HOTSPOT
There are days when I wake up and forget. I would think that I would have lunch with Mama or imagine visiting our house to see her. It would take a moment to gather my thoughts and reconcile with the fact that she’s gone.
In a fortnight, it would be two years since the October shock of 2022. Up to now, I still wrestle with the fact of the finality of it.
The consolation I could think of is that Mama was an “anak” too, and her passing gives her a chance to reunite with her own parents. How she missed both of them. She was after all their first-born.
The battle is not about forgetting, but in how not to stop remembering, and doing whatever we can to carry on, strengthened by fondest memories.
This partly explains my special attention to causes of public school teachers. My Mama was one of them, having taught at Ramon Avanceña and later Tondo High School, and finally the Polytechnic University of the Philippines. While she also taught in private schools like Martinez Memorial, St. Stephen’s and Baliuag University, she had a bias for public education.
Most probably, because she herself was a product of public schools like Alejandro Albert Elementary and Ramon Magsaysay (España) High School. After taking her undergraduate course at the University of the East (on scholarship from the U.S. Veterans Administration, because our grandfather was a veteran), she obtained her masteral degree from the Technological University of the Philippines, and nearly accomplished her doctorate at the “Sintang Paaralan” in Santa Mesa.
Of course, I’m also a proud product of public schools: also from Albert, then Manila Science, and later at the University of the Philippines at Los Baños. I was the first from both sides of the family to manage to enter MaSci and UP. By both heritage and personal experience, I’m proud to be associated with public schools and I could say I will always be devoted to them.
Going into the 2025 elections, I’m excited for France Castro, the Master Teacher in mathematics, who has become known as a fearless foe of corruption and a champion of public school teachers. This three-term congresswoman from ACT Teachers Partylist practically leads the Makabayan senatorial slate in popularity and prominence. We will be better off if we send her to the Senate.
If there’s any massive investment we cannot possibly regret as a country, it is in the field of public education, be it in public schools per se by enlarging them, building more, and improving facilities. Or perhaps in our public school teachers who should receive full scholarships to obtain masteral and doctoral degrees. In between, raising their salaries, benefits, and allowances, and perhaps rolling out free meals and free lunch in schools, would be positive to the mental and physical health of teachers and students. These are expenses that we can agree to be worthwhile, positive, productive and, quite frankly, long overdue.
Past graduates from public schools don’t demand the same or worse for the public school teachers and students today. We know we must make things better for the present and the future, and we cannot begin to imagine what students and teachers could achieve if we manage to wrest previous public funds away from corrupt, inept, inefficient, and non-productive expenditures, and redirect them instead to public schools at all levels.
It is the same spirit that welcomes free uniforms, books, school supplies, and shoes handed out yearly by Metro Manila’s local governments. Those are unquestionable, necessary, and productive expenditures. The challenge is to make those freebies go national, and especially for the students in rural public schools. We may encounter branding issues, considering politicians’ penchant for affixing their faces and names on taxpayer-funded things, but that’s not impossible to ban whether slowly or quickly.
Come Election Day, we go to public schools to vote, and come face-to-face with public school teachers. You’ve sent them to the House. Maybe send one to the Senate. In Mama’s memory, I would. We, their kids, would be thankful if you do too.
(In memoriam: Liwayway Memije Cruz, daughter, sister, wife, mother, lola and teacher, July 21 1949-Oct. 21, 2022)