Introduction
After graduating with an AB English degree in 1979 from Philippine Christian University (Taft Avenue, Manila) and finishing my Education units in Philippine Normal College 1981, I enrolled in PCU for my master's degree. Some of my PCU professors were Dean Tuvera and Victor Montes. For my masteral thesis, I presented to Dean Tuvera my plan of doing a survey of Philippine short stories in English that portray teachers. I remember spending hours reading literature books and anthologies in the PCU library and in the nearby National Library.
As you can read from the discussion below, I did find several Philippine short stories in English that portray teachers. The most notable short stories I found were “The Visitation of the Gods” by Gilda Cordero Fernando and “Zita” by Arturo B. Rotor. I also found out that the author who wrote the most about schoolteachers in his stories was Bienvenido N. Santos. (I also found a brief mention of a schoolteacher in a story by Julie Yap Daza, a well-known newspaper columnist and TV host in the 1980s.)
I didn’t continue writing my masteral thesis because I thought that I didn’t have enough references about schoolteachers from Philippine short stories in English. Sometime in the early 1980s, I wrote an article based on my research and submitted it as an entry to the Palaca Awards. I didn't win, but later on, I submitted the article to Focus Magazine, which was owned and edited by my favorite essayist, Kerima Polotan Tuvera. Sometime in 1985, Focus Magazine published my article. I was so happy because I held Kerima Polotan Tuvera in high esteem; I wore out through repeated reading my copies of her collections of essays — “Adventures in a Forgotten Country” and “Author’s Choice.” And, as far as I can tell, she didn’t edit any word or sentence in my article.
Teachers and a Dance Called Tango
People from all walks of life have the notion that teaching is a profession that promises little in terms of financial remuneration and a lot in terms of work and frustration. Among Filipino families, the parents would always think of setting off their brightest sons or daughters into engineering, medicine, or law. The teaching profession always comes last in their consideration of a career, and is often reserved for the dullest kid in the family or for the daughter who’s showing inclinations towards being an old maid!
“What I mean to say is, hell, what’s the use of going through all the palabas? As I always say,” Mr. Sawit raised his arm and pumped it vigorously in the air, “let’s get to the heart of what matters!”
Miss Noel looked up with interest. “You mean get into the root of problems?”
“Hell no!” the English supervisor said, “I mean the dance! I always believe there’s no school problem that a good round of tango will not solve!”
“The Visitation of the Gods” by Gilda Cordero Fernando
How true are these impressions about teachers and the teaching profession?
It has been said that literature is a mirror of life, that when we want to learn about life, we should study literature. In this light, how has Philippine literature, specifically the short story in English, portrayed the schoolteacher and the teaching profession?
Other questions that can be raised in relation to this issue are the following:
- What are the motivations of people who go into the teaching profession?
- What are the rewards of being a teacher?
- What problems do teachers have?
- How are supervisors and other school officials portrayed?
- How do students regard their teachers?
- How does society regard teachers and the teaching profession?
The Motivations of Teachers
Vicente Rivera Jr. in his story “Unseasonable Sun” (1953) portrays a physically handicapped person who goes into teaching as a means of escaping reality: “He had come to the town because suddenly there was nothing for him anymore in the city. After the war it seemed as if all at once he walked alone. And when he read the ad in the paper about the need for a teacher in this town he had never seen, he came at once.”
“There are thousands of teachers. They’re mostly disillusioned but they go on teaching; it’s the only place for a woman to go.”
“The Visitation of the Gods” by Gilda Cordero Fernando
In “A Time of Peace,” Rivera Jr. portrays a soldier who, after being discharged from the army, burrows into a teaching job without finishing college.
