A Descriptive Study of a Fishing Village in San Jacinto, Masbate

Abstract

Fishing aside from agriculture played a major role in the survival of the people in the coastal town of San Jacinto, Masbate. With limited job opportunities and low educational attainment, some people resort to fishing as a source of income. These are the fishermen of the town. Most of the fishermen started at a very young age like seven or ten because of the urgency of their involvement in fishing to help their fathers in providing for their family needs, since most them came from big families. This is one of the reasons why fishermen in the town have low educational attainment. Another reason was the financial difficulties of their parents to send them to school. Young age marriages were common because of the need of the fishermen for a person who could look after their needs such as cooking their foods, doing the laundry since their time was reserved for the fishing activity. Job inheritance became a natural consequence among the fishermen. Their parents were hardly educated because of the nature of their work and financial difficulties of their families. Aside from the hardship they experienced from fishing, their aspiration for a better life molded their value on education. They believed that through education, their children would have successful lives, thus they would not suffer the way their parents did. With this reasons, they willingly sent their children to school in the town and even in the cities where they believe education standard is high, even though this would only mean lesser food on the table and frequent fishing. White-collar jobs would later be taken for granted because of the craving for blue-collar jobs thus creating imbalance in the future among people since division of labor could not be observed.