Education may perhaps be the oldest and noblest profession in Man’s history. It has been credited for the evolution of civilization that has shaped humanity to the elite position that it is now. However, despite this prestige Public School Teachers are beset by a mounting dilemma: soaring, uncontrollable DEBT!
Yes, this is the sad fact faced by our beloved mentors. Despite their decent salaries, their take home pay has a negative correlation to their length of service. Why is this so? Well perhaps the issue isn’t very far from the problems of typical Filipino household; wrong financial management.
The Department of Education has one of the largest pie of our national budget, this is to suffice the compensation of hundreds of thousands of public school teachers. Public School Teachers perhaps comprise the largest group of government employees in the Philippines, thus becoming the main attraction for Lending Institutions. A Public School Teacher, having a minimum gross income of Php20,000.00, becomes a good prospective client for lending institutions given the stability of their work and fair level of income they receive. Hence, they become accessible to easy credit, and here is where the trouble begins.
Easy access to debt may have its consequences. The convenience of easy credit access is mounted by a staggering Interest Rate! Oftentimes, newly hired teachers, overwhelmed with a profound salary at their ready disposal, miscalculates the danger of borrowing money and recklessly dive themselves into serious financial obligation. Most of the times, their loan applications are for trivial things that they do out of ignorance.
In the end teachers play a losing game, with the increasing risk of stress and free radicals they get lower and lower pay checks as they spend more years working almost 7 days a week (counting the assignments of checking papers, lesson plans and other related work). To make matters worse, social pressures and the feeling of having a boss (like the Principals and supervisors) adds to the stress of reaching deadlines and handling multiple attitude problems of students, parents and other teachers.
Indeed, security of tenure do not always guarantee financial security. Come to think of it, we haven’t heard of any Public School teacher who became rich without exploring other options to earn extra income. The point is, as public school teachers we should never content ourselves with the traditional source of income that come from the government we serve. We should explore other options to increase our income so that we may avoid borrowing and fall into a personal credit crisis. We should free ourselves from the pains of stress, and limitations set by the nature of our jobs. We should work to find alternative income now so that in the future we can enjoy the time free of stress and free of financial obligations.
While we can we should work NOW for our future. As they say it’s better to sweat today and enjoy tomorrow than do otherwise.
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