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Caring for the Past, Raising the Future
April 10, 2007There are many things I wish this country would have, decent socialized medicine, for one, and nationwide government-subsidized education, for another. It's true we have public schools, but middle class parents would rather cut corners on the household budget than send their children to these public schools. Who can blame them? The story of our public schools is one that will break hearts. One underpaid, overworked teacher, twenty books, forty chairs, sixty children, two ceiling fans, and only one of them is functional. The sheer absurdity of the math alone will make you weep.
The same is true of our geriatric healthcare. I often hear it said that we don't have nursing homes because the Filipino family is so closely-knit we take care of our own. We don't foist them on institutions, like East Bay nursing homes in the U.S, for example. It's true we take our elders in. But taking them in isn't akin to taking care of them. I frequently hear stories of bedridden grandfathers being sorely neglected by grandchildren who spend the afternoon gossiping with neighbors. There are stories, too, of grandmothers locked inside rooms because it's tedious to clean up after them after they're let out.
I cannot emphasize this point often enough to the people I know. This country needs to take better care of its young and its old. We have no right to treat shabbily the Filipinos on whose backs the present was built on, and the Filipinos whose fingertips will shape the country's future.
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