OUT OF SCHOOL YOUTH -

“Maaga kasi akong nag-asawa.” Quite surprising answer we got as a majority from our
interviewees. Our initial hypotheses were that poverty was the main culprit of their ousting from
education. Our group has not limited the scope of the ages to interview to people who are in their teens.
We have also considered ages up to mid 40’s.Surprisingly, education was easily obtained as it was
affordable to people before the 1990’s.

Out of school youth has been evident since the earliest days due to five main factors, basing on
our interviews: (1) Early creation of own family (2) Monetary inadequacy (3) Social influences (4) Lost of
interest or Laziness (5) Unsupportable parents.

“’Nung 3rd Year High school ako, niligawan ako ng boyfriend ko. Naging kami at nabuntis ako.
Nahiya na akong bumalik sa school,” answered by Remedios, 32 y/o, currently a sales assistant for a
canteen, on why she dropped out of school. At a young age, she have entered a new but challenging
type of life and she expected it to be quite different. “Gusto ko mag-aral ng Computer noon, pero
ngayon mas gusto ko nang maging chef,” said she when asked what she wanted to be if she reached
college and finished. “Maaga din akong nag-asawa. Hindi naman ganoon kamahal ang tuition noon.
Gusto kong tapusin ang high school ko, kaso ayaw na akong papasukin ng asawa ko,” said Sheila, 42 y/o,
when asked the same question.

“Third year high school ako nang huminto ako sa pag-aaral, dahil sa mahirap lang kami kaya sa
murang edad naghanap ako ng trabaho. Gusto ko sanang maging seaman noon.”, according to Nestor,
38. In this case, poverty or lack of stable source of income was the cause why Nestor became an out of
school youth. In order for him and his family to survive, he was forced to do labor and forget about
studying. In our country, there are a bunch of youth and children having the same situation as Nestor’s.
Another one is Armin, 19 years old, “Hindi ako nakapagtapos ng pag-aaral dahil sa kagipitan sa pera at
dahil maaga akong nakapagasawa. Napilitan akong magtrabaho kaya ngayon, namamasada nalang ako.
Fourth year high school lang ang natapos ko, pero kung natuloy ko sana, gusto kong kurso ang IT.”

The fact that all youth are prone of dropping out of school because of social influence is
inevitable. While children are at the adolescent age, words from a friend or a group of friends are more
meaningful to him/her than the actual words of their parents. One would rather enjoy the company of
his friends (party in the club, smoke and get drunk, premarital sex, drugs of any kind, vandalism, theft
and the like) than focus on studying. “Nadala ako ng mga barkada, ayun tumigil ako ng pagaaral. Mas
nag-enjoy ako na kasama sila nakatambay sa basketball court, inuman kapag may pera ang tropa,
pustahan sa DOTA, basketball kapag may dumadayo. Kaya ganto, hindi ko na nabigyan ng pansin ung
pangarap kong maging police.”, Arjay 23 years old when asked what happened why he dropped out.

“Wala lang. Ayaw ko lang.”,said Lester when we asked him why he quit schooling.
“Nakakatamad. Bakit pa ako magaaral, ung iba ngang nakapagtapos, wala namang trabaho. Ngayong
nagtatrabaho na akong delivery boy ng mineral water, kahit papano kumikita na agad ako.”, he added as
we seek deeper explanation from him. In Lester’s case, it was very clear that out of school youth can
also be rooted by laziness or the state of losing interest in going to school. Some prefer to immediately
receive a monetary figure that’s why they lose the eagerness to finish school and at their early age, they
would choose to deploy themselves in the working industry.
 What are the qualifications of unsupportable parents; one is they are the anti-motivator, they
don’t motivate their children to go to school, instead, they are manipulating them not to go to school.
These parents don’t give any moral support and lastly even though how eager the child would want to
go to school, his/her parents will not give any financial support and the child cannot do anything about
it. Arnold, 41 years old is currently a school janitor. According to him, he was 17 years old when he
stopped going to school. He was ordained by his parents to help in their farm, not only him but also his
older brother Alex who was 19 years old at that time. Arnold and Alex’ contribution to their farm was a
big help for their father because this saved their father the fee of hiring two more farmers. “Wala naman
akong gaanong pinagsisihan. Dahil sa desisyon namin ni kuya Alex, nakatulong kami sa aming Ama ng
halos sampung taon kahit pa ung kagustuhan ko sanang maging Electrical Engineer at magtrabaho sa
abroad ay hindi na natupad.”, stated by Arnold.

Aside from the reasons we learned in our study of knowing why students quit school, we would
like to also mention other basis of out of school youth we didn’t cover such as (1) Distant parents (2) Bad
environment (3) Teacher factor.

The distant parent scenario is common for us Filipinos. Good examples of this are the Overseas
Filipino Worker (OFW) parents that do distant parenting strategies. They cannot effectively monitor
their offspring. All what’s happening is the student just receives money. The child’s studies only depend
on his/her discipline and interest in studying. Once the child loses his/her interest, the parent wouldn’t
instantly know.

The environment of the learner has also an impact because students are discourage to go to
schools because of terrorism like in some parts of Mindanao where class days are being stop due to the
fight between the soldiers and rebels adding to that is the kidnapping of teachers.

Some teachers in rural areas have an unruly attitude, who does not care if there students are
coming to school or not, whether they are teaching the right thing or not, who always mocks and punish
children without any reason. These teachers are already considered incapable or ineffective teachers
that only care of their salary and not to his/her students.