Arturo B. Rotor in his famous short story “Zita” introduces his readers to Mr. Reteche, a Renaissance man who could tackle all subjects whether English composition, science, literature or social graces. Rotor describes how this one kind of a teacher captivates his students:
“ .. afternoons he would draw the whole crowd of village boys from their game of leapfrog or patintero and bring them with him. And they would go home hours after sunset with the wonderful things that Mr. Reteche had told them, why the sea was green, the sky blue, what one who was strong and fearless might find at that exact place where the sky met the sea. They would be flushed and happy and bright eyed, for he could stand on his head longer than any of them, dig for crabs faster, send a pebble skimming over the breast of Anayat Bay farthest .... And his pupils now remembered those mornings he received their flowers, the camia which had fainted away at her own fragrance, the kampupot with the night dew stilltrembling in its heart, received with a smile and forgot the lessons of the day and told them all about those princesses and fairies who dwelt in flowers, why the dama de noche must have the darkness of the night to set off its fragrance, how the petal of the ylang-ylang, crushed and soaked in some liquid, would one day touch the lips of some wondrous creature in some faraway land whose eyes were blue and hair golden.”
Mr. Reteche, evidently a well-read and cultured man, however did not come to teach in this little island of broken cliffs and coconut palms out of any altruistic motive; he was escaping from the gross artificiality he found in his society and from the unhappiness born of his relationship with a woman.
Kerima Polotan in her story “The Sounds of Sunday” has for her main character Emma Gorrez who goes back to teaching after an unhappy stay in the Big City and after breaking up with her husband. She sees the teaching profession, however, as part of her ideal life:
“Even after she had begun to teach again at Plaridel High, she heard nothing to indicate that people were wondering why she and her two sons lived by themselves. It was the quiet and modest life that she had wanted. Each day, she walked the boys to the primary school building atop Manressa Knoll and then turned downhill again towards the high school.”
Not all teachers portrayed in Philippine short stories in English, however, go to teaching as a means of escape from harsh realities. Some also see teaching as a noble profession.
Carlos Beltran in “Green Hills of Bantayan” portrays a head teacher who has devotedly been at his job for twenty-one long years and a new BSE graduate who placed third in the competitive examinations and gladly goes back to his alma mater even though it was located in an out-of-the-way place.
Salud del Rosario in her story “Faded Bandanna” tells of a woman of forty who has grown old in the teaching profession, has remained single and received a pay increase only once in twenty years, and yet could say:
“She felt that she would not give up her job for the world. How silly it was for her to think the children insufferably dull. For this meeting with the boy whom she loved when he was seven, this meeting with the grateful boy whose eyes that spoke turned misty when they parted, this made her feel that there were other things worth more than a year’s pay.”
Such teachers as these may be classified as the “missionary type,” and Gilda Cordero Fernando in “The Visitation of the Gods” sums up their motivations when her heroine Miss Noel muses at the end of the story:
“Dear perceptive Leon. He wanted to become a lawyer. Pugad Lawin’s first. What kind of a piker was she to betray a dream like that? What would happen to him if she wasn’t there to teach him his p’s and f’s? Deep in the night and the silence outside flickered an ocassional gaslight in a hut on the mountain shaped like a sleeping woman. Was Porfirio deep in a Physics book? (Oh, but he musn’t blow up anymore pigshed!) What was Juanita composing tonight? (An ode on starlight on the trunk of a banana tree?) Leon walked swiftly under the window: in Miss Noel’s eyes he had already won a case. Why do I have to be such a darn missionary?”
Cirilo F. Bautista in his story “Ritual” (Palanca awardee for 1971) portrays Roy who once worked as a newspaper reporter and who entered teaching as a means of escape from his broken marriage. In utter contrast to him (and to almost all of the teachers portrayed in Philippine literature, whether they are of the missionary type or of the kind who see teaching as a refuge from harsh realities) is Carlos Dayleg, an Ifugao native, who sees himself not as a teacher in the traditional sense but as an agent of social change.
Dayleg, who took up philosophy and pedagogy for his university degrees, reveals the moving force in his life when he says:
“It’s not because my people are uneducated that they cling to ancient traditions but it’s a reason civilized men like you don’t and can’t fully understand. But what must be obvious to you is that I do things to break these traditions. I believe it’s about time some of these were challenged.”
And how does Carlos Dayleg go about challenging these traditions through his work as a teacher?
