There's The Rub : And now the teachers

There's The Rub : And now the teachers
Jan 10, 2006
Updated 00:38am (Mla time)
Conrado de Quiros dequiros@info.com.ph
Inquirer
http://news.inq7.net/express/html_output/20060110-62451.xml.html

ALEJANDRO Lichauco had a very interesting article last week. Government, he said, is rejoicing over something that it really ought to be grieving about. The inflow of foreign exchange that has strengthened the peso, he said, has a humongous cost, one that will ravage the country in the long run. “The rising level of inward remittances from our overseas workers is the most valuable evidence of the brain drain we are experiencing.”

But that’s not the worst of it, he said. What is worst is that our overseas workers now include teachers. “A decade or so ago, we hardly heard of teachers joining the club of overseas workers. Entertainers, yes, along with carpenters, mechanics, and other skilled workers. Now it seems that teachers haven’t only joined the workers’ exodus but in fact have come to outnumber the entertainers and perhaps the plumbers, carpenters and other skilled workers too.

“In essence, what we are gaining in dollars, we are losing in valuable human and intellectual capital… This is far more devastating than the drain of our natural wealth, lost through our indiscriminate exportation of natural resources.”

I myself have learned that the remittances shot up from $8 billion last year to a whopping $12 billion this year, the $10 billion through normal government-monitored channels and the remaining $2 billion through the backdoor. But however the dollars got in, they boosted the peso tremendously. Part of the reason for the rise in remittances was that, times being hard, the overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) gave more to tide their families and relatives over. The other reason was that true enough, the new entrants to the force, the caregivers and the teachers, earned more and so could afford to send more.

My own sources say caregivers remain the biggest drain on the country, not the teachers. That is so because teaching requires more language skills than care-giving. But which also means that it’s the cream of the crop in the teaching profession that’s being lured abroad.

I share Lichauco’s dismay, or alarm, at the depth of the brain drain. This is brain drain in the very literal sense of the word. We’re no longer being drained of excess labor, we’re being drained of critical manpower. It’s bad enough that the hospitals and clinics are losing doctors and nurses, it’s worse that the universities are losing teachers. Last I looked, which was five years ago in the Asia Week ranking of schools, our top three universities, which used to vie for the top spots among Asian academic institutions, had slipped to No. 48, No. 71 and No. 72. It’s Singapore that is outpacing everyone, paying huge sums to teachers from Asia and other countries. It has its priorities in the right place. Knowledge is the greatest capital there is.

The loss to the country is additionally enormous given that the cost of training the teachers and nurses, many of whom are doctors. The joke that you have to pass the medical board exams first to study to become a nurse falls on this country. To paraphrase a local proverb, we’re the ones who cooked the rice, somebody else ate it.

Now, every time you complain about this, you’re bound to encounter an idiot who tells you to criticize the politicians all you want but leave the caregivers and other OFWs well enough alone. What can I say? It is a testament to our increasing loss not just of the people who are taking care of our bodies but those who are taking care of our minds that many Filipinos are now hard put to think, let alone think clearly. Let me put it as starkly as I can: I do not blame OFWs, I do not disparage caregivers, I do not denigrate the dignity of labor in whatever form. But I do fulminate against several things:

One is the havoc the Diaspora is wreaking upon the country, and will continue to wreak upon the country. Who doesn’t want to get out of the country given the absolute mess the government has made of it? But understanding the reasons people are desperate to leave it cannot blind you either to the fact that the massive exodus, or the compelling desire to join, is pauperizing the country beyond belief. When you have thousands of doctors turning themselves into caregivers just to work abroad, you know you’re in deep organic fertilizer. You add to that your best teachers, and Lichauco is right to complain the not-very-long-term impact is bound to be more incalculable than the loss of our forests and fishes.

Two is the attitude of mediocrity -- no, the defeatist mentality that says beggars cannot be choosers -- that the entire syndrome is foisting on us. I have no problem with caregivers per se, I have every problem with the height of our national aspiration, or the zenith of our personal ambitions, being reduced to becoming a caregiver. I have a problem with the entire educational system being refashioned -- whole nursing wings have sprouted in universities -- to serve the purpose. I have a problem with an entire nation whose mental, intellectual and human horizons do not go past surviving by cleaning the toilet bowls of the world. We’re not just the sick man of Asia, we’re the joke of Asia.

And three is a government that not only does not attempt to hold on to the country’s best and brightest but drives them mercilessly away. I do not know what the solution to the current Diaspora is; it’s become a monstrous problem. I do know the solution to it is not a government that is making this country unlivable and profits from it by getting more and more dollars from the people it drives away. That is the real double whammy.

But now the teachers too! The only time the Diaspora will serve a great purpose is if we started exporting our public officials. With the label: “Not fragile, feel free to rough up. ”

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