MANILA, Oct. 4, 2012?They say the youth is the future of the nation. But how bright or bleak the future of the nation also depends on the kind of teachers who mentor the country’s future movers and shakers.
As the nation marks Teachers’ Day tomorrow, October 5, the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines (CEAP) underscored the need for private and public schools to hire teachers who will be exemplary models of Filipino values and Christian virtues to their students.
In an interview with YouthPinoy, CEAP president Fr. Gregorio Bañaga, C.M. reminded school administrators that the types of teachers they hire will affect the kind of students who will later on play vital roles in the future of the nation.
“The business of educational institutions is not only to make their students competent or to give high quality of education to prepare them for professional work. It also includes imparting values through values formation,” he said.
Bañaga, who is also president of Adamson University, said teachers should be their students’ foremost models of values since “they say that values are not taught, but caught.”
“Students catch values when they see their teachers modeling them. If you ask alumni, what they remember most about their teachers are not the classes they gave them but the particular traits and values they espoused and students appreciate,” he added.
Value-laden
Bañaga stressed the need to hire value-laden teachers if schools are bent on producing students who will be responsible members of the community and society. CEAP is a network of some 1,345 Catholic schools, colleges and universities nationwide.
“Part of what we school administrators must do is to select the teachers well because the values you want to remain with your students should be in the personality of their teachers,” he said.
Bañaga, who is also president of Adamson University, said the selection process should be tougher for Catholic Schools.
“If you talk about Catholic education and Catholic values, the best way to teach these is to get teachers who live the values you want students to learn. This is why it is important for teachers to be exemplary models of virtues and values,” he added.
On Friday, the National Teachers’ Month will culminate with a celebration of Teachers’ Day, a significant day of appreciation for the sacrifices and dedication of those in the teaching profession. (YouthPinoy)
Watch YouthPinoy’s Teachers’ Day presentation here (hyperlink to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_BhK2R8eaE&list=UUeGZY2YHtyqSshgu035bSxg&index=1&feature=plcp)
