Friday, June 26, 2009

Filipino Professionals Dreaming to be Abroad: Who's To Blame?

Being away from this mother nation Philippines for quite two years made me realize a lot of things. When I saw that article you see below from reading some current news about Philippines, it made me think right away. Did I dream to be abroad? What was my fellow professionals and student by then think about going abroad? What lies ahead in our own dear country? There are a thousand questions, there are a million probable answers but who knows? Who really know?
filipinos abroad, philippine poverty, filipino professionals, brain drain,There is also very high demand for new science and math teachers in the US with estimates by the Business-Higher Education Forum in Washington putting the figure at 200,000 at the least. In the last 10 years, around 4,000 Filipino teachers—mostly math science English and special education teachers—left the country. This figure included only new hires for teaching jobs and did not include those who left the country for work other than teaching, the paper said. The top destinations were the United States, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, the paper added. According to a UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization Unesco study Geron said, the Arab states will face the greatest teacher shortage in the drive to provide every child with a primary education by 2015 as the region will need to raise the current stock by 26 percent and create another 450,000 teaching posts in less than a decade. As more developed countries face a graying workforce, they are increasingly resorting to the recruitment of skilled teachers from less developed countries. This phenomenon had already been foreseen by European countries since the ’90s, warning that aging teaching forces may eventually lead to shortages.For instance, more than 60 percent of all primary teachers are over 40 years of age in Canada, Italy, and the Netherlands; and more than 40 percent are over 50 years old in Germany and Sweden
As one of the professionals who's abroad, although I am no teacher at all, I ask myself who's to be blamed in the situation. I have to say that the quality of teachers and teaching methods in the country would worsen if all of those who have capabilities, greater talents and more responsible and brilliant teachers teach somewhere else instead of teaching their fellow Filipinos.

What I can say is, the quality of life and the surroundings where one has to teach also motivate the teacher: they have dream! Until these teachers see what lies ahead abroad, their dreams would be there, within themselves and so strong. We have the shortage in our own country and we have surplus for those who dream to be abroad.

The fact is, if one cannot eat and enjoy in his/her own country, it's better to be out, right? Government does not do nothing at all to alleviate the poverty. I mean, to do something does not necessarily mean to spend a lot of resources. Change start from the mind and the ideas, thus, implementing ideas that can stick in each Filipino mind, and heart and if the leaders themselves practice what they preach (this can be done on media ads in TVs, Internet, etc), change would come slowly. As they say, "Rome was not built overnight" so expect the long term effect of a long term plan!
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Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Crazy But It Happens

Complains, clamours, dissatisfaction and a lot of negative things you read here about the Philippines. But as they say, the truth hurts and I usually just write the truth and others get hurt by it. But what can I do? To conquer our fears, we have to face it. Like the problems that we have in our country, to solve any of them, we have to acknowledge that problem's existence.
All I want to say is, I'd be two years out of the Philippines by November and how I wish I can gi back there this time and see how my dear country is. I miss the confusion, my friends and a lot of other things that is Pinoy.

I miss the jeep, I miss the dirt, I miss the noise, I miss the crazy heavy traffic jam! Am I crazy? Maybe it happens to you when you grow 22 years in that country and when you try to go away from practices and beliefs and customs that you later o, when you are at least 18 years of age, discovered to be stinking, lousy and useless practices..
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