UNMASKING INEQUALITY

By Reona Supeña

God Knows Hudas Not Pay

God doesn’t discriminate, but a hospital does.

Thirty Grade 12 students of Las Piñas City National Science High School were deprived of experiencing an actual work setting. As one of those 30 students, I find it an academic tragedy.

It is true that an alternative schoolbased work immersion is better than having none at all. However, it is undeniable how different the experiences of working at school and working at a real workplace are from each other. I know that learning thrives wherever you are, but having work immersion outside the school campus is a golden ticket to discovering the inner workings of the workplace.

Students aspiring to be in the medical field would have gotten even a glimpse of how they would be like in the future. The hospital’s facilities would have allowed them to know about the different medical machineries’ mechanisms. Even if they did not want to be medicallyaligned, the students would have known basic health skills.

Likewise, for students desiring a future job related to engineering and information technology, the school setting for work immersion definitely put a limit to the novel information that they could acquire. A go signal would have allowed them to have prior knowledge that would be necessary for the profession that they would want to pursue. They would have been treated like real employees and not like mere former students by their supervisors in their immersion at school.

Now, all these are just “would’vebeen’s” with the incapability of Christ The King (CTK) Unihealth Las Piñas’ administration to have a proper conversation and agreement amongst themselves.

Completing the 80 hours of work immersion in an external facility is mandated by the government, so students are forbidden from paying only to meet that requirement. That is why it was easy for them to deny students of the immersion experience at their hospital, because there were college students who paid for their on-the-job training.

66.7%

of Grade 12 students assigned in CTK robbed of hands-on experience

Ironic, isn’t it? A hospital bearing Jesus’ title, falling to corporate greed.

A hospital bearing Jesus’ title, falling to corporate greed.

Despite the closing of what should have been open doors, the school-based immersion was still able to provide the students new experiences and learnings. These were not enough but certainly better than paying the hospital just to avail of new knowledge. That might even cause an uproar and be atrocious to the eyes of the Department of Education.

This made it seem as though their company principles lean to prioritizing financial benefits. The higher-ups of the hospital did not care if the students were going to be forced to settle with a school immersion; if there is no profit for them to gain, there is no point in giving the students the opportunity.