Graduation day was the first time he ever wore shoes – two sizes bigger, having been borrowed from some kin – padded with newspapers to fit.
His secondary education – at the Pampanga High School – was hounded by his virtual eviction from the classroom at each examination time for failure to pay tuition, to some perverse adolescent delight of those with whom he competed for honors.
Oh, how he wept “as the classroom door closed behind me.”
Poverty struck field trips and extra curriculars out of his high school life. He washed dishes at a cousin’s carinderia (eatery) early morning before school, and after, helped out at another relative’s pulot stand, serving molasses as feed additive to the horses drawing the town’s calesas.
High school graduation was one bitter frustration. Consistently in the top section’s honors list throughout the school year, his final grade did not merit even the last of the honorable mentions.
“That was one painful realization. Of the chasm between having and not having. But then, a stronger resolve rises within you. And all challenges thereafter become less difficult to surmount,” he says in retrospect.
His journey through college started with his parents’ sale of two hogs – all that the old folks could provide for his tuition.
He took the shortest route to learn a skill – stenography, to enable him to find work to pay for his further studies. Found work he did in the courts and in some other government agencies, and with academic and extra-curricular excellence that earned him some scholarships, he finished college cum laude.
And on to law school, still as a working student.
So seared in the psyche of Oscar S. Rodriguez is his struggle to finish school – despite all odds, as recorded in the biography About Oca: A Story of Struggle (2005) – that the education of the youth has become a core value in his service to the public, whether as congressman – with his thousands of scholars, or as mayor now – still with a thousand scholars and more education programs and projects. The 37 new school buildings spread throughout the city but a sampling.
Under Mayor Oca, the city government instituted the Scholarship in Education for Empowerment and Development (SEED) program financed through the Special Education Fund. SEED currently has 8,000 beneficiaries.
Despite the scholarship grants amounting to some P20 million, Mayor Oca noted that only 20 percent of the beneficiaries obtain bachelor’s degrees.
To complement the scholarship program, a community college for the city has found approval at the city council.
“We commend our gallant councilors and Vice Mayor Edwin Santiago in speedily looking into the approval of creating a city college. This is a dream come true for many of our current and future scholars desirous of earning a degree to make a difference in their world,” Mayor Oca said.
Indeed, what a difference education makes. World-class Mayor Oca is one living – serving – proof of this.
And for him, the youth of San Fernando are truly blessed.
