Kristel Tejada and the Philippine Educational System

A UP student named Kristel Tejada took her own life after being forced on leave for her failure to pay the tuition balance of P10,000 she owed the state institution. She was only 16 years old. A former colleague of mine when I taught in a conservative Catholic school in Cebu City said that there is no reason, absolutely no reason to commit suicide. I beg to disagree, no one has the right and the moral right to condemn people for the acts that they do, especially if those acts do no harm to anyone, save probably the mental torture and grief of the person's immediate family. We are free to do our own in this world, as long as those acts do not directly harm, injure, infringe upon and violate the rights of others. I cannot in good conscience condemn Kristel for what she did because I do not know her life experiences and how those experiences shaped the person she was. Not even her family can claim to know they understood everything about Kristel.

Her suicide is undeniably tragic. A symptom of the social malaise of our country, where hypocritical religiosity and outward, superficial expressions of solidarity are mere covers for a bankrupt moral system suffused by the toxic indoctrination of organized religion and the comprehensive control of the vested narrow elites. There is tragedy in the Philippines everyday, tragedy for the failure of our educational system to inculcate radical, out-of-the-box and critical thinking responsive and relevant to the needs of the Filipino experience. An educational system that regurtitates information rather than fire-up the spark of intellectual curiosity and intellectual adventurism will breed a society of unequals and unevens content with the status-quo yet aspiring for a better result.

The Filipino people must decide what we want for our future. Such decision will begin with the May 2013 elections. Unless the people will define what it wants for its future and to pursue such dreams, we will as a nation rot in a pool of our intellectual and social inaction to perpetuate a society full of have-nots while the few oligarchs suck upon the resources of this blessed nation.