Why Basic Education Matters

Filipinos recently elected the son of Marcos to be their next president. They also voted for the daughter of the current president to be their next vice president. Some may think that how people vote is influenced by their education. Unfortunately, in politics, beliefs are more important. What basic education can do is so little compared to what frustration and disenchantment can. Filipinos have been experimenting with liberal politics for more than three decades. There seems to be not much difference for most Filipinos who have lived in both periods, before and after the EDSA "people power" in 1986. Education cannot miraculously change how people vote, but how people deal with politics shows the current state of education. Unfortunately, even the opposition to authoritarianism demonstrates the current predicament of Philippine education. The results of the elections have been made public quickly this time. At past 8 in the evening, nearly half of the votes have been transmitted:

The results, as expected, are in line with surveys made a few days before the election. Sadly, a supposedly statistics student has used the above table to suggest that election results are biased, as emphasized in the last column of the above table. The student claims that the votes for Marcos and Robredo are now strongly correlated. The ratio of the number of votes for Robredo to the number of votes for Marcos is a constant, at about 47 percent. Apparently, this student has not learned the law of large numbers yet. With almost half of the returns processed, the first row of numbers should already begin representing the entire population. Of course, this does not always happen, as in the case of the state of Virginia, where votes are counted first from the rural areas, and there is a clear difference between urban and rural areas when it comes to political party preference. In the Philippines, this is not the case, and half of the ballots, randomly processed from various regions of the country, should already establish a clear trend.

This line of thought not only demonstrates a problem in education, in this case, higher education in the Philippines, but it also clearly prevents people from seeing how big Marcos' victory truly is. It is a huge lead. We have serious problems in both basic and higher education in the Philippines. Education cannot fix the problems of the Philippines without addressing first the problems Philippine basic education faces. 

The world is currently facing inflation, after central banks have been providing liquidity to the markets for quite some time and the apparent decrease in COVID mortality rates. Inflation affects more countries that spend most of their living wages on food. Sadly, this is the case in the Philippines. Stock markets are also affected, especially growth companies, as interest rates begin to rise to combat inflation. The Philippines finds itself in a very difficult situation at this time. There is climate change. The price of fossil fuels is skyrocketing. People are indeed entitled to feel sad for a loss in a hotly contested election, but please make it quick because there are serious problems that need to be addressed right now.