Hail to our teachers, help for the prostituted

WORLD Teachers’ Day and International Day of No Prostitution are worldwide celebrations on the same day, October 5.

The International Day of No Prostitution is mostly celebrated by those concerned with women rights and is one day set aside in the year when no one should buy or sell anyone for sex. The call is specifically focused on men who buy girls, boys, and women in prostitution; an appeal to set aside this day as a token of freedom for the prostituted.

The movement to declare a day of no prostitution started in the Bay Area of California, USA in 2002. The idea was said to have come from the American prostitution survivors’ group Escape. The idea has since spread to other countries, the Philippines included, and Davao City in particular.

With regards the World Teachers’ Day, this was a proclamation by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) in 1994 in remembering the “great step made for teachers on 5 October 1966, when a special intergovernmental conference convened by UNESCO in Paris adopted the UNESCO/International Labor Organization (ILO) Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers, in cooperation with the ILO.

The 1966 recommendation set the rights and responsibilities of teachers and international standards for their trainings and further education, recruitment, employment, teaching, and learning conditions, a magna carta of sorts.

The queer combination underlines the value of relevant education as delivered by teachers who not only see their career as a day job but as a vocation for a better future, the values that will make for better discernment, the value we give to our teachers as the molders of future generations and not as pawns in our political plans and willing victims to undeserved welcome parties for this and that official, and the empowerment of women and children who fall into the prostitution trap either for lack of discernment or in desperation.

It may be difficult to weave in some meaning in this unusual coincidence, but somehow the irony of celebrating both in one day grabs the attention of those who are aware of what October 5 means. The irony may be difficult to pin down and enumerated one by one, but it is there; and we know that it has something to do with education and the respect for people as humans and not as objects that can be bought and traded.