Unearned titles

There is far too much confusion in this country. A major reason is our indis-criminate award of titles to those who have not earned them yet and those who perhaps will never deserve them at all.

There is probably no nobler title than "teacher" – reserved for someone tasked with the terrible responsibility of molding a mind, inspiring an intellect and cultivating character. In the country’s educational system are numerous people who do not seem to understand the seriousness of their mandate as teachers and daily proceed to macerate minds, interdict intellects and corrupt character. A former secretary of education actually wryly commented that given this kind of "teachers", the longer one stays in the educational system, the more miseducated she/he gets to be. By the thousands, these "teachers" terroristically warp where they do not abort their innocent wards. The nation suffers the consequences of such "teachers" and is much injured by the latter’s perverted products – posturing politicians and casual citizens.

Much like "teachers" are those gratuitously bestowed the title "parents". These are people whose particular res-ponsibility is to ensure that our species continues to be human and humanizing. Empathy, compassion and the basic sense of justice or fairness are the main province of parents. They raise their children into adulthood and in the process activate latent capabilities for seeing oneself in the position of others, feeling with them, acknowledging that each person has a proper share of life and living life so as minimize rather than increase its current inequities.

Too many "parents" renege on parenting. Many are not even around physically and believe that earnings – here or abroad – substitute for parental care. They entrust the raising of their children to decrepit adults, to siblings – most overgrown children who are only slightly older than their forced wards – or similarly childish, mostly poorly educated katulongs hailing from some miserable corner of the country.

When they are physically around, few "parents" bother to develop themselves in order that their children might benefit from education by example. Far too little sense of strategy attend their child-rearing and so they fail to see connections between a child’s environment and his adult equipage. Too few parents appreciate how violence in the adult is facilitated by childhood contact with gory games purveyed by engaging play stations, desensitizing brutal offerings on TV and in films, toy cannons, grenades, guns and knives that mock their real counterparts and – one must not forget – a child’s direct experience of abusive "parents" or other violence-prone adults in their immediate vicinity.

Unwilling or unable to temper freedom with discipline, mistaking permissiveness and mindless generosity for love and concern, "parents" raise children who eventually reach adulthood mistaking license for liberty, anarchy for self-expression and selfishness for self-worth. Obsessed with the here and the now, fixated on the I, myself and me, such children never become compassionate citizens of a truly human society. Their adulthood often operationally translates into becoming adults and graduating into becoming hoods. When they become smart enough, they become the plunderers of their own people.

Not enough teachers and not enough parents in this country. That is the main problem for Filipinos who would reinvent their society. There is also not enough doctors, engineers, mechanics, carpenters or plumbers and just about any one who understands and seriously, competently work at his or her craft of choice. Many "doctors" are indistinguishable from businessmen, many "plumbers" also pass themselves off as "electricians". Of course, many "teachers are tocino masters as well as insurance agents, real estate peddlers, pre-need artists and professional entertainers."

"Senators" actually take the cake even from the most impressive "teachers". They are omnicompetent, omnipresent and – most daunting of all – omnivorous, much unlike the few remaining relics of an age when senators of this country were simply intelligent, hard-working, civic-minded, nationalistic and competent legislators.

For the Philippines to make it, titles in this country must not simply be bestowed. They have to be earned. Teachers, parents and legislators ahead of other titles.