Being at the Public Relations Department of the company I am working with for two years now is a challenge. I have been to the odds and evens of my job already. Meeting numerous people from all walks of life is a great privilege. Dealing with customers and handling complaints is a test of my ability. Biting the bullet of the reproaches of my manager is but a requirement, and a motivational experience though. But learning and doing everybody’s job in the department is an achievement.

From a small retail store, the company has developed into a full service shopping center, which helped bring the province to the forefront of development in terms of investment and employment opportunities. This greatly contributes in building the framework of a progressive provincial economy. The company’s business has been growing tremendously into a big retail industry.

Aware of its responsibilities to the public it serves, the company also consistently pursued its community outreach programs, one of which is the Drum and Bugle Corps Showdown, and other talent and skills development activities. This is one way of helping in youth development, which is the basic educational thrust of the schools.

Unlike in the previous years, we are bringing the interschool battle of the brains to the campuses within the city this year. A real hard work and enervating job. Through this, I found time to make assessment about the public education and private instruction. Meeting hundreds of pupils and or students from the two zones is both overwhelming and distressing. They vary a lot, and the gap is quite obvious.

Private instruction is quite sophisticated and intense. Pupils and students in this segment differ a lot from that of the communal division. From the discipline up to the intellectual honing, private education in the provincial setting obviously is in the forefront. Snappy classroom behaviors such as sitting properly on the chair, well-arranged individual things (books, etc.), silence amidst the discussion, proper conduct; attentive responses to queries, articulate expressions of ideas like correct pronunciation, keen intuitions and confidence (there is volunteerism) are just among the characteristics I have practically come across. In contrast, mean classroom behaviors like running around the classroom even the teacher is discussing, disorganized chairs and things; inattentiveness or talking with seatmates in the middle of the sessions, inarticulate demonstration of opinions, few speculations or answering just for fun, and introvert characteristics are manifested in the public setting.

Though not all of those public school pupils show the same kind of weaknesses, it is the reality. We have visited various schools and we have seen these things as common. Truly, private institutions give much for its scholars. Public schools are definitely behind. It makes me upset that there is the thing as opposite in the system of our education. Would it take how many years to improve the method?


richard philippe cuthing