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Saturday, June 24, 2006
Roperos: Tribute to good teachers
By Godofredo M. Roperos
Politics Also
This piece is rather belated simply because time and space in this daily, like life itself, is limited. But it is never too late to talk about a good man.
There is no limit to what one could say or do about a man who, in life, has enriched not only his own but also others, or whose life had inevitably touched his own. I feel that such a life may have been allowed to be by the Creator to fulfill His designs.
I am speaking about the late Hilario Davide Sr., a simple man with peasant beginnings. That he died a good and successful father and family man bestowed with the honors of a great public school teacher fills me with deep pride and nostalgia, as I do for all teachers of his generation.
Once upon a time, I became familiar with the lives and ways of two other “old school” teachers. Why they were called so after the war was beyond me then.
But pondering on the tributes bestowed on Hilario Davide Sr., I am saddened that virtues of teachers of the so-called old school have not been maintained to this day.
Indeed, in my youth, there were two parallels to the life of “Undo.” One was the late Ramon Dakay, a school principal in my teen years, and the other, was my father.
When I was 19 years old in 1949 and a fresh graduate from the UP Cebu high school, I passed the teachers’ recruitment exams of the province. I became substitute teacher for grade five and grade six in the Asturias central school, handling English and Elementary Science subjects.
Dakay, a principled man, was from my hometown, Balamban, some seven kilometers away. Since I was a calamity in music, he would handle the opening exercises for me. He looked at teaching as both a career and a responsibility.
My father was a grade four teacher in our town. He finished only grade seven but was asked to teach in grade four. While teaching, he did clerical work in the district supervisor’s office. He took secondary school courses in summer and it took him many years to graduate.
In grade four, even if my grades qualified me for his Section 1 class, he did not accept me. He said it would not be good for if I pass people would say it is because I am his son.
Years later, I would hear people talk about how some teachers allowed children of co-teachers to pass and become honor pupils over more deserving ones who were children of poor families in the town.
Is this contemporary situation perhaps the reason why there is a tidal wave of graft and corruption in public office and rank immorality in our society, even among those we consider as community leaders?
“Undo” Davide, who died at 101 years old, could be the last one of the so-called “old school” generation. My father was 91 when he died in 1986, and Dakay, I believe, was also similarly that age.
It is not surprising to note that they produced progenies they could generally be proud of. And it is for this feat that I write this tribute for. I mourn for the passing of their generation; I cannot similarly do so of the generation of the recent past, or of the present.
Perhaps, there would be one in the future, when our contemporary leaders shall have succeeded in making themselves role models for the youth today.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (June 24, 2006 issue)
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