Confidently smart with a heart

Post date: Apr 25, 2018 8:53:16 AM

By: Andrea S. Irangan

Education plays a vital role in nation building. It is the process of transforming individuals from learners to builders, from explorers to developers, and from observers to change makers. Time to time, we have been in awe in witnessing advance technology, genius minds creating state-of-the-art equipment, and skyscrapers gazing at humans. Time to time, our society is defined by how intelligent its people and how its members collectively devise of solutions to our nation’s countless problems. Yet time to time, we are still left in awe how these situations of immorality continue to plague our society.

Education, therefore, does not only mean cultivating the minds that will yield innovations and ingenuity but also means creating individuals who are morally upright. Facts, lessons, histories, ideas, and information, I believe, can be easily achieved through continuous reading and studying. These are the things that are usually easy to be learned and easy to be taught. However, teaching values takes more than reading and studying. The abovementioned problems faced by our society are moral problem and therefore requires moral solution. It is in this sense that is just right to say that more than having intelligent youth, what we more needed are individuals who adhere to the principle of equality, equity, and truth. What we need, in these trying times, are individuals who can commit themselves in keeping our democracy protected, in keeping justice fair and true, and in keeping the unity of the Filipino people. Those seem to be visions of idealism yet the things that are happening around us are nothing but truth. This situation entails a tougher task for teachers to monitor and correct wrongdoings at an early age of students. This situations entails a larger call for teachers to be facilitators of value formation, of teaching students that no one should experience being bullied, and that no one gets above the law.

This is a daunting task in which we must always promise to be doing every day because some fall in the pit of normalcy, of just lecturing the students without giving enough time and attention to see how they behave and how they grow. School is where values are formed. School is where relationships are tested and formed. School is the microcosm of the society. So we must give extra effort in being role models to these children because by doing so, we teach them that we can still be good in a world of people doing wrong.

Indeed, we do not just teach the minds, but we also teach the hearts.