Roxas -Sixty four high school students, both from private and public schools faced a panel of adjudicators when they took the exam sponsored by the Rotary Club of Roxas during the celebration of the New Generation Month held at the Provincial Health Office on September 25, 2010. Twenty eight students made it to the top and they were chosen to join the boys and girls in this week long event. They were given the privilege to play the role of the Mayor, Vice Mayor and Councilors for the week to sit and report for duty during the whole week’s event.
One of the questions asked to the participants was: If given the chance to be the newly elected Philippine President, what are the first three priority projects that you will carry out in your first 100 days in the office?
The answers they gave to this question were: Education, Alleviation of Poverty and Health.
Education they say is the key to progress. According to Ivy Lopez, a 16 year old high school student, “If one gets a good education, he or she will surely succeed .However, most of the students these days are not taking the opportunity of good education when it is offered to them. That the perennial problems that the youths are facing today are as follows: Teen age pregnancy, smoking, addiction, truancy and joining fraternities.”
These issues that Ivy brought out before the panel were affirmed by the group.
Stefanie, one of the participants commented that students are not inspired to study because of the low quality of teacher’s strategy in teaching their chosen subjects. Students cut classes to play computers. Some say,” teachers are boring, or I hate the subjects.”
As to their stand to the additional two years of school, they almost disagreed. Jasef said, “the government should instead think to add more classrooms and hire quality teachers so that students will become globally competitive.” According to them, the additional two years is not the answer to the deteriorating standard of education, instead it will give more problems to the parents especially that 80% of Filipinos fall below poverty line.
On teenage pregnancy, John Rey said that, “parents play a big role in discussing sex education at the dinner table.” Half of the 28 students, agreed to include sex education in their curriculum. They are in favor of getting awareness through sex education in school, but this depends on how the modules will be presented, that is now the issue. They are also concern about teenage pregnancy cases in their school because of curiosity and lack of knowledge on reproductive health.
Truancy outside of the school community is rampant. Mariah Yza commented. She suggested that computer.shop owners should be disciplined by the city government and to implement the Law on Truancy.
Kirbie added, “For students to avoid cutting classes and resort to truancy, teaching strategy should be improved, teachers should be sent to more seminars to learn new tactics in their teaching method to keep the students interested; to provide teachers good salary more school rooms and facilities for more learning opportunities.
As for eradicating Sangguniang Kabataan, Toni Maree, Ann Karlyn, Pearl Ann and Joem disagreed. They said, that they represent the voice of the youth in the community. They do good deeds in their barangay like providing sports fest for out of school youth..
Ferdinand, Jason Jay, Christina and Venice agreed to abolish SK as they are being lured to corruption by some politicians like vote buying and will end up with corrupted minds, in return becomes the liability to the community. They said, they would want SK to be functional, otherwise eliminate it.
These students indentified the perennial problems of the youths in school and in the community. They were articulate in exposing the fact that cases such as these are really happening before their eyes. These are the everyday challenge they are facing. Other observations they have were, addiction to smoking, drinking and peer pressure, population control, injustice especially for the poor and boring teachers. Others are parents who are too busy ignoring them.
As to the alleviation of poverty, if they will be given the chance to be the president, most of them will provide feeding program, housing to the poor and jobs to the jobless. They also said, that by providing free education for all, it will resolve corruption and poverty. When asked about health, they all agreed to give solutions to the alarming dengue situation; to strictly implement the segregation of waste materials and the consistent clean up activities, as what they are doing in school now.
When asked to grade President Aquino, 10 being the highest – average grade was 6. They all saw the hostage crisis on television and they said,” we wished P-Noy could have done something to stop the crisis and avoid the loss of lives.” On the other hand, most of them idolized Pres. Noy and hoping that he could bring change to the country and become the role model of the youths.
Only a couple of them gave solutions to improve tourism by bringing in investors in the country. Jan Erol affirmed that where there is development, there is also the negative effect of tourism. However, he said, it is but normal that there is the pros and cons to tourism, but more on the side of pros like giving employment to the locals.
These 28 students are ready to face the challenge to report to duty from Sept. 27 to October 1 at the city municipal office. We will wait for more exciting news of their actions to some of these concerns they brought out during the interview. John Paul said that, “I wish that during the boys and girls week, the city government will give attention to our concerns.”
Led by Pres. Jerry Lames as the committee chairman, the invited panelists were PE Mariz Gepilano PP Megs Lunn, Rtn. Raoul Bermejo, Rtn. Marie Antonette Borres, Rtn. Rexam and Rtn. Toto Arce.
Happy New Generations Month celebration Rotary International./TE
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