The Constitution and education

Title

Creator

Borlaza, Gregorio C.

Language

English

Source

Philippine Educator, XII (3) August 1957

Year

1957

Subject

Education and globalization

Constitutions

Educational law and legislation

Economic development

Philippines. Department of Education

Belshaw, H.

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Fulltext

5. Failure to realize that, in any society, there are persons who, while pausing as champions of the common people and urging aid - national or international - to combat poverty, disease, ignorance or even communism, are in reality practising blackmail and have proved adept in diverting funds to their own purposes. 6. Failure to realize that more is required than feeling of pride in going it alone; economic development cannot succeed or even gather strength in a society where people are under-fed, malaria ridden, exploited, unorganized or cynically mistrustful of their leaders. Better nutrition and health improve the energy and efficiency of the workers and their propensity to make innovations or to accept them. Education extends the horizons of knowledge and the area of receptivity to new ideas. Land reform and other institutional changes may improve both the incentive and the resources available for the fuller development and expression of latent potentialities of the people. _ 7. Failure to realize the value of integrated and multi-purpose approaches. "This does not mean that everything can be attempted at once, but rather that the minimum necessary supporting or complementary measures must be undertaken for the success of any given approach. It will be futile to improve agricultural techniques if the malaria ridden population cannot apply them. On the other hand improved agriculture is necessary so that health measures can be afforded." 8. Failure to realize that, while it is necessary to awaken new wants, it will be dangerous to do so un~ less the means to satisfy them are made available or that the people have both the will and the competence to acquire the same. 9. Failure to realize that "as long as a desk strewn with files is the fall-mark of status, and field work with its dirty hands and dirty boots has low prestige value, success in implementing (economic) development plans will be limited." 10. The mere provision of services is not enough. "The active participation of villagers, both individually and as groups, is required." While in the initial stages leadership may have to come from the outside, "the primary object of awakening technical consciousness and providing channels for technical and other forms of aid, is to promote more active and more efficient village participation." These "dangers" necessarily overlap. The only point to itemizing them is to call attention to the many and varied elements that are involved which are often overlooked because of the tendency to oversimplify the problem of economic development, and to show that social attitudes and values, customs and habits of work and thinking, which are not easily changed, are powerful deterrents or handicaps - in some cases they may act in the opposite direction - to measures of economic development. In the next article, an attempt will be made to show the implications of the foregoing discussion for the problems of economic development in the Philippines and to suggest ways and means of avoiding the various dangers that have been mentioned. The Uonstitution and Education THE Constitution of any country is the source of its strenght and stability. A government beromes stable or shaky in proportion as the governed regard their Constitution as a venerable document which must be respected and defended at all times. The Code of Citizenship and Ethics (Executive Order No. 217) which is displayed in thousands of classrooms all over the' land, enjoins the people to "Respect The Constitution which is the expression of your sovereign will." And yet, how empty must this injunction seem to our pupils, and how futile must the efforts of our teachers to teach it be, . as long as our schools have to violate the Constitution in the very process of teaching the pupils to respect it! AUGUST, 1957 By Grtgorio C. Horlaza One of the most fundamental educational precepts in the Constitution of the Philippines is that found in Sec. 5, Article XIV, which provides for at least. free primary instruction. Are we giving our school children free primary instruction? In some progressive countries of the world free education is understood to include free bus service, free milk, and- even free lunch. It is of course unreasonable to expect these in the Philippines which is a comparatively poor country We may even excuse the fact that the parents of the primary pupils in this country are often asked to contribute money, labor, and materials for the acquistion of school sites and for the construction and repair of school fmildPAGE lS ings. This has its justification in the fact that if the people want for their children better school facilities nearer their homes than the government can afford they should be willing to help procure them. We may also excuse the fact that our primary pupils have to buy the paper, pencils, crayons, and other supplies needed in their studies. The recurrent outlay which government provision of these consumable supplies will entail will be too big for our national treasury to prov:ide without sacrificing other essential services. But when the government virtually tells the primary pupils that it cannot take care of their health dental fee, when the government fails to appropriate sufficient funds for the purchase of textbooks so that many primary pupils have to buy them or do without, and when in the process of introducing necessary educational reforms, such as the changing of the language of instruction from English to the vernacular, the cost of providing the necessary materials, such as vernacular readers, has to be born by the parents of the0 primary pupils, as has been happening in many non-Tagalog provinces, free primary education becomes a farce. The people will find it difficult to consider the governments attitude to the school system as anything less than parsimonious while hundreds of millions of pesos are appropriated for wasteful pork-barrel projects. In her Master's thesis, Mrs. Lucina G. Flores, a district supervisor in La Union, states that it costs P80.84 a year to educate a primary pupil in the division of La Union, and that the family shoulders P33.54 (about 51.5%) of this amount.1 There is as yet no way of telling how typical of the whole country this situation in La Union is, but it certainly indicates a situation which makes primary education prohibitive 1 Lucina G. Flores, A Study of the Cost of Edueating a Child through the Public Elementnry Grades in the Division of La Union (Dagupan City: Northwestern Educational Institution, 1955). pp. 110-111. for the typical family with six members and an income of only Pl.26 a day.2 No wonder, according to latest statistics based on a nationwide study, only si:r of every ten pupils entering Grade I reach Grade IV, and almost a million children of elementary school age (27 o/o) are out of school, of whom almost half a million have had no previous S{!hooling.3 This is partly the fault of the people themselves. If Congress diverts so much fund to the pork-barrel, it is because the people judge them, when they run for reelection, largely by the amount of public works appropriation they can bring their respective districts. As a people we have not shown a reverent attitude toward our Constitution. We amended it during the term of office of the first President elected under it, to enable that President to serve for more than six years, only to regret it later and think of amending the Constitution again to restore the original provision on presidential term of office. We amended it again after the war, giving the Americans parity rights over the patrimony of the race, in order to secure financial aid, only to regret it later upon seeing even enemy countries get financial aid from the United States without having to sacrifice the natural and exclusive rights of their citizens to exploit their natural resources. We considered a colorful political personality in the first case, and material benefits in the second, over and above some of the cherished ideals embodied in our Constitution. We must develop in ourselves a healthier attitude toward the Constitution, but we cannot do this unless we stop violating that Constitution in the very process of teaching the nation's children to respect it. 2 Generoso F. Rivera and Robert T. Mc Millan, The Rural Philippines (Manila; Mutual Security Agency, 1952), 3 THIS WEEK (Magazine of the Sunday Chronicle, Vol. 12, No. 12, July 7, 1957), pp. 8-9. Miss Winning, Heaven in Her Hands UNDERSTANDING among nations, between groups and between individuals, is the first, aye, the most urgent call of the nations today. There would have been no innumerable family conflicts, truancy, vocational inefficiency inter-group tensions, as well as international discords if there was adequate understanding. Results of researches reveal that at the root of every conflict or problem ranging from the simplest one to the most complicated, like global PAGE 16 By Miguela Solis '· wars is MISUNDERSTANDING. If misunderstanding is the root cause of most troubles, it is imperative that efforts be exerted to attain and maintain adequate understanding. It is the key foundation of wholesome human relations that play essential role in the successful accomplishment of group tasks. In the field of education, inadequate understanding of Filipino children is one of the· recognized roadblocks to the successful achievements of our goals in com'." THE PHILIPPINE EDUCATOR ..

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