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Friday, September 23, 2005
Speak out: Teaching and today’s crisis
By Rhoderick John S. Abellanosa
Member, Sacred Heart School of the Society of Jesus
Teaching for some is simply a profession, and for professionals who are of higher category so to speak, teaching may be the most simple and under-professed profession.
Indeed it is the simplest, for what is a chalk compared to a stethoscope?
But more than the superficial level, there are higher truths about “being a teacher,” truths that men and women have long forgotten, truths that should not be forgotten at all.
Teaching is a profession that most expresses what it means to be truly human. For to be truly human is to be fallible or imperfect yet bearing hope despite such fallibility or imperfection.
Teaching is thus the noblest of all professions, despite what others may say, not because of the costs needed for a person to be one or because of the fruits it have yielded and will yield.
Its nobility stems from the fact that it humanizes all the things we do, mold the genius of all disciplines and still make a world broken into compartments and individualization a one world of hope in unity amidst diversity.
The teacher is a person of hope, because he believes that students can learn even though they are not perfect, and that he himself does not possess the quality of perfection.
Along this vein, teaching is a gift and mystery--a gift because it is given only to some, even to those who didn’t ask for it and a mystery because teachers are given a noble task despite their limitations and imperfections.
Teachers are gifted individuals not because of their high IQs or for any superhuman quality but because they carry on their shoulders the future of the world and other responsibilities.
Teachers are also gifted with life’s great mystery, that is, while their task is to shape the future towards perfection, they remain to be imperfect themselves.
At times teachers are ridiculed for their inadequacies and failures, but the very nobility of their profession vindicates them.
As our country continues to grapple with means for survival, teachers may not offer solutions that would end all the woes we have.
The business of teaching is but to remind all of us that things may change so long as we continue to learn and that, despite the dim present, there really is a bright future awaiting all of us.
In these difficult times, we need to remember that before we can construct bridges, we need to build our thoughts. That before we can have a highly progressive and wealthy nation, we need to be obedient to rules as individuals first.
And that before we can have the things we want in life, we have to be ready to give up our agenda and surrender to the fact that all we have are nothing but gifts that find meaning in the mystery of sharing and learning from each other.
All these are lessons teachers impart, and whether they have succeeded in doing so or not or will eventually succeed in such, they deserve all the honor and words of gratitude.
(September 23, 2005 issue)
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