can be argued that by standards their quality of secondary education is equivalent to our college education, or even beyond, the point is not all human resources can be appropriate to its successful pursuit. From 1998-2000, 4.5 million lost their jobs, add to this the 750,000 graduates