#OPINION | Shackled by service
by Dolores Austria*
*The author has opted to use a pseudonym.
Content warning: This article has mentions of identity issues and sexual offenses.
“Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts,” said the revolutionary and former South African president Nelson Mandela. However, is it possible that free men become prisoners of the contracts they enter into?
On November 3, the Commission of Audit (COA) sought legal actions against 41 graduates of the PSHS Western Visayas Campus for violating the school’s Scholarship Agreement (hereinafter referred to as the “contract”) mandating that they enroll in approved science and technology courses in college. The COA, through the PSHS system, demanded a total of 5.8 million pesos, about 140 thousand pesos per graduate who violated the contract.
According to the contract, should a scholar violate any of the terms of the contract, including the requirement of enrolling in a science-related program, the scholar and their parents or guardians should “jointly and solidarily reimburse PSHS the monetary value of the Scholarship Award based on the rates approved by the PSHS Board of Trustees.” This value includes tuitions, stipends, fees, and other monetary benefits awarded to the scholar.
Just from the numbers, one can already see the impact of these government demands. The PSHS system is founded on scholarships, meaning that students of different backgrounds and financial standings are able to receive just benefits from the government. To demand 140 thousand pesos from a student, more so during a pandemic, is lethal. During their stay in PSHS, scholars and their families were removed a heavy burden as their scholarship was fully covered with additional stipends; some families relied on these stipends completely.
To demand 140 thousand pesos from a student for not following a contract they made when they were 12 years old, is even worse. Students were mere adolescents when they signed their contracts. They were not fully (and legally) capable of making their own decisions, and they were still exploring their hobbies, interests, and career paths. It is therefore unjust and plain wrong for a system to dictate one’s life path for the next 11 or so years, as these scholars were still in the process of growth. For in the words of Phineas and Ferb, weren’t we a bit too young to be contractually bound to a science career? Yes; yes, we were.
Adolescent competence
According to Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development, adolescents (ages 12 to 18) explore the conflict of identity and role confusion. In the adolescent stage, children become more independent and learn what roles they will eventually occupy as an adult. Two identities are involved here: the sexual and the occupational; when these two are built upon in the adolescent stage, a person gains fidelity.
Although children start learning specific skills before they turn 12, it is the adolescent stage in which they truly explore different virtues, ideals, and skills which appeal to them or they believe are fit for them as they grow up.
One should then wonder why the government and the PSHS system demand unconditional compliance from its future students who just signed the contract, most of whom are adolescents and some who have not even entered that stage. To think that the PSHS’s entrance exam is given the year before this contract signing, some students may have been told to take the entrance exam as early as 9 or 10 years old.
Aside from the fact that not all students entered completely willingly into the school, the entirety of secondary education happens during the adolescent stage. This means that during the course of their secondary education, a student may find their niche to be more in arts more than in sciences, and vice versa. Some students may even find themselves to be in a mix of these two. As though the PSHS curriculum is heavily based on science and technology, this does not assure that all of its students will gear towards science or science-related career paths.
As leaders of education, the government and the PSHS system should not withhold students from exploring and even enhancing their skills and talents, whether in science or not. If otherwise, this will lead to what Erikson calls “role confusion,” a situation in which a person does not get to establish a sense of identity within the self and within society. This can lead to significant mental health problems on people due to repression done by the educational system on their personal skills and beliefs. On a larger scale, the PSHS system continually risks losing students with unique capabilities in science and beyond.
Truth, excellence, services
Besides, when developed properly, any of the personal skills and beliefs of a student can be used for a greater purpose, whether in science or not. Hence, it is also wrong for the government to impose that students take on strict science-based careers after college. Though not as tangible as science, service can be rendered in art, media, and even politics — take Atom Araullo, a prominent journalist who not only reports on science issues like climate change, but also on sociopolitical issues such as the Rohingya migration crisis.
The service-based education of PSHS need not be strictly shown in science; it can even be shown in arts. A digital artist or a filmmaker has the same capacity as a scientist to relay important information, albeit in different mediums. The government, and Philippine society in general, should not discount the equal importance of both art and science in the advancement of society.
In fact, these can be interdependent: a scientist invents something, an artist presents it. An activist advocates for something, a scientist investigates it. The PSHS system knows this even from the Martial Law era, where students were and still are at the forefront of activism against this tyrannical regime.
