Once a venerable institution getting mired

The dress code of male public school teachers until the onset of World War II used to be the formal coat and tie. Their distaff counterparts, though not in priggish Maria Clara or in Victorian primness, were likewise nattily clad.

There’s no call to revive such formal attire. Evolving fashion hankers for informality with pleasant personality without straining limited finances, or rumple decency. After all, British satirist Alexander Pope says in this didactic couplet: “Be not the first by whom the new are tried/ Nor be the last to lay the old aside.”

This piece is not about dress code per se, but just a “pasumbingay”, sort of symbolic parody of how finicky was the public schools institution of yore that valued its dignity and respectability. But now, some stark inroads are tarnishing and eroding the once untouchable integrity and propriety of this institution, now often cited in the same breath as the DPWH, BIR, Customs, DOTC, and like agencies reeking foul.

No need to tick off old stats on filth, say, bloated costs of school buildings, desks/chairs/tables/blackboards, teaching aids and devices; ginormous over-pricing of textbooks/supplemental readers/workbooks; unreasonable yearly changes of books and materials to facilitate kickbacks; abuse in forcing field subalterns to “raid” the LGUs of the special education fund (SEF), and other monkey business.

More recent repetitions of these DepEd anomalies at the local level… The latest bombshell has just smeared DepEd Cebu – despite Gov. Gwen Garcia’s penchant to stick to the straight and the narrow – as regards over-priced and poor quality pupils’ desks/chairs and teachers’ tables. A lot of explaining has to be done by the concerned Bidding and Awards Committee (BAC).

While there’s a textbook-thick law (RA 9184) on bidding and awards in government procurement of supplies and materials, to do away with graft and corruption of old, but the results as borne out by abuses often prove otherwise.

There’s that Ombudsman case of a Metro Cebu LGU on purchase of pricey computers for its public schools. This was funded by the SEF of the local school board co-chaired by the mayor and the city superintendent. The case still unresolved, the latter moved to the LGU across the channel, again, “raided” its SEF for over P19 M. Amazingly, its legal office hasn’t pursued any case on the “midnight” deal of prohibited non-textbooks. Jacking up prices, the noxious paper trail and the checks got through, some just one to three days before the new LGU executive assumed office.

There’s also the bandied resurrection of teachers’ “promotion for sale”. Or, has this offal been there all the time without let-up? A related scam is also the much talked-about “teaching position for sale” for original entry into the service, or in case of transfer from one school station to another. Can “flunkers” in teachers board exams still “grease” through the service as they used to?

Meantime, in various entrance or achievement tests for grade schools and high schools, the quality of the teaching –learning process is nothing to be proud of. Such sub-standard stats are very obvious in English or language, Science, and Math among the examinees nationwide.

Test results for teaching applicants, or teachers board exams, or promo exams for higher position, are also often much below standard. Is this the result of an attitudinal aberration spawned by letting any Juan or Maria take up teaching because of IQ mediocrity? And being graduated below par and, due to unemployment, apply for OFWs as domestic helpers?

But all may not be that grimly hopeless… There may still be that proverbial silver lining that the greater bulk of the public teachers who are mostly decent and efficient, could still overcome the system and the few corrupt school administrators and politicians now who despoil the once venerable educational institution.

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