Education

Balitang Amerika was on earlier today. It's a Filipino news show whose main focus are Filipinos and afflictions that affect them here in America. I saw a little bit of this one segment where students are rallying at UC Berkeley, due to budget cuts and furlows and all other dilemmas that are affecting schools nationwide. My mother decides to comment saying, "See, it's really bad here now." I told her that the Philippines isn't any better. Schools aren't free over there, let alone budgeted by the government. There are plenty of children who cannot get into schools because they cannot afford it. My very wise mother then said, "It's not your problem". I walked away to walk upstairs and told her to stop thinking so selfishly.

I'm not sure what it is... maybe the generation gaps, our cultural differences (considering that I pretty much spent my adolescent years in America), or I was just born to refute everything my mother tells me, but I really dislike her way of thinking. "It's not your problem". Seriously? It's extremely unfair that children are yanked away from an opportunity such as education. Sure, it's not personally my problem, but it's still a problem when a lot of kids are unable to go to school because they're not as fortunate as me...

I'm going back to the Philippines to finish college, and yeah, I'm grateful -- happy, even -- that my family can afford to send me to school... but I'm not gonna hear it when my mother tells me that it's not my problem, because I feel like I have an unfair advantage over all of them...