Especially in a time where tyrannical actions are still abound in our society and (ironically) the government, the government and the system should not reject non-scientific modes of service; they should in fact encourage them. If the bounds of service under the PSHS system are limited by fines and penalties, then graduates and maybe even current students would find difficulty being motivated to bring their technical learnings to a higher practical purpose. This would be a great loss for the student, the school, and society in general.
Invasion of education
When students find difficulty in using their education for a higher purpose in their homeland, they may seek that elsewhere, essentially migrating to other countries for perhaps better opportunities or work and living conditions — this is commonly called the brain drain. In fact, the brain drain has been prevalent since the United States amended a law in 1965 making Asian countries the primary source of imported skill and labor. It still happens at present; during the COVID-19 pandemic plaguing the world, we still have a notorious shortage of nurses. It comes as no surprise that 15,000 of our nurses work in the States at present.
It is unfortunate that, even with the Philippines trying to incentivize them by returning to the country through its Balik-Siyensya program, scientists still find it difficult to do so. A rigorous science curriculum and a patronizing commitment to service would be useless for students who would not be able to apply their scientific knowledge properly in their homeland anyway.
This becomes a sad reflection of the larger issue of neoliberalism that persists in our education system: instead of focusing on developing unique skills and talents and enhancing the self-actualization of students, the education system looks at its students in terms of their productivity and value-for-money. A neoliberalist education system essentially restricts its students to a very rigid skill set, not allowing for productive individual development in other fields.
As the education system has become capitalized on by governments or even wealthy “benefactors”, students, teachers, and staff have always been on the losing side. In the name of service, the people working in the education system have to sacrifice time, money, and sometimes, even health.
As the system only understands itself in terms of money, it essentially disregards organic methods of learning and communication. It assumes that students learn from their mistake of reneging from the contract when they pay a huge fine. It assumes that sexual offender graduates make up for their offenses when they do community services, even though they received their diplomas anyway.
If the government and the PSHS system truly wants its scientists in the Philippines, not only should they provide better and fairer job opportunities; they should also ensure that the education they give to its future scientists truly values their human worth and skills, whether in science or not. As educators often say nowadays to their students and even to each other: Maslow’s before Bloom’s. Educators and students could also protest Maslow’s before Bloom’s to the system: before the education system can expect a useful learning and working outcome from students, they should ensure that their students’ identities and needs are fulfilled in the first place.
(A)mend the bonds
The COVID-19 pandemic has made it even clearer that even though we are in dire need of scientists, the education system would not allow this to happen. As the PSHS system reluctantly began a new school year in a learning mode that both sides of the screen have difficulty in implementing, it would be expected that students further realize the difficulty of learning science, and more so taking it into their careers.
Ironically and interestingly, art and activism has been more tangible among the youth as it is through these that they have a direct output in society, by teaching relevant issues or advocating for certain policies. If anything, the COVID-19 pandemic was able to show to the education system that beyond the curriculum in itself, there are an infinite number of ways to contribute to and serve society, even outside the realm of science or of capitalist industries.
Moving forward, it is imperative for the PSHS system to remove the mandate for its scholars to take up science courses. If anyone should dictate a decade or so of their lives, it should be the students who know themselves best. Only the students will ever know how they can uniquely contribute to Philippine society, and this is something that they should decide on themselves after realizing their identity and beliefs.
This is something that no person, system, or government should be able to dictate and restrict on another person. If not for the neoliberalist nature of the educational system, graduates would not have to pay anything back for violating a contract that banned them from exploring their own identity, beliefs, and skills.
Nonetheless, after students have graduated, they will already be mature enough to make the decision of how to apply their scientific training in the world. Whatever way they do this is the greatest manifestation that their education was put to use, and this should be given support from the government and the system.
As the writer and PSHS alumnus Butch Dalisay said, “Trust the student; trust [their] intelligence to make the best and most responsible decision for [themselves]. Whatever happens, the great majority of them will move on to a career in science, in any case — not because they have to, but because they want to.”
We must amend the bonds that students unfortunately had to tear for the sake of their humanity and ultimately for the greater good. For after all, if we are shackled by service, it is no longer service, but subservience.
