It’s that time of year when the country’s schools hold their graduation ceremonies for their students and it’s supposed to be a fun, sentimental farewell to an old life and the start of a new one, either through the halls of higher learning or to the harsh, uncertain job market.
Either way, students have to settle through a lot of last minute requirements before the commencement exercises. The Department of Education (DepEd) had at least removed one, the requirement for students to pay a certain amount for their yearbook.
The yearbook fee may not be much for middle to upper class families who can afford to send their children to exclusive schools but it is a pretty big deal for those families living below the poverty line.
In fact so many parents offer to pay in kind or services rather than pay for the annual yearbook fee that’s decided on by the parents-teachers association (PTA). The fact that students aren’t allowed to graduate without paying the yearbook fee or some other fee is yet another sad testament to the dismal state of the country’s educational system.
Well-meaning though it may be, a few hundred pesos can spell the difference between finding the next meal and buying a pair of shoes for some families that live off the land or fish in the seas to sustain themselves.
Thankfully, the Internet and the established online media landscape has rendered the yearbook an antique, an oddity of the past. Why it had not been promoted by the Department of Education a few years back when Friendster and other social media sites sprung up we don’t know.
Education Secretary Bro. Armin Luistro said Facebook has apparently replaced the yearbook as the medium of choice for storing personal and public photos and advised schools to set up websites instead to store the students photos so they can see their graduation photos for free—or at least print them at half the cost at the nearest Internet café.
However, some enterprising PTA member or the school management may insist on charging fees for students to either upload or see their graduation photos in either the school’s website or Facebook account and other social media outlet and this should be addressed by the DepEd.
In fact, Facebook originated from co-founders Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin’s (stolen) idea to post the photos of popular girls in campus through an online social publication website project.
DepEd can do something by setting up the websites of the country’s public schools and posting the graduation photos of the students and printing them for free.
That’s probably the least it can do for students who have to study under the shade of trees or make do with classrooms that had muddy sludge or packed dirt for floors.
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