“He had gathered thirty of the old villagers, marched them to the schoolhouse where before the blackboard topped by a picture of a severe, unsmiling Rizal he lectured them on the advantages of forsaking Lumawig and adopting the ways of the Christians. His listeners sat with the passivity of a people used to the hard exigencies of mountain life, their faces solid as the rocks the school was perched on, neither nodding nor shaking their heads, for they could not follow the ramifications of this strange, exotic dialectics, taking in the words more out of respect for this young man who had been to the university than out of interest in what he was saying; a few of them, who had come only thinking there would be planning afoot for a forthcoming feast, appeared confused.”
It’s clear from what has been presented above that the majority of those who go into teaching do so to escape from bitter and unwanted realities; they are like the sand on the seashore, rough, unsightly, and far too common. Those who enter teaching in order to make a difference in the lives of their students are the beautiful shells washed up on the seashore, a prized possession for anyone. The teachers who see themselves as agents of social change are like precious pearls, few and far between; one has to dive deeply into the ocean to look for them.
Hazards of the Profession; Low Pay, Hard Work, and Contributions
Conrado V. Pedroche in “The New Sky” depicts two of the most common hazards of the teaching profession — low pay and hard work. At the beginning of the story, Pedroche’s main character narrates:
“Mother was a very courageous woman. Father left her with nine children and very little money. There was the farmland, of course, but it yielded so little. Sister was teaching but brother Carlos was still in college. How was it possible for mother to see him through school now that Father was gone?“
The focus of the narration is on the mother, but what is implied is that even though the sister referred to was working as a teacher, her salary was almost of no consequence to the family’s financial problems.
Towards the end of the story, the main character recounts:
“Once in a while (mother and sister) would come to see us. They would bring us fruits and vegetables, rice and milk. They had left town and were now living quite alone in the farm. It was good for sister to stop teaching because of her failing health.“
The sister’s failing health could have been due to the general poverty of their family; however, it is more than probable that she was overworked as a teacher. (The classic prewar series of articles “Teachers Are Also People” written by Maria Luna Lopez mentions a pavilion in the Quezon Institute built primarily for the benefit of tubercular teachers.)
Speaking about the dismal salary a teacher gets, the main character in Salud del Rosario’s “Faded Bandanna” has been teaching for twenty years and received a raise in salary only once. As if the low pay and hard work were not enough calvary, the teacher also has to contend with the perennial contributions for just about anything under the sun.
The head teacher in the story “Unseasonable Sun” tiptoes up to a fellow teacher and not too coyly pleads:
“My home economics class is planning to bake some cakes and cook up a few special dishes in honor of the new school stove. Some of the teachers thought it would be a good idea if we the teachers contributed a little something to buy the materials needed. You know, flour and baking powder and such.”
In “The Visitation of the Gods,” Gilda Cordero Fernando reveals how the lavish meal prepared for the supervisors was paid for:
“The menu consisted of a 14-1b suckling pig, macaroni soup, baked lapu-lapu, morcon, leche flan and ice cream, the total cost of which had already been deducted from the teachers’ pay envelopes.”
The teachers’ job is not over even after their official hours in school because they’re often conscripted into very unofficial duties by the principal and other school officials. Gilda Cordero Fernando in her story mentioned above details how teachers are taken advantage of by school officials:
“The lady teachers were, moreover, for lack of household help, ‘invited’ to the principal’s house to make a special salad, stuff a chicken or clean the silverware. But this certainly was much less than expected of the vocational staff the woodworking instructor who was detailed to do all the painting and repair work on the principal’s house, the Poultry instructor whose stock of leghorns was depleted after every party of the Olbeses, and the Automotive instructor who was forever being detailed behind the wheel of the principal’s jeep and Miss Noel had to take it all in stride as one of the hazards of the profession.”
Teaching indeed is shark-infested waters and the poor teachers tread furiously to keep their heads above the water with the millstones of low pay, hard work and contributions are hung around their necks.
Supervisors: The Scourge of Teachers
Salud del Rosario in her story “Faded Bandanna” sums up how teachers generally feel towards their supervisors when her main character remarks: “How nice it would be to be free from supervisors.”
