We never ran out of witty phrases by which we call, or give tribute to, our teachers. We call them the molders of the minds or the movers of civilization. Former President Jose P. Laurel, himself a teacher, once called them “the meek molders of man’s characters.”
But how can the teachers meet so daunting a task with so meager a supply? Indeed, how can they mold the mind of others when their minds, too, need molding? How can they move a civilization when they scramble to persuade their students to follow their instructions? How can they mold someone else’s characters when they are sometimes looked up to with little respect?
I have seen how horrible the situation is in public schools. There, teachers handle four sections of more or less 75 students crammed into a small, oftentimes shabby, and poorly-ventilated classroom. The students don’t have books, and on the rare occasions that they ever got hold of a book, a dilapidated one at that, they have to share it with what—four other students? And for subjecting themselves to what some may consider as self-flagellation, they receive only about 12,000 pesos per month.
Yet what fascinates me is that they are like flowers from the rubble. Amidst the flutters of discouraging things around them, they still manage to keep their groove. Despite the very many odd things that they have to wade through, they still teach. Despite the paucity of books or the low salary, they still teach.
Perhaps the reason why they persist is that they continuously cling on to the romantic idea that in their hands, lie the noble task of molding the minds, of building up characters, of helping a fledgling fly. Some people call it madness. I think it is not.
It is, I believe, a normal response of people who have accepted the challenge of teaching and meekly resigned to the fact that “In teaching,” as Jacques Barzun said, “you cannot see the fruit of a day’s work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years.”
