Foregoing classes not a bad tradeoff for life

President Duterte has said early on that there should be no resumption of classes until a vaccine against the coronavirus is found. As there is no concrete indication of when that might be, I do not think the resumption of classes should be tied to that eventuality. But I go along with many parents concerned about the well-being of their kids that classes in all levels should be put off for at least one year.

Schools and classes will always be there but life, once gone, is irrecoverable. The choice between life and anything else should be pretty clear to everyone. So it does not do anyone any good to vacillate on the issue. Duterte must decide now where we are headed on the matter of classes, most especially since his very own spokesman seems to speak his own mind.

According to Duterte spokesman Harry Roque, classes have to open by August 24 at the latest because that is what the law says. Since Roque knows the law very well, he could have appraised the president of the legal situation instead of coming out with the information and, in so doing, make it appear he was contradicting his principal, or worse, that he was better than his boss.

Still, if as Roque says the clock is ticking before classes will be forced to open by operation of law, then Duterte must make up his mind now. But if I were him, I would stick to my original preference for life over anything else, including classes. There will always be time to make up and recover for as long as you are alive.

But if the coronavirus kills you, or worse, kills thousands of students because the national leadership decided wrongly or did not decide quickly enough, then the country not only loses a lot of students' lives, it loses a huge chunk of its own future and any hope of speedy recovery. If we need to invest in the young, we need to keep them alive first.

There are many convincing, compelling, even titillating reasons why classes should supposedly be made to resume soon. But I do not think any of them can invalidate the primacy and supremacy of life over anything else. We only have one life. Once gone, that's it. But if you skip one year in school, you can go back the following year. If you do not graduate this year, you always can next year. For as long as you are alive.

If the worry is the impact on the workforce, then that should be the least of all worries. There is, I am sure, still a huge backlog in graduates from prior years who, to this day, have still not found any work since joining the workforce. And they have been joined by those who lost their jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic.

So, in a way, foregoing classes for even just a year may also have its unintended benefit of helping forestall the further ballooning of unemployment and strain on a shaky economy in this time of great crisis. It also allows parents who lost businesses or jobs or other sources of income a welcome reprieve from spending for tuition and other school expenses. For health and other practical reasons, classes should be put off for at least a year.