Parents as schools' milking cows

Posted on June 4, 2007 - Filed Under |

CHUMI, my first apo, is entering kinder school this June. Her mama was telling me she’d been talking to her husband, Gilbert, who’s abroad in Florida and Gilbert had told her to just pay their little girl’s tuition fee at a local kinder school in cash.

“Wait till he hears it’s gonna cost P26,000 for a schoolyear,” my daughter said when she came home from the school where she inquired about the tuition and miscellaneous fee for Chumi’s schooling.

I was myself floored. Not having kept abreast oof kinder and grade school tuition rates since my two daughters, Sheila (Chumi’s mom) and Venus May, graduated from that level at Edna’s School here a decade-and-a-half ago (when the wife and I had to really scrimp to be able to fork out about P5 thou to P8-thou every schoolyear for each of our two little girl’s and only boy’s fees) the current amount was staggering. P26, 000 bucks for a little pupil’s kinder school fee! And, drilling it in further to educate me, my daughter added that the other “two schools” were charging much higher tuition fees. I didn’t miss the sly grin on her face at seeing my knitted eyebrows. She must have been silently saying: “C’mon pops, this is 2007. git?”

I must have been in some time warp or something, really, to not be able to believe that. Now I know why everyone’s jumping into the education business these days. And yes, I said “business.”

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