It takes one to be one

BY ADRIAN POUL T. BLANDO

“Professionalism”

This is what the Department of Education (DepEd) has been telling the Filipinos when they released the DepEd Order No. 042, series of 2022. Many teachers reacted to this kind of policy wherein communication outside classroom hours and even mutual social media following are prohibited.

According to the office, they have been receiving sexual abuse-related complains. To them, implementing this policy is the best thing that they can do since they saw how text messages and exchange of online conversation become tools in demonizing the image of the teachers.

The instant DepEd Secretary and Vice President Sara Duterte said that there should be a line between the teacher and the learner – and friendly relationship to students outside the school is something that they should prohibited; because according to VP Duterte, there is a biasness when you are friends with someone. More so, her usual concerned heart bothered her when she remembered the stabbing incident of a student and a teacher because they are too close.

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Representative France Castro question such decision. She said that if DepEd continuously insists on gagging their staffs and removing their access to organize, to have free speech and expression, and to be able to voice out their grievances, what else is left to their workers?

In a press conference, DepEd Spokesperson Atty. Michael T. Poa defended the office, saying that the said DepEd order is just a reiteration of the Code of Conduct of Civil Servants and the professionalism stated in RA 6713 which gives the ethical standards of civil servants – including the teachers – with the intention to make DepEd professional. Poa also added that teachers should act professionally and uphold the honor of DepEd. Nonetheless, Poa, himself, said that this is not new because this is already in civil service rules. Also, according to him, they don’t want the relationship of the students and the teacher to become personal –because to him, that is something that is not natural because there should be a line.

Seeing these perspectives is already giving us the hint that these two officials are not connected to the office that they are into. They are too far from the reality of what really teaching in a classroom is. The mere fact that they are gate keeping the teachers as instruction robots and