It’s fresh wet cement, and these school children are squashing their hands in it to leave a mark for the future, like miniature movie stars on some local “walk of fame”.
Actually, though, it’s probably more the feeling of wet cement under their fingers than any future fame that gives these kids pleasure. It’s really their parents who want to leave a mark. “We did our job, we sent our kids to school and educated them, and here’s the proof for all time”.
Nothing wrong with that.
Every day, the beaches, the farms, the basketball courts in the barangays are full of children who should be in school but aren’t.
For the most part, little kids don’t want to go to school. They don’t want to be quiet, to sit all day in hot classrooms, and learn to deal with words and numbers on paper or on computer screens.
It’s a kind of bitter medicine that they have to take everyday because it’s “good for you”.
And you have to think all the time! Until you’re used to doing it, it takes effort to think.
Little kids don’t see the point of it.
In many cases, their parents don’t see the point of it either, especially if they’re not educated themselves. Their son says he doesn’t want to go to school today, and they let him stay home. He’s happier at home, and school is a heavy expense, even public school.
Here, there’s no social or legal pressure on parents. As long as children don’t cause trouble in the neighborhood, nobody cares if they’re in school or not. Children are expected to help their parents around the house, and help them by finding work when they get older, and that’s all. No one expects them to think.
These kids are having fun playing in the cement, but in a few minutes, they’ll have to go back to their classrooms, to words and numbers, to thinking.
Years from now as adults, they may come back here, and see their tiny handprints in the worn cement along the pathway they followed everyday on their way to school.
They may not have understood why they had to do it this time, but by then, they would have seen the point of it.
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