The teachers opportunity in community cooperation

Media

Part of The Philippine Craftsman

Title: The teachers opportunity in community cooperation
Language: English
Year: 1916
Rights
Fulltext: OTHER ASPECTS OF COOPERATION ipal treasurers was insisted upon. The store added from 10 to 15 per cent to cost prices, yet it was possible for the schools to purchase materials at Manila prices and lower. Slightly higher prices had to be asked for stock which moved slowly. The supplies purchased locally ranged from garden and shop tools, pumps, cement, fencing, roofing, and reinforcing iron to cloth, thread, thimbles, and needles. This initial venture in supplying the schools with proper materials at reasonable prices opened the way to a permanent and regular trade with the schools. Since then there has been a tendency on the part of local dealers to increase prices. The stores were expected to keep on hand stock enough to meet the needs of the schools. As these needs varied from time to time there was some stock that turned very slowly. Owing to the large amount of capital necessary to carry materials sufficient to meet all requirements, the stock was allowed to go down to where individual orders from schools were ordered by the merchants from Manila with the increased cost price and transportation added to the bill. In time the same profits were demanded on school purchases as were received on other sales. Such a development as here recounted might not have occured at a time when all business was normal. The chief advantage in securing industrial materials through local firms is that of payment. The local firm receives the order from the municipal treasurer, approved by the supervising teacher and the division superintendent, and knows that there will be no question as to payment. The arrangement is more satisfactory to the supervising teacher because he does not have to advance money on school purchases. From the experience in local buying here related, it will be seen that for it to be satisfactory orders should be submitted before the materials are actually needed, so that the items can be combined, and the orders should be sufficiently large so that their frequent repetition will not be necessary. THE TEACHER’S OPPORTUNITY IN COMMUNITY COOPERATION. By J. H. Tibbs, Principal, Central Luzon Agricultural School. The teacher’s interest in community life is too often confined to social affairs and to activities which directly affect school work. He feels on safe ground when aiding in a literary program or a fiesta, or in organizing the community for the construction or repair of the schoolhouse. He is usually willing to aid in any beneficial activity already under way, but he 40 THE PHILIPPINE CRAFTSMAN seldom gets beyond a vague wish to initiate community action or any activity not directly connected with social life or school work. Timidity and the rareness of such action by teachers are the principal causes of this inaction. The schoolmaster has generally been a symbol of business inefficiency. In many cases his training has been such that it has actually unfitted him to take an active part in the practical affairs of the community. His mode of life has shut him away from the every-day problems of the people to such an extent that a suggestion or plan from him not connected with social or school work is usually afforded scant respect. For this, the teacher himself is to blame. • It is comparatively easy for a teacher to become a community leader in any one of a number of problems, as soon as the people have been shown that his opinion is entitled to consideration. In every community the teacher daily encounters conditions which should be bettered and which can only be improved by community effort. Knowing his limitations he will readily recognize the conditions which he is able to improve with the forces at his command. But before starting on such work the teacher must know exactly what he wishes to accomplish and the means that are to be employed in reaching the desired result. He must remember that in the first burst of enthusiasm it is comparatively easy to launch almost any community endeavor, but that only by careful planning and persistent effort will it be brought to a successful conclusion. The teacher can most easily work through the medium of his pupils. Home gardens, home tree planting, and the food campaigns of the Bureau of Education, with their results in awakening the interest and cooperation of the parents in the community, show the general plan of such activities. He can adapt these same methods to other endeavors, and by tactful cooperation with his pupils can extend his operations to activities not directly connected with school work yet of considerable importance to the community. The value of such a local campaign would be demonstrated if it resulted in making every week a clean-up week, in keeping the barrio streets free from cogon grass, or in providing every home with sanitary arrangements. After a teacher has successfully carried on one or more projects with the aid of his pupils, he will have established a standing in the community and an ability which will allow him to attack larger community problems. In this he must work more especially with the influential members of the community. If they can be impressed with the need and the possibility of the OTHER ASPECTS OF COOPERATION 41 improvement, and can be induced to set the machinery in motion to remedy the condition, it is of little consequence whether the teacher receives due credit for his service or not. Having been a definite factor in improving the health conditions of a town, in improving a municipal irrigation system, or in improving the social and moral condition of a community, a teacher’s value to the people among whom he works will have been much greater than if he had confined himself strictly to his books and classes. The reaction on the teacher himself cannot help but be beneficial. To find that he is really being accepted as a man among men, and not merely as a schoolmaster, is worth to him personally all of the effort made. WOULD YOU GIVE YOURSELF A JOB? If you applied to yourself for a job would you get it? Think it over. Just be “boss” for a few minutes, then check up your record for the past month as an employee. Remember, now, it’s your money meeting the pay roll. Have you, as an employee, filled your hours with productive, conscientious labor, or have you been too busy watching the clock? Have you produced enough in that month to make you a profitable investment? Have you put your shoulder to the wheel—forgotten petty differences and difficulties—or have you put sand in the bearings? Have you asked questions and improved, or have you been too wise to learn? Have you analyzed what you are doing, and why, or used instinct instead of reason, and got an indifferent and methodless result? Have you allowed your mind to become poisoned with anger, worry, or envy, and by so doing contaminated and reduced the efficiency of others? Have you gone through the month, a vision of pay day the oasis in your desert of work? And have you let this vision shut our from view all else in the day’s work that would build you to a size where you would give yourself a job? Or have you been heart and soul in the work, on the job every minute with a breadth of vision that made of the desert of work an oasis of opportunity? Check up. Be truthful. Would you give yourself a job? (J. R. Worden in The Artisan.)