Teachers: A privileged lot

Like it or not, this essay won as champion in the Essay Competition for English during the Education Inter-School Competition last February 28, 2009 held at the Holy Cross of Davao College. It bested five other entries from University of Immaculate Concepcion, Ateneo de Davao University, Jose Maria College, University of Southern Philippines, and University of Mindanao. It's written at the spur of the moment, so I took the liberty of editing it.
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There's a story that has become a favorite among teachers.

Once, St. Peter — typically portrayed as the bearded hard-to-please gate keeper of heaven — went into his usual rounds of screening souls. The good deeds each one had done on earth are the bases of St. Peter for choosing who gets to enter heaven. He asked one soul, a doctor, what had he done while he’s still alive. Loud and proud, the doctor said he cured the sick for free. St. Peter asked another soul, this time it was a lawyer. The lawyer said he defended the poor and oppressed. Then, St. Peter asked an engineer. The engineer said he built buildings and bridges, some of which became the marvels of the world today.

But no one seemed to impress St. Peter. A lowly soul approached St. Peter and said, “I taught them all.” Right then and there, St. Peter allowed the teacher to enter the strictly guarded gates of heaven.

The story does not in any way mean that if you’re not a teacher you can’t enter heaven. That’s not for us mere mortals to decide. Rather, the story only serves to highlight the unparalleled importance of teachers.

Throughout the ages, there was not a man or a woman who was not influenced by a teacher. Helen Keller, who lost her eyesight at a very tender age, would not have become a successful writer if it were not for Anne Sullivan. Despite the many odds she herself went through while growing up, Sullivan opted to be a teacher and taught Keller to learn, to believe that she can beat her own odds, too. Guy de Maupassant would not have bequeathed us his stories had Gustave Flaubert not acted as his literary guardian.

Indeed, there could be no Plato without Socrates; no Aristotle without Plato; no Alexander the Great without Aristotle; no Jose Rizal without Teodora, his mother and first teacher. So important teachers are that Cicero once quipped, “What nobler employment, or more valuable to the state, than that of the man who instructs the rising generation?”

But while society places teaching on a pedestal as a most noble profession, it doesn’t mean that teachers are beyond reproach. There are times when teachers are tangled in a controversy themselves. Who must have not heard of a teacher sexually taking advantage of her students? Or a teacher beating his students? Or a teacher humiliating his students for not giving the right answer to a simple question?

Indeed, many controversies have already been documented in which a teacher plays the big, bad, bully. Yet teaching continues to exercise a fascination over the best and the brightest youths in this country. Perhaps it may have something to do with the fact that no other profession exerts far-reaching influence than teaching.

No profession also brings enormous joy than teaching. As those seasoned teacher would attest, when you’re part of someone else’s growth, you can’t help but be contented that you have done your just share.

No doubt a teacher is secure in his place as the most favored professional on earth. I said this before and I say it again. People may thank doctors for curing their sicknesses and saving their lives; lawyers for freely rendering their legal services and defending them in litigation. But behind all these people are teachers who worked relentlessly, teachers without whose knowledge, competence and genuine affection, we surely couldn’t have doctors, lawyers, etc.

Many shudder at the statement that teaching is the profession that teaches all other professions. But when one asks who’s behind the success of several successful men and women, one finds that it is somehow the teacher who is responsible for what that successful man or woman has become.

Ah, little wonder why St. Peter let the teacher enter the gates of heaven first before everyone else.