Given a better financial situation, most parents these days would prefer to put their children in private and/or religious schools than in public schools for the sheer reason that they feel students are taught better in view of a lower student-to-teacher ratio and with a presumably better-educated teacher, instructor or professor than the traditional image of a low-paid public school mentor with hardly a passion to teach.
In recent years though, many of those that started their kids in private schools ended up sending them to the jampacked public schools because they could no longer afford to pay for nearly P100,000 a year for the education of their children (with an average household having four children) in elementary or high school that is now a total of 12 years plus kindergarten and for college students this is P50,000 to P100,000 per semester depending on the prominence of the university or college.
Emotional and psychological disorientation naturally occurs in students that transferred from private to public (mind you there are no public school students transferring to private institutions unless they are lucky to get scholarships) and chances are rumbles between the transferees and those honed in the public school system naturally take place.
On the other side are educators coming from private schools getting into the public schools and state colleges/universities since they now offer better wages than most parochial learning institutions.
Almost naturally, they get disoriented in their approaches to teaching, the discipline to impose on students and their limits to disciplining the students become troublesome for them.
The big cause of such disorientation is the absence of religion and teaching of good morals and right conduct classes (GMRC), which basically teaches students (in the process the teachers as well) on ethical values and distinguishing between right and wrong.
Admittedly, getting hired into a public learning institution is a lot easier than in a private institution, school, college or university. All it takes to get employed is a completed masteral degree (preferably with units in doctoral courses), a character reference (preferably a politician or any influential personality) and some experience in teaching (but some enter as fresh masteral graduates or as fresh undergraduates pursuing masters’ degree).
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It is often believed that parochial or religion-based schools offer children more safety and security since it is assumed, often wrongly, that students come from elite and well-bred families (alta sociedad) and therefore have better breeding than students in public schools.
But the threat is not often just confined among students as it is also from teachers, professors and even school officials who may be going out of boundaries when dealing with students, who ironically pay for their salaries and fat allowances.
Many cases of sexual harassment, child abuse and even rape within private school campuses purportedly perpetrated by those principally tasked to protect the students are still pending in the courts while many more are silently being kept by the student/victims for fear of ridiculed or even threats from their perpetrator should they expose such social maladies.
It is no wonder then that a parent who exposes such irregularities in media often get rebuked by the school head, has no recourse but to file a case in court, if the family can afford it, or just let the victim bear it for the rest of her life. This attitude is called leaving it to Divine Providence or karma to get even with the evildoer.
Sadly, there are cases when this evildoer ends up getting promoted to a higher position because he can pull strings and becloud whatever bad record he had with lies and deceptions.
The key here is to conduct a very rigid screening and background checking of the applicant for possible pending cases in the courts or other administrative offices, if the top position is for a public university or college.
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Not too long ago, my friend, Mon Tulfo made a strong point in his column at the Inquirer about the need to teach the children from kindergarten to 12 years of basic education moral values and respect for the rights of others.
He said: “Moral values, or ethics and respect for others, should be a major subject from kindergarten up to the college (and post-graduate) levels. Moral values involve the principles of knowing right from wrong, while respect for the rights of others is self-explanatory.”
This, he said, is more important than packing the children with knowledge about science, math, language and the arts, since having moral values and respect for others form the basis of a child’s future behaviour.
“Children, who are the country’s future leaders and followers, should learn moral values and respect the rights of others early,” Tulfo added.
My footnote on this is that errant behaviour by some school officials may be product of the absence or the total abandonment of their GMRC and respect lessons in their younger days
Ethics is not about religion but about discipline. First world nations like Japan have disciplined (and may I add trustworthy) citizens. The Philippines, though a Third World country, should not lack in discipline, but it shamefully does.
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Lest I be misunderstood, I want to emphasize here that a First World country like the United States is also having problems with campus genocide and other social aberrations because of a combination of lack of GMRC and discipline by respecting the rights of others; too much or unregulated democracy and lack of control/screening on gun ownership/acquisition. Like it or not, media also has to blame for this malaise.
