Valuing teachers

How fitting indeed that the lone Filipino selected for a Ramon Magsaysay Award this year is a public school teacher who fords rivers, hikes mountain trails and risks his safety by riding a public bus and a  habal-habal  (retrofitted commuter motorcycle) to reach his school in Pegalongan outside Davao City. Once there, he not only teaches youngsters belonging to the Matigsalog cultural community but also leads the entire community in creating a food self-sufficiency program as well as sustainable livelihoods.

Randy Halasan, 31, a native of Davao City, has spent the last seven years teaching in Pegalongan. In those years, he not only helped educate Matigsalog children but also led the entire community to plan a food self-sufficiency drive, so that today Pegalongan farmers “have a collectively-owned rice and corn mill, a seed bank, a cattle dispersal project and a horse for transporting their produce.”

Although a public school teacher’s main vocation is to educate young people, helping mold them into productive and responsible citizens, a teacher is likewise a natural community leader and organizer. Because Filipinos put a high value on education and learning, teachers are respected, their views listened to, their leadership sought.

This must have been the case with Halasan, who, despite his youth when he first arrived in Pegalongan, was able to forge a community spirit that will now allow the people a more fruitful, sustainable way of life.

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The recognition, I believe, is not just for Halasan but for all the other men and women who dedicate their lives to the vocation of teaching.

Often unheralded, frequently underpaid, usually overworked, teachers are hailed and honored in the “generic” sense, but at the individual level are overlooked for public approbation, especially when compared to politicians and celebrities.

While those in other professions and callings at least have their higher compensation and esteem to cushion the mind-numbing and soul-crushing demands of workaday lives, teachers toil in anonymity and suffer from indignities. Much of this stems from their relatively low rung in society, with some young people—often their students—looking down on them as “losers” who, because they seemingly cannot compete in the job market, choose the safe way out.

And yet, where would all of us be without our teachers? Where would we have ended up if we did not find mentors who recognized our uniqueness and our gifts, spent time to nurture our abilities, and shared whatever knowledge and wisdom they had accumulated?

Halasan is still in his 30s, and who knows what he might yet achieve in years to come? But even if he were to quit teaching right now, he would already have served his students and his community well, and done his country a world of good.

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Other recipients of the Ramon Magsaysay Award, often called the Asian version of the Nobel Prize, include Chinese journalist Hu Shuli who hails from a family of journalists and was recognized for her investigative journalism.

Also from China is environmental lawyer Wang Canfa, whose organization provides legal aid to victims of pollution as well as to the suspension of environmentally dangerous projects. I am sure that he has as well garnered a long list of enemies for this pioneering work.

Sharing with Halasan a passion for helping her country’s indigenous communities, Saur Marlina Manurung from Indonesia was cited for her “passion to protect and improve the lives of Indonesia’s forest people.” She founded Sokola, a group of volunteer teachers and “Orang Rimba” or forest people youth to provide basic literacy lessons for children, and skills to cope with changes in the environment.

While other awardees were cited for their work in preparing their people for present and future challenges, Omara Khan Masoudi of Afghanistan was cited for his efforts to protect and preserve the past, launching a campaign “for the restoration of historical monuments and the rebuilding of museums that were severely damaged by civil strife, bombings, looting and willful destruction of the Taliban.”

To his countryfolk and to other people as well, Masoudi offers this advice: “A nation stays alive only when it can keep its history and culture alive.”

A nonprofit organization in Pakistan that runs schools for underprivileged youth, The Citizens Foundation (TCF) was cited for its social vision to provide “quality education” for all.

Founded in 1995 by six Pakistani business leaders, TCF grew from an initial five schools and 800 students to the present-day roster of 1,000 schools with more than 145,00 students.

Indeed, education is key to the development of a robust citizenry, whether the learners be youngsters from tribes learning survival skills, a nation rediscovering its glorious past, or even a government straddling the challenges of development and environmental preservation.

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“Rak of Aegis,” an original Filipino musical based on the songs of the local rock group Aegis, will have a fund-raising show on Aug. 10 to benefit survivors of Typhoon “Yolanda.”

The 3 p.m. matinee show is meant to raise funds for a groundbreaking psychosocial program for Yolanda survivors in Tacloban.

Dr. June Pagaduan-Lopez, a psychiatrist, cancer survivor and sister in TOWNS, is directing the program.

That “Rak of Aegis,” which has received glowing reviews and is being restaged in response to growing public demand, should help raise funds for Yolanda survivors is only proper. Staged at the Peta theater in Quezon City, the musical tells the story of an urban poor community regularly besieged by floods and other disasters. And yet its residents bravely—and musically—soldier on.

For inquiries, please get in touch with Pagaduan-Lopez and Peta.