Monday, January 05, 2009 Editorial: Back to school
THE numbers matter.
Today, as most schools open after the holiday break, millions are returning to classrooms.
Education Secretary Jesli Lapus said that some 1.06 million pre-schoolers and 20.59 million students in the elementary and secondary levels of public and private schools will resume classes today.
That’s more than 21 million futures “hanging in the balance.”
This idiom implies a situation where that there are at least two possibilities for the outcome but it is impossible to predict which will win out.
Not a matter only of promotion
Traditionalists perceive that only two possibilities exist in formal education: pass or fail.
Meeting the minimum academic requirements is the condition for passing and moving on to the next level or, upon the completion of course requirements, eligibility for a new job.
In the real world, promotion is far from being cut-and-dried.
Despite the decreasing pattern of unemployment and underemployment in 2007, the number of jobless Filipino youth remained high. According to the National Statistics Office (NSO) January 2007 Labor Force Survey, the young sector–aged 24 years and below–made up nearly half of the unemployed.
For many Filipino families who pin their hopes on college graduates, the joblessness of the young, representing 48.8 percent of the estimated 2.85 million unemployed Filipinos, extends the precariousness of family security and shakes faith in an educational system that once guaranteed improvement of family finances and social mobility.
But many problems do not only manifest after graduation; some derail the youth from even completing their education. Youth delinquency, which results in gang violence, teenage pregnancy and other anti-social behavior, worries parents, educators and the religious as not just curtailing the youth’s opportunities but also reflecting a crisis in values and the socialization process.
Considering their direct impact on the young and indirect influence on social stability, teachers have the most important obligations.
Deserving the pedestal
Sun.Star Cebu believes the passage of House Bill 4734 and Senate Bill 2408 will recognize teachers’ significant contributions to society by granting public school educators an increase of P3,000 spread over three years.
Increasing pay, offering more social benefits like housing and medical assistance, and giving access to continuing learning such as scholarships will return the prestige to teaching. According to Lapus, making education a competitive career path will address the shortage of local teachers due to the overseas exodus.
But setting their sights on the future, Department of Education officials and the educators themselves should not also forget the present: addressing the lapses of the current system and raising the quality of education is overdue.
Beyond ensuring that students acquire the basic competencies, teachers must inspire them to aspire for excellence. This is not just creating a culture around individual performance but also of peer cooperation, communal stakeholdership and global governance.
To produce scholars and global citizens, teachers have to lead by example. Linkages with government and nongovernment bodies will enable teachers to see the classroom’s role in the greater synergy: that external public and private funds can sponsor the supplementary feeding that will keep pupils in school, well-nourished and intellectually responsive to class lessons.
And that, to learn the greater significance of science, corporate sponsors can be tapped by teachers to enable students to take watershed tours and see their role in protecting and maintaining the local ecology.
Admittedly, there may never be sufficient compensation for the real work underscoring teaching: questioning, questing, innovating, creating, inspiring, modeling, questioning the status quo, mentoring students to think out of the box, to pay forward, to give back.
Other rewards, non-monetary and less ephemeral, await the mentors who truly deserve that pedestal.
