Beyond family homes
PERHAPS, there can be wide agreement amongst us that the family is the base of the nation. Strengthen that base, and chances are that the nation itself will be much stronger. Indeed, the Filipino family has to continue to be the garden where core values---such as those proposed by Dr. Tiongco as our national core values---are taught and observed. After all, values cannot remain at the level of ideals, sermons, and occasional reminders: they also have to take concrete and specific flesh in the day-to-day inter-action between all members of the family.
Dr. Tiongco then moves to his second core area of strategic concern, and this is moral literacy. This is what he says:
“In seminars for educators that I facilitate, I often ask this question: Which do you think is the more serious problem: that a child can’t read or write or that a child can’t tell right from wrong? Invariably, the first reaction would be some uneasy moments of silence, which I would break by saying: Those are both serious problems, but which one would you say is the more serious? I would then ask for a quick show of hands. Every time, the second of the two choices would emerge the clear winner—a big inner relief for me, because it tells me that our educators still have their moral sense in place.
“This ‘on-the-spot quiz’ opens up for me the opportunity to bring up the need for moral literacy as a basic goal of the educational process. There is a need to do so because moral literacy has been often either overlooked, ignored, taken for granted, or not sufficiently appreciated in educational circles both here and abroad. According to Nancy Tuana, referring to the situation in the US, ‘the absence of moral literacy is a glaring omission from our national efforts to strengthen education’.”
Many of us may not be so familiar with the term “moral literacy.” We have always thought of “literacy” as the ability to read and write. But the comments above of Dr. Tiongco add another dimension to literacy, i.e. our ability to discern and tell what is right and wrong. This is a critical dimension, which in current Philippine society we are in the process of disregarding and neglecting. The examples of those who should be leading us; the lack of consistency between the words and ideals people proclaim and the actions as well as decisions they actually take and make; and the loosening of standards of integrity being actually observed in social and personal life of many around us may have dulled the conscience we are all endowed with.
In this light, we need to be clear, if we are going to be morally literate: with respect to ideals and principles, we should hang on to the straight and narrow path, and try and stay there. With respect to people with their faults and foibles, we should be tolerant and patient: but instead of stooping further down with them, we should try and lift them up from whatever moral pit they may have fallen into. In this way, we help strengthen the moral fiber of our society.