Hashtags in graduates’ hearts, smartphones in their hands

On to college

The following year, the Department of Education began to phase the K to 12 Enhanced Basic Education Curriculum into the school system. Since then, it has been compulsory for Filipinos to attend kindergarten and six years of elementary school (Grades 1 to 6), four years of junior high school (Grades 7 to 10) and 2 years of senior high school (Grades 11 and 12) before they can qualify to enter any university.

Having narrowly escaped the K to 12 system, Velasco is looking forward to college life at UP Diliman in the coming academic year. She said she wanted to take up Business Administration and Accountancy but didn’t make the course quota. She will now have to choose between Public Administration, Hotel, Restaurant and Institution Management, and Tourism, or whichever of the three courses will have room for her.

“I think Public Administration will be a better pre-Law course than the other two,” she said.

Geneblazo herself is in a quandary about which university to enter. The courses open to her at UPLB—among them Agriculture and Forestry—are just not tempting. Because her heart is set on  Architecture, she said she was seriously considering going to Polytechnic University of the Philippines. That will enable her to live with her mother in Manila. Since her second year at QNHS, she had been staying in a dormitory and, she confessed, she had a longing for a homelife.

Geneblazo’s father, Emerson, died when she was only two years old, leaving her mother Shiela as her sole support. At 6, she was left in the care of her grandparents and other relatives in Pagbilao so her mom could work abroad. She was 12 when Shiela came home for good, only to leave her again after a year for a better-paying job in Manila.

“My mother decided that I’d stay in Lucena so I could continue to receive quality education from Quezon High,” Geneblazo said.

Like her, Velasco is the only child of an OFW mother. Her father, Antolin, is unemployed. It is likely her mother, Mary Jean, will leave again for work. “She has plans of going to Hong Kong because I’ll be going to college,” Velasco said.

Tribute to mothers

Both girls paid tribute to their mothers in their speeches. 

“Thanks for the support, the guidance and the love,” Geneblazo said. 

“Thank you for the endless understanding and forgiveness,” said Velasco when it was her turn.

The commencement program ran for seven hours, which was not surprising because QNHS, the second largest public high school in the country, graduated 1,907 students: 1,664 from BEC, 115 from ESEP, 60 from the Open High School Program, 40 from the Special Program in Sports, 21 from the Evening Class and seven from Special Education (for the Hearing Impaired).

Of the candidates, 1,027 were female and 880 were male. To say that Lucena’s flower vendors, beauty salons and restaurants made a killing that day would be an utter understatement.

Melvir Buela, who was the Class of 1998 valedictorian and is now the treasury manager at the country’s largest steel manufacturing company, returned to QNHS as commencement speaker and wished the graduates a future filled with accomplishments for themselves, their communities and the country.

This may be the last commencement exercise for QNHS because, according to principal Carolina T. Zaracena, she has received word from the Department of Education that their Grade 10 students next year will be going to a different facility for Grades 11 and 12 or senior high school.

Chelo Banal-Formoso is Editor, Learning at the Philippine Daily Inquirer.