Teacher Anna's Lessons for the Day

Spinning off from Alex Lacson's book, entitled: 12 Little Things Every Filipino Can Do to Help Our Country, I asked my students to make an essay on two little things they can do as Lyceans to help our country. I had them present a summary of what they wrote in front of class and the things that they suggested they could do to help our country surprised me. 

The one dominant suggestion was to follow simple rules and regulations and become disciplined citizens. It hit me! That was exactly what this country needed—for its citizens to start following rules and abide by regulations of the different institutions they are connected with—if everyone would do that, we will definitely have a peaceful, corrupt-free, harmonious Philippines. If only all government officials become role models for its citizenry by using the Constitution to good and constantly referring to it in making decisions, then probably our country wouldn't be in the state it is in. I then remembered the movie Bata, Bata Pano Ka Ginawa. One line that hit me was from Vilma Santos' character, Lea Bustamente, to adopt from its Filipino version, she said: "It is easy to explain how a child is created. What is hard to explain is how to mold every child into a decent individual. If every child grew up to become a decent citizen, then we would have created a decent society that we could be proud of bestowing to the future generation." True. We have to strive to teach decency to our children so that they will be able to govern a decent society. The most simple way to do this is to follow rules and regulations and striving hard to become disciplined. We may never achieve this perfectly but we can at least try by making sure that rules are set and implemented. We may slide from the norm for reasons beyond our control but we could always make things right again as best we could to go back to its status quo.

Another suggestion that my students gave was to pray—pray for our country so that it can survive the challenges ahead, pray for the candidates of the coming election so that they would learn to accept the results of democracy, and pray for the registered voters to make decisions dictated by their hearts and conscience. For if humans are weak, divine intervention would always be the best option. 

Today, I learned valuable lessons from my students. It was a humbling experience but at the same time, I am proud to have had the opportunity to touch the lives of these students who give me hope that with them around, the future of this country may have some light after all...