It is with the greatest joy that I join this distinguished assembly of Filipino teachers on World Teachers’ Day.

            The great Albert Einstein once said, "It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge." Teaching is a mission. And teachers are evangelists.

            Yet the determination to produce inquiring, disciplined and critical minds is challenged everyday by the realities outside the classrooms - poverty, media, consumerism, and the internet.  The importance of inculcating the value of dignity to our students is severely undermined by another harsh reality – our teachers who are expected to teach dignity ironically cannot maintain their dignity, since their salaries provide them with little option but to take on additional jobs or even work abroad as domestic helpers.

            Ang akin pong ina ay isang guro. Sa kanya ko natutunan ang halaga ng edukasyon. Siya po ang laging nagpapaalala sa akin – madalas sa pamamagitan ng sariling halimbawa - ng halaga ng disiplina. Nirerespeto sya ng kanyang mga estudyante, dahil noong panahong yon, malaki ang respeto ng lipunan sa ating mga guro. Ako rin ay nagkaroon ng pagkakataong magturo sa mg kolehiyo at pamantasan.

            In my private life as a father, in equal partnership with my wife, I have tried to exercise to the full my right and duty as the primary educator of my children. And this is one teaching job I have enjoyed the most.

            In my present position as Vice President,  with all the things the President has put on my  plate,  whether they have to  do with OFW concerns, housing and urban development, the campaign against human trafficking and illegal recruitment, I have to be both a performing and teaching Vice President at the same time. Our people expect it, and they will settle for nothing less.

            But not all these credentials allow me to claim the honor and distinction, which the world uniquely and exclusively confers upon you today as teachers.  This is World Teachers’ Day, and it is best to remind ourselves that without your total dedication to your calling,  humanity might still be cast in darkness, sitting inside the mythical cave which Plato talks about in his famous classic, “The Republic.”  

            From the dawn of civilization to our time, society has always called upon education to provide the key to human progress.  And the Teacher has been a major pillar of that progress. No progress is possible that is not grounded on knowledge; knowledge and wisdom, like all the human virtues, increase and multiply the more they are shared with others.

            And therefore no scholar ever gains recognition or prestige without in some ways acknowledging the teacher or teachers who helped to mold or influence his/her work. 

            Today, Philippine public education is in dire straits.

            Achievement levels of our students in the basic and secondary schools are below global standards.  And our state colleges and universities suffer major budgetary cutbacks.

            The centerpiece for Philippine education reform is the increase in the number of years spent by our kids in basic and secondary school from 10 to 12 years. Without depreciating the value of this initiative, you and i will agree that this is not enough.  We should not only increase the amount of time our kids spend in school.

            Teachers must also receive the full moral and physical support due their noble vocation.  And I know that for our public school teachers in particular, there is much to do in this regard.

            Allow me to take this opportunity to announce to you that the Pag-IBIG Fund, of which i am chairman of the board, is finalizing with the department of education, a housing program for our teachers.  I understand fully well the housing situation of most, if not all our public school teachers and this is why I have decided to extend to you a program where you can avail yourselves of affordable housing through Pag-IBIG.

            Sa amin sa sektor ng pabahay, lagi naming sinasabi na sa sariling bahay nagsisimula ang magandang buhay. Sana sa programang ito, masimulan natin ang pagpapaganda sa buhay ng ating mga mahal na guro.

            A teacher informs with his/her knowledge; but with his/her values, a teacher transforms.  My teachers did not only teach me what they knew; above all they gave me the best of themselves.

            This is what makes education not simply a matter of filling a  bucket that was empty, but rather a matter of  igniting  a fire where none existed before.  

            Indeed, if our aim is to change the world as we know it, we can only do so by setting our hearts and our minds on fire. Less than that would not be good enough. For we can only change things if we change ourselves first.

            In practical terms, this means we cannot settle for mediocrity. We must constantly aim for the perfect score, as a matter of practice, as a matter of principle.

            Perfection should be our goal.  Indeed, perfection will remain elusive, but it cannot be unattainable.  In the end, our limited abilities and lack of means may not allow us to achieve it, but by constantly aiming for it, we shall  acquire  the habit of doing so, and in the process, possibly attain a level of excellence that would have been beyond our reach had we simply aimed lower.

            In education and everything else, the same standards we apply to ourselves as individuals, we should now apply to our country and people.  We need to aim for the perfect goal.  That is the only way we can compete with our global competitors.  That is the only way we can win.   That is how every other country in the world today, particularly in Asia, is playing the game.    

            In education, the challenges are daunting. Out of 700 universities around the world, the QS World University rankings for 2011, which are available online, place the best of our universities at the lower half of the lot.

            But we have not really had enough time to consider in earnest the new direction our educational system must take----regardless of what resources we have or do not have----in order to allow us to go head to head with other countries with our comparative strengths and weaknesses. We have not really had the opportunity to do anything on our own.

            Until now, we have been content to copy from the West.  But not everything now is worth copying from the West.  The time has come for us to think on our own, innovate, and learn what we can from our own neighbors in the East.

            China’s consuming obsession with education could be the first thing we may want to imitate.  By expanding its native student population to at least 20 million by 2005, and sending tens of thousands of scholars for post-graduate studies to leading universities abroad, China enlarged and upgraded its stock of human capital faster than any of its global competitors.

            From 1978 onward, Deng Xiaoping took a huge gamble when he opened up China to foreign investments and allowed Chinese scholars by the thousands to leave China for advanced studies abroad.  There was the danger that many of them would not come back, or that they would, upon their return, bring to China foreign ideas inimical to and destructive of the Chinese system.

            But they all came back, and their new knowledge powered China’s rise to global economic heights.

            What can we possibly learn from all this? The answer is obvious. Patriotism. The sense of belonging to one’s own country, and refusing to exchange that country for any other place.  That is not peculiar to the Chinese alone. Except that from the Atlantic to the Pacific, China is the main topic of conversation.

            Patriotism is a normally a function of by one’s native culture. But it can be  strengthened by education.  Where the culture has failed to engrave it upon the character of the people, a strong training in values could still  give the young people a sense of patriotism.

            This is why in some countries, a short period of national service is required to allow the youth to develop a closer identity with their country and its sovereign rights and interests.  This allows them to develop a sense of discipline which in turn allows them to respond to certain situations and challenges with patriotic fervor.

            We do not have such a service.  What used to pass for it, in the form of a modest reserve officers military training course for college students on campus, has been abolished without extended debate, and replaced with nothing.  We have had no mechanism or opportunity since then for attempting to instill discipline among the young, or to make the young lead such a movement.

            And yet wherever I have gone anywhere in the country since I became Vice President, I have heard men and women from all walks of life say how much stronger and more important a country we would be, if we but had a little more discipline in our daily life.  I am sure many of you, if not all of you, will agree.

            I am not in a position, nor would I wish to propose that we include this in our academic curriculum.  But recognizing the cumulative work that you  have done and continue to do to form the character of our young people,  I do not hesitate to call upon you to join me in launching on this world teachers’ day a movement for national discipline that will set the hearts and minds of our young people on fire.  

            This is a supreme teaching opportunity for all of us in this assembly, and I ask that we seize it and offer our people a brighter vision of the nation we could become.  Mga kababayan, magsama-sama po tayo sa ika-uunlad ng bansang Pilipinas.

            Maraming salamat po at magandang umaga sa inyong lahat.