The power of a teacher

Henry Brooks Adams said, “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” Such is the power of a teacher --and I mean a good teacher. I thought about this after reading an article in which reelected Cagayan de Oro Rep. Rufus Rodriguez asked the Department of Education (DepEd) and the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) to give half, or 8,000 new teaching positions, to Mindanao, where eight of the 10 provinces with the highest illiteracy rates are located.

Literacy is defined as the ability to read, write, and compute. Surprisingly, the country's literacy rate among 10 to 64-year-olds is 93.1%. Functional literacy is defined as the ability to comprehend and apply skills. Here, the country’s rate is only 70.8% among the same age group. So, while one may know how to read and write or even compute, they may not know what they just read. Note that voters come from that age group. But I digress.

So, how do we stack up against other countries? The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a worldwide study “to evaluate educational systems by measuring 15-year-old school pupils' scholastic performance on mathematics, science, and reading.” The latest PISA results are from 2022, where the Philippines ranked 76 out of 81 in math, 79 out of 81 in science, and 76 out of 81 in reading. That’s nothing to be happy about. The next PISA evaluation is this year.

The thing is that students are only as good as what the teachers teach. And there’s the rub. There may be 16,000 teaching positions, but are there 16,000 good teachers? Here is where the DepEd must work overtime. The current DepEd secretary is former Senator Sonny Angara. He is very well-educated, so he has his work cut out for him. Can he improve the country’s PISA standing?

We all know the good teachers end up in private, exclusive, and expensive schools. How can the DepEd address this issue? It would be nice to see an exclusively school-educated teacher end up in a public school. But that’s not the reality on the ground. Even the DepEd is not spared by mediocrity or even downright stupidity in creating its textbooks. Some have even become political. We have heard the nightmare stories of ridiculously wrong grammar, context, and even spelling. Some are even lost in translation.

The DepEd needs to do more to address the country’s educational doldrums. It is not enough to know how to read and write. Comprehension and application are likewise important. All these rest on the shoulders of teachers with guidance from the DepEd. We need more teachers who can affect eternity.