Miss Inocencio, the substitute teacher in N.V.M. Gonzales’ “Blue Skull and the Dark Palms,” stood in fear of the provincial school inspector, trying her utmost best to give a good impression of the way she was conducting the affairs of the small barrio school so that she could be given a permanent position. The motives of the middle-aged school inspector, moreover, are apparently not so pristine and innocent when he offers Miss Inocencio a better job:
“Perhaps you’d consider a transfer to a much bigger school? Mr. Vidal continued. There’s a vacancy at the provincial capital. Yes, why not? The kindness in his voice did not escape her, yet she could say nothing in turn. She became tongue-tied over this prospect of becoming his protege.”
Perhaps the most scathing attack on supervisors can be found in “The Visitation of the Gods”; the title alone reveals author Gilda Cordero Fernando’s (and the teachers’) attitude towards supervisors. A microcosm of the teachers’ calvary in the face of the annual visitation of the superintendent, district and division supervisors (the “gods”), this story details with scalpel precision the experiences of harried and hurried teachers, climaxing in the clash between the idealistic English teacher and the battle-scarred, pragmatic English supervisor.
The opening salvo against supervisors throws them into a comedy of errors: “There was a great to-do in the weapons carrier. The academic supervisor’s pabaon of live crabs from Mapili had gotten entangled with the kalamay in the Home Economics supervisor’s basket. The district supervisor had mislaid his left shoe among the squawking chickens, and someone had stepped on the puto seco.”
And how does Pugad Lawin High School get a good rating in the visitation? Miss Noel, the idealistic English teacher, remarks:
“I overheard one of your own companions say just a while ago that if our lechon was crisper than that of the preceding school, if our pabaon were more lavish, we would get a higher efficiency rating.”
Miss Noel also takes potshots at the sweepstakes agent supervisor, who makes a ticket out of the teacher’s clearance for the withdrawal of his pay, and the mischievous supervisor pursuing a giggling teacher down in the playground.
The worst that a supervisor could be is summed up in the person of Mr. Sawit, the English supervisor. Steel cold pragmatism is the tattoo stamped on his bureaucratic soul as he observes:
“Education is not so much a matter of brains as getting along with one’s fellowmen or else how could I have risen to my present position? All the fools I started out with are still head teachers in godforsaken barrios, and how can one be idealistic in a mudhole?”
The counterpunching Miss Noel herself has painfully realized what Mr. Sawit has put so cynically well:
“During the five years that I’ve taught, I’ve done my best to live up to my ideals. Yet I please nobody. It’s the same old narrow conformism and favor-currying. What matters is not how well one teaches but how well one has learned the art of pleasing the powers-that-be and it’s the same all the way up.”
Confronted by a teacher whose ideals about the teaching profession still burned brightly within her despite all that she had been through, Mr. Sawit gives Miss Noel a piece of his cynical mind:
“So you want to change the world. I’ve been in the service a long time, Miss Noel. Seventeen years. This bald spot on my head was caused mostly by new teachers like you who want to set the world on fire. In my younger days I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend you for expulsion for your rash opinions. But I’ve grown old and mellow I recognize spunk and am willing to give it credit. But spunk is only hardheadedness when not directed towards the proper channels. But you’re young enough and you’ll learn, the hard way, singed here and there but you’ll learn.”
Definitely singed all over, Mr. Sawit also displays a sexist prejudice when he pontificates:
“There are thousands of teachers. They’re mostly disillusioned but they go on teaching it’s the only place for a woman to go.”
The sarcasm pours on as Gilda Cordero Fernando describes the parting of the sexist supervisor and the firebrand teacher who by now, as Mr. Sawit must have congratulated himself, must have been sufficiently warned, chastened, and enlightened:
“Mr. Sawit’s hot trembling hand (the same mighty hand that fathered the 8-A’s that made or broke English teachers) found its way swiftly around her waist, and hot on her forehead, Miss Noel endured the supreme insult of a wet, fatherly kiss.”
Adding insult to injury, the principal and the school superintendent conspire further to compound the teachers’ sad plight:
“Towards the end of the meal, Mr. Alava inquired casually of the principal where he could purchase some buntal hats. Elated, the latter replied that it was the cottage industry right here in Pugad Lawin. They were, however, the principal said, not for sale to colleagues. The superintendent shook his head and said he insisted on paying, and brought out his wallet, upon which the principal was so offended he would not continue eating. At last the superintendent said, all right, companero, give me one or two hats, but the principal shook his head and ordered his alarmed teachers to round up fifty.”
