The did it in Iriga

Title

The did it in Iriga

Language

English

Year

1947

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Fulltext

THEY DID ~ IT IN IRIGA By . JAI~E MALANYAON Member, Board of Directo,.s, Cam. Sur Teachers' Federation Two years .ago, many were wondP.ring why teachers should return to teaching when many of them could e~rn four or five times as much outside. Still many were talking of enormous blackmarket profits, back pay, bonuses, and gratuities, and above all, guerrilh b<')nefits. All these things were idle dreams , to tead1.ers of !riga Element.ary School, for though many of them were active members of the guerrilla II\OVement, their first love was the school. In the whole province, theirs was the ' biggest problem, for nothing was left of six big beautiful buildings except piles of debris, broken cement posts, land mines, bombed craters, buried barbed wire, and dangerous metal ', scraps. The school population number~ing nearly two thousand pupils were housed in bodegas and in ruined buildings th.at smell of rotten foodstuffs and wastes. If teachers ever dared to stay on under these conditions, it was because they were determind to build their school houses in spite of these difficulties. With teachers as leade1·s, the parents and pupils responded to their noble task of constructing twenty-five cottages, each a classroom by itself. From the smallest child of seven to the twenty-eight-year old grade-six boy came the cry, "Let's build them ourselves!" After three weeks of silent but 'fruitful effort, the "village" (the cott.ages are arranged like a small village) was made. Considering the materials and labor of parents and children, the project is valued at twenty thousand victory pesos. In the words of Mr. Joseph Rexroad, foremerly principal of West Virginia Elementary School, then a sergeant .in the 158 RCT, .U. S. Army, the project is "a wonderful job that the teachers of !riga Elementary School are doing".l In his letter sent to the Principal of the school, on September 11, 1945, Mr. Rexroad further said, "My friends and I h'ave learned. !flUCh . by our visits 'and conversations. We have had our ego deflated, for we have decided th~t we .are not very good teachers. A group of teachers that can give their services in such an efficient way, with small recompense as to finances, and the only reward expected, the well being and advancement of the human race, deserves the highest praise." Not one of the teachers in this school ever thought that they played a major role in the history of reh.abiiitating the ~hilippine school system, for not long afterwards, hundreds of school houses were modelled from the !riga school "village". At a distance, with the !riga Mountain as its background, the beautiful village has been · the symbol of the noble task which a group of deserving teachers ha'3 done in this period of rehabilitation. More than this, it symbolize'S what power, wh.at strength, what influence the fifty-six thousand school teachers can have when they work together. 1 Mr. Rexroad and several educational experts of the 158 RCT visited the school severn! times from July to October 1945. FOR MODERN OPTICAL NEEDS-SEE KEEPSAKE OPTICAL-SO Escolta 15

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