Teacher’s day is every day
IDON’T know why World Teacher’s Day is celebrated for only one day in the year. This year, it was marked with mass actions demanding salary increases and other benefits. DepEd immediately retorted that it had no budget for that, but there would be a gift of 13,000 a pop in December. That sums up pretty much why I think Teacher’s Day should be every day.
I wrote about my mother many columns ago, a public school teacher whom I consider my greatest teacher both in and out of the classroom. I was a teacher, too, and continue to give continuing education lectures. I can tell you that hands down, teaching has been the most challenging job I have ever done, the least financially rewarding, but the most fulfilling and humbling.
My mother’s salary was a mere pittance, her take home-pay even more so after all the deductions for loans, miscellaneous contributions, and expenses for teaching aids and materials that the school could not provide. It was certainly not commensurate to the long and exhausting hours of preparing lessons, articulating them to a class of at least 40, keeping discipline, giving and grading exams, organizing school fairs and programs... the list goes on. No wonder the Quezon Institute then had a “Teachers’ Ward;” they were particularly vulnerable to TB on account of their backbreaking work but the most meager of resources to stay healthy. No wonder, too, that they resorted to selling food and knick knacks to augment their income and be able to continue their selfless service to country.
The salary increases that our present crop of public school teachers demand must therefore be seriously considered. If the salaries of our uniformed public servants have been raised, there should be no reason why those of our public school teachers cannot. Neither should it be a matter of asking every Filipino to pay more taxes; I believe it is more about properly setting our priorities and putting public money where our most cherished values lie. Are our values not in our children, our real and only future? Are they not in our teachers, their second parents with whom they spend even more time than their biological parents? Are they not in our schools, where our young are supposed to learn not only academics but good citizenship and love of country as well?
I give much credit to public school teachers and the public schools because to them I owe much of what I have become as a person and citizen. I remember and thank all my grade school teachers in my native Cagayan and my professors at the University of the Philippines for their perseverance and generosity of spirit. I give special mention to Prof. Allas of UPCAS, Prof. Cora Estrella of UPCBA, and Prof. Ruben Balane of UPLaw. It was Prof. Allas who recognized that I could write, and encouraged me. From Profs. Estrella and Balane, I learned the art and science of critical and creative thinking. Whenever I think of them – which is quite often – it is Teacher’s Day.