C. de Oro academics rant over education budget cut, join calls for Arroyo's ouster

By Maricel Casino-Rivera
The Mindanao Goldstar Daily
Volume 16 No. 41

A GROUP of academics from major colleges and universities in Cagayan de Oro yesterday joined militant youth groups in calling for the ouster of the embattled President Arroyo as the Lower House resumed deliberations on the impeachment complaints.

This came even as a handful of students gathered in front of the Jesuit-run Xavier University, braving the heat at noon-time, to pursue their call for Arroyo's resignation.

Academics who call themselves the Educators' Caucus, an informal gathering of teachers and other education workers coming from private and public education institutions in the city, said they were dismayed over the sorry state of the country's education system. The group includes academics from Xavier, Mindanao Polytechnic State College (MPSC), Liceo de Cagayan University, Capitol University and Cagayan de Oro College.

The group said the government budget for education significantly decreased from 17 percent in 2002 to 14.9 percent this year.

In a statement, the organized academics said the government also reduced the education department's budget for maintenance and other operating expenses and services.

In 2004, they said there was an overwhelming lack of public teachers.

"The lack of budget for education led to massive contractualization of teachers, low quality of education due to increased number of working hours and number of class size and the decreased income for the teachers," their statement said.

Kim Gargar, MPSC Physics department chairperson, said the Educators' Caucus is a venue for discussions on issues that concern the education sector and promotes and forms the broadest unity among their ranks for their legitimate democratic rights and interests.

"It believes that as significant members of the academic community the educators are at the vantage point to observe, analyze and help solve the problems besetting the country," said Gargar.

Gargar said the group is also fully supporting the impeachment process. Its members have shown concern over reports that Malacanang was bent on using the alleged ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses to influence the outcome of the impeachment hearings.

The Presidential Commission on Good Governance (PCGG) is finalizing details on the auction of the jewelry owned by former First Lady Imelda Marcos by the end of this year with an estimated value of US$10 million.

Gargar said it was time for Arroyo to go because the evidence--the "Hello Garci tapes"--clearly show that "she cheated and betrayed public trust to usurp power".

"The tapes [are] the last straw. From the first day she assumed office, her credibility has been questioned. The President has lost moral ascendancy, legal mandate and credibility to stay in power," said Gargar.

When you love someone

When you love someone you'll do anything
You'll do all the crazy things that you can't explain
You'll shoot the moon - put out the sun
When you love someone
You'll deny the truth - believe a lie
There'll be times that you'll believe
You can really fly
But your lonely nights have just begun
When you love someone
When you love someone you'll feel it deep inside
And nothin' else can ever change your mind
When you want someone - when you need someone
When you love someone
When you love someone - you'll sacrifice
You'd give it everything you got and
you won't think twice
You'd risk it all - no matter what may come
When you love someone
You'll shoot the moon - put out the sun
When you love someone

---------
I like the sound of the oboe.

The man with a hoe

L'homme la houe by Jean-Francois Millet

In 1899 an American schoolteacher, Charles Edward Anson Markham (1852-1940), who used the penname Edwin Markham, was inspired by an 1863 painting to write a poem. The painting was "L'homme la houe" by the French artist, Jean-Francois Millet (1814-1875); the poem was "The Man with a Hoe".

The poem quickly became as famous as the painting. Both continue to be moving testimonies to what the too prevalent inhumanity of humanity can cause.

The Man with a Hoe
by Edwin Markham

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back, the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?

Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
To have dominion over sea and land;
To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;
To feel the passion of Eternity?
Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
Down all the caverns of Hell to their last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this--
More tongued with cries against the world's blind greed--
More filled with signs and portents for the soul--
More packed with danger to the universe.

What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and the swing of the Pleiades?
What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop;
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
Plundered, profaned and disinherited,
Cries protest to the Powers that made the world,
A protest that is also prophecy.

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
How will you ever straighten up this shape;
Touch it again with immortality;
Give back the upward looking and the light;
Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
How will the future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings--
With those who shaped him to the thing he is--
When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world,
After the silence of the centuries?