Money affects Learning

     I could often hear in my high school days the phrase: "Ang kahirapan ay hindi hadlang sa edukasyon (Poverty is not a hindrance for education)". This bon mot is often reiterated by my schoolmates who will to motivate everyone to pursue their academic success despite of their financial challenge. In my own viewpoint, however, this dictum tells about one's determination and not about his pecuniary stance. By this, we must raise a question: How can we learn and educate ourselves despite our impecuniosity?

     Come to think of it: if we don't have a single penny in our pocket: we can neither send ourselves to school, buy a book, buy even a twenty-peso (uncertain for the price) of periodico, install electricity in our house so that we can have radio or television, nor can we travel. If we don't have money, our horizon would be limited. We can just perceive knowledge from the gratis natters from our neighbors that could perilously be gossips, read from the free distributed flyers from the election, religious evangelists, product promotion, and the like, and we can travel around the town alone. If we don't have money, we cannot explore everything we can.

     Simply put, if we have just a meager money which may make us somewhat tough to sustain our 3 basic needs (food, clothing, and shelter), we may end up missing the somehow secondary yet essential need: education. To conclude my viewpoint, money can deeply affect our learning, our experience, and our realm. The limited the money we have, the limited our world could be. However, is it really the end for the indigent? I highly say NO. Money can be earned, diskarte lang yan. We can earn money so long as we are just strategic enough to gain it, and wise enough to handle it. Ang pera ay pwedeng kitain. That is why we need to earn to sustain our living, especially our education. Furthermore, we can also earn money by our learning and expertise. The cycle is just reciprocal, we earn to learn and we learn to earn. To expound my aphorism, we earn money to educate ourselves with a skill, so as to apply skill to earn more money. And the wavy cycle goes on.

     A further reflection also, we really need money to live. Money seems to be our lifeblood of living. If we do not have money, we would be nothing as if we would be put into an oblivious realm. We cannot actually disregard our need of money, as we cannot deny it as an essential for our living. We simply just need a coin. Period. We need a coin to live. So be it.