On Wednesday, as in any other year on Teachers’ Day, school children presented their tutors with glowing tributes. They talked about their appreciation for the big and small things their teachers have done for them. They brought to focus sacrifices made.
In the Philippines, however, there are many other ways to commemorate the day for teachers.
We can talk about the still-poor state of pay and benefits for teachers amid challenging working conditions and. As a result, it is less attractive as a career choice than it was generations ago.
We can also mention how in the appointment and promotion of teachers in various schools, other considerations aside from merit and competence prevail. These have damning consequences on the quality of the management of educational institutions.
We can emphasize how guidance from a teacher has helped a student get by with personal or career decisions and draw from, perhaps, our individual experiences.
Then again, not all teachers are found in classrooms donning uniforms and computing grades at the end of the term. Stretching the definition, anybody who comes into contact with an impressionable younger person and who has the chance to affect that person’s thinking could well be called a teacher.
And so there are teachers in schools, in homes, on traditional and social media, and in government offices. If children see in these mentors, for instance, that it is all right to preach one thing and do another, that it is acceptable to look at just the end without consideration for the means, or that it is the norm to shoot down questions and criticism however valid they may be, then there is no doubt they would embrace these practices later on.
It will not be because they are bad individuals. It will be because they do not know any better.
We can only hope that he or she may inspire the young to at least strive to know better.