There are thousands of teachers, and, indeed, they are mostly disillusioned. For this anomalous situation, the supervisors and school officials of Mr. Sawit’s ilk can take much of the credit.
Security of Tenure
The substitute teachers experience a lot of uncertainties and difficulties for they are often at the mercy of supervisors and other school officials.
N.V.M. Gonzales in “The Blue Skull and the Dark Palms” describes Miss Inocencio, a substitute teacher yearning for a permanent position:
“She felt she was making a fair, if not indeed a good impression upon the school inspector. He would give her an excellent efficiency rating, and perhaps but oh, how could she think of it? She was hardly three months in the service, and a mere substitute at that. Still I should like to be well thought of, she told herself.”
Gilda Cordero Fernando in “The Visitation of the Gods” pictures how permanent positions are auctioned off by supervisors:
“How often had the temporary teachers had to court the favor of their supervisors with lavish gifts of sweets, de hilo, portfolios and what-not, hoping that they would be given a favorable commendation! A permanent position for the highest bidder!”
Keeping one’s job often depends on the efficiency rating a teacher gets. And how does a teacher get a good rating? The English supervisor in Gilda Cordero Fernando’s story gives a classic reply: “I shall give you a good rating after this visitation because you remind me of my younger sister, if for no other reason.”
Mr. Sawit, the English supervisor, also dangles before Miss Noel a transfer to a better school in the city on the condition that she learn how to curb her tongue and toe the line. The English supervisor glibly adds that he can swing this appointment simply because he is related to the school superintendent.
Even the permanent teachers do not have smooth sailing as the English supervisor reminds the headstrong Miss Noel: “There will be a reclassification next month ... the (school principal) is out to get you - he can too, on grounds of insubordination, you know that.”
What are the grounds of insubordination for which a teacher could lose his job? Gilda Cordero Fernando describes how flimsy and arbitrary these grounds could be:
“She had long been at odds with the principal, or rather the principal’s wife ever since the plump Mrs. Olbes had come to school in a fashionable sack dress and caught on Miss Noel’s mouth a half-effaced smile .... That Miss Noel spent her vacations taking a summer course for teachers in Manila made matters even worse for Mr. Olbes believed that the English teacher attended these courses for the sole purpose of showing them up. And Miss Noel’s latest wrinkle, the Integration Method, gave Mr. Olbes a pain where he sat.”
Emma Gorrez in Kerima Polotan’s "Sounds of Sunday" is one teacher who did not have to worry about being a substitute or permanent teacher nor about efficiency ratings; she slides back into her old teaching job effortlessly and in such short notice because the school principal was an old suitor of hers!
The making of lesson plans is pictured as a tedious job, something which teachers, if they had the choice, would gladly do away with.
Carlos F. Beltran in “Green Hills of Bantayan” describes a teacher agonizing over a lesson plan: “The unfinished lesson plan lay before him. Painstakingly, he tried to follow the sequence of tomorrow’s lesson but they were a tangled mess.”
Lesson planning, along with the use of the official course outlines, is also seen to be a hindrance to teachers’ creativity and, therefore, their effectiveness. Miss Inocencio, the substitute teacher in “The Blue Skull and the Dark Palms,” vacillates between picking her lessons from the garden of the official course outline or escaping over the wall with her creative ideas:
“She arranged the books on her desk, pulled out her lesson plan and drew the cap off her pen wondering how best to conduct the next day’a class. Certainly there ought to be something new, something no one had done before, something not in the course of study book, which would benefit the children. But would the service allow for originality? Right there before her was the official paper-bound course outline and already it was checking on her thoughts.”
Miss Noel in “The Visitation of the Gods” also laments how lesson plans intrude upon her social life: “Oh, to be able to lie in a hammock on the top of the hill and not have to worry about the next lesson plan! To have time to meet people, to be pretty, to write.”
