“Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.” – Nelson Mandela
How did education become so powerful tool to many people? Is this essential nowadays?
Education has been a cliché for everyone’s success. It’s been a key for everybody to ran in the battlefield of life. Education is the key to eliminating gender inequality, to reducing poverty, to creating a sustainable job, to preventing needless deaths and illness, and to fostering peace. Education is a very important factor to eradicate social problems and inequality in order to promote a peaceful world with equal opportunities.
I am a living proof that poverty will never stop me to achieving my dreams. Poverty won’t kill my dreams. As I grew up, with so much hardships in life, thinking of the experiences I had. At a very young age, I am delighted how hard to earn and to save money. My father is a taxi driver and everything we have is reciprocated with debt and paid with a big amount of money. We just rent a house and city services are paid too. So instead of being complacent what I did was to sell plastic bags in the market during my Elementary days, and even tried selling Bannacue at any part of Burnham Park. I started helping my parents to look for money just to help them out in their expenses at home. When I was in College, I pushed through with my studies though my father can’t really afford paying my tuition fee. So, I decided to look for an option. I applied as a working scholar in a university. I began as a helper/janitress and also went to a prestigious office too. During my shift at work, I, seldom read my notes and my ample time will just be the leeway for me to go over my lessons. But I always had my thinking that poverty will never hinder me. Being the last child and the only girl in the family, I was inspired with the kind of living we have. Apparently, with an empty stomach and an empty pocket drive me to keep going. So, it’s been my greatest reward upon seeing the certificate/diploma handed to me plus an award of a Graduate with working students/scholar award.
Based from the Paediater Child Health Research, school readiness reflects a child’s ability to succeed both academically and socially in a school environment. It requires physical well-being and appropriate motor development, emotional health and a positive approach to new experiences, age-appropriate social knowledge and competence, age-appropriate language skills, and age-appropriate general knowledge and cognitive skills. It is well documented that poverty decreases a child’s readiness for school through aspects of health, home life, schooling and neighborhoods. Those were the different aspects in life that will really hold someone’s back specifically in achieving their dreams in life.
More so, education is an investment, and one of the most critical investments we can make. This is true not only for me, but for all the youngsters who continued to believe with themselves. For this reason, all children should get an equal education regardless of their ethnicity or class background. Therefore, it is clear that the concept of education leads to wealth and opportunity is not problematic and we should pass on the message that education is the key to success. Education provides the opportunity for individuals to think freely, so that they can freely soar and spread their wings high.
By Mary Joy A. Pangilinan
