Saving the Future
By LJ

Go Forth and Make Many

Says the Bible.

It seems that today's people have followed that advice to the letter. We cannot ignore the fact that that our country's population is growing exponentially and that a vast majority comprises of the youth. The question is, how much of our current populace live decently, if not comfortably?

It's a sad fact that most Filipinos live miserably, financially speaking. Just looking at the slums dotting the streets of Metro Manila confirms this. Everywhere you go, there are kids as young as three years patrolling even the busiest roads to sell sampaguita leis, begging passers-by for food and money. You don't need a college degree to know that those kids don't belong there; they should be in schools, sitting behind desks, learning. But that's easier said than done.

It's pretty ironic because in our case, financial status and family size are often inversely related. The poorest families are usually the largest. Why is that, you ask? Well, some people say that the more children you have, the more income-generators there will be in the future. It's also a matter having someone to look after aging parents. Normal Filipinos can't exactly afford private nurses, so their children are their only option. Also, some people argue that it's about perpetuation of their lineage. They want males to carry on the family name, and females to continue the line.

It may be an accepted line of reasoning, but it is also an uneducated point of view. You can't just have children without thinking about the consequences. That's why education plays a major role in the understanding of these consequences, and the managing of the future generation. In a country whose elders are usually staunch Catholics, birth control and family planning isn't exactly an idea well-received. You can't just hand someone a birth control pill or show commercials of condoms and expect the public to automatically accept it without argument. Most people would protest and say that it merely encourages promiscuity. Without proper education and training, these ideas would go right out the window. Bye-bye, population control. Hello, chaos and lack of resources.

Education isn't only about learning how to read and to write; it's about being aware. The youth are considered to be the hope of the nation, but how much of the total population is given a chance to learn how to be? We can't only depend on the well-informed, because there only so much of them out there. We need to reach out to the majority, and share the information with them. They ought to be given a chance to learn; a chance to make a change. It's only in working together that we could make a difference. We could make the lives of so many people better.

The youth is the future. It's about time that we act on it.