Take away the creativity of teachers and you emasculate their effectiveness and enthusiasm. Burden them daily with lesson plans and you rob them of the opportunity of meeting people. No wonder so many teachers end up as old maids.
Students: The Teacher’s Reward and Punishment
The Filipino student as portrayed in Philippine fiction displays the chameleon-like capacity for turning from a real angel to a little monster.
Lino, the physically handicapped teacher in “Unseasonable Sun,” discovers to his dismay how the model behavior of his students suddenly changed after the first few weeks of classes: “The youngsters that he thought trusted in him, believed in him, in their young unfeelingness, thrust these broken pieces of himself upon him. It was nothing at first, just smiles, surreptitious laughter, a glance that fell uneasily on his mind. And then it came out in words, bold, well-defined. He’s funny, he’s old, he’s lame. How would you like to dance with him?”
On the other hand, Mr. Reteche, the Renaissance man in “Zita,” experiences that deep affection that often blooms between students and the teacher who students know really care about them: “Little boys came up to (Zita’s) house and she wiped away their tears and told them that (the schoolteacher) was coming back coming back, soon, soon.”
Bienvenido N. Santos in his story “Early Harvest” describes the simple and charming joys of a teacher and her students: “I remembered how every year before the Christmas vacation, our teacher in the barrio school made us go to the peak of the Sinicaran hills for the agoho trees that looked like pine trees. We used empty gasoline cans for the base and placed stones and rocks in the can to keep the trees steady. We decorated the trees with tinsel and stars. We wrapped little gifts and sang Christmas songs all week. When we sang Joy to the World, Miss Nahol put her fingers on her lips and stopped us, saying, You don’t have to shout. It was fun. We exchanged gifts and ate ice cream and cookies on the last day of school.”
The history teacher in Jaime Lim’s “Outward Journey,” however, does not fare as well as Mr. Reteche and Miss Nahol, becoming exasperated when she encounters a group of sullen, uninterested students: “Mrs. Renes ... had sent me (to the school library) indirectly when she had shrilled indignantly in class, What! Nobody knows where the Mediterranean is! All right, assignment for next meeting then ....”
Society and the Teaching Profession
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“Shirley was Lu’s classmate at Xavier U where they were taking BSE Ed or some other equally idiotic course.”
“Outward Journey” (1973) by Jaime Lim |
The coming of the schoolteacher in “Zita” (1930) merited a reception committee composed of the municipal president, the parish priest, the hacendero who owned almost all the coconuts in the little island of broken cliffs and coconut palms, the herb doctor, and even the village character.
The island folk later on looked up with concern when they thought the schoolteacher wanted to leave already.
“The Blue Skull and the Dark Palms” (set in a small barrio haunted by the recent memories of the war) features Miss Inocencio, a teacher, and Mr. Vidal, a school official, who are addressed not by their names but by their positions: “Three women came up the house and after a respectful Good evening, Mr. School Inspector, and Good evening, Lady School-teacher, they wiped their bare feet upon the coir door mat, untied their black kerchiefs and filed quietly in the sala.”
Today in the 1980’s, teachers are referred to only by their family names and without the appelations Miss, Mrs., or Mister. Teaching is seen as an idiotic course, and has been relegated to the backwaters of careers.
The Life of a Teacher: Material for Great Fiction
The Philippine short story in English as shown above portrays both the seamy side and the redeeming graces of the teaching profession.
Teaching is indeed often a thankless task with the poor teacher hounded on all sides by low pay, hard work, exploitative supervisors and ungrateful students. It also has often been made a refuge of people escaping from harsh realities; the quality of persons going into teaching thus leaves much to be desired.
There are some teachers, however, who remain true to their ideals, despite all the cards being stacked up against them; they lend credence to the badly mauled notion that teaching is the noblest of all professions.
The most precious nugget unearthed in this study however does not concern teachers and the teaching profession per se; the spade has turned up teachers whose lives and concerns take center stage in some of the most memorable short stories written by the giants of Philippine literature. The life of the lowly schoolteacher does indeed provide the stuff for great and enduring fiction.
Surely that is an uplifting thought for teachers everywhere.
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