Teachers have long been neglected by the government

There are two professionals who have been long neglected by the government: nurses and teachers. We will just let the Philippine Nurses Association speak for these medical frontliners.

I will dwell on the hardships and travails of the teachers. Since I began teaching on Aug. 21, 1962, and retired on Dec. 16, 2005, never in a single moment did I consider that it was a wasted time. I love and miss teaching.

However, I lament the fact that teachers continue to be downtrodden. They are overworked, yet underpaid. Despite their multifarious roles and responsibilities, the plight and plea of the molders of the youth continue to fall on deaf ears of the government.

I recall that in the late ’60s and early ’70s—considered the golden years of teachers’ militancy—they began demanding from the government their just and rightful salaries.

They staged mammoth rallies to call the attention of the government callous to their pitiful economic situation. They called their militant action “mass leave of absence.” Armed with constitutional and legal bases, they invoked the benefits due to them. Often cited are the provisions of Republic Act No. 4670, more known as the Magna Carta for Public School Teachers, authored and principally sponsored by former Senate president Jovito R. Salonga.

They were threatened with dismissal by then President Ferdinand E. Marcos, whose parents—Don Mariano Marcos and Doña Josefa Edralin Marcos—were teachers themselves. The protesting teachers shrugged off the threat.

Fast forward to the present.

Now that another Marcos is President—and no less than the Vice President is the education secretary—will the teachers get a better deal?

EUSEBIO S. SAN DIEGO,

founder, Kaguro, and former president, Quezon City Public School Teachers Association

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