By Dr. Rex Casiple
Last year, Iloilo City was alarmed by youngsters arrested for illegal drug cases. The police aired the possibility that drug pushers were taking advantage of the innocence of these teenagers. In other parts of the country, there were also lots of teenagers arrested because of illegal drugs.
In August 2020, one of the alleged leaders of a notorious criminal gang operating in Iloilo province was killed in a shootout with arresting lawmen in the central town of Iloilo. The group he belonged to was believed to have been involved in many gun-for-hire and robbery cases in the past decade. With these happenings, it seems that our youngsters today have forgotten the good values implanted to them by their teachers in schools.
The late President Manuel L. Quezon said, “National strength can only be built on character.” The need to strengthen Filipino values was supported by Presidential Proclamation No. 479 dated October 7, 1994 declaring the month of November of every year as Filipino Values Month. It aims to mobilize all Filipinos for nation-building by actualizing human values in daily lives as citizens and to awake all in the power of values and ideals in achieving the individual and national goals.
In 1988, the Department of Education (DepEd) formerly the Department of Education, Culture and Sports (DECS) issued an Order nationwide of providing Values Education at all three levels of the school system; the elementary, secondary and tertiary levels. This offering of Values Education aimed to develop the citizens in the country committed to building a free, democratic, peaceful, and progressive nation.
In 2003, the DepEd issued an Order of inclusion Values Education in the Basic Education Curriculum. The Order was issued to effectively reinforce the role of every teacher in values education to develop desirable values among the students; to meaningfully integrate values development in the lessons in each discipline; to ensure that values education is purposefully planned as regular lessons in the subject and not taken as incidental lessons in the process; to properly evaluate the result of interventions conducted both inside and outside the classroom; among others.
Values education is the process in education by which people give moral values to each other. It covers topics related to character development, personality development, spiritual development, citizenship and ethics. These include empathy, equal opportunities, respect for the environment, care for health, and critical thinking. Values education is our responsibility and not just of schools.
In other countries like Australia and the United Kingdom, Values Education is compulsory.
Values education helps the students become more responsible. It helps students understand life in a better way that leads them to become successful and responsible citizens of the country. It helps students to develop a strong relationship with family, relatives and friends.
Values education starts at home. It has positive academic results to students like their responsibility in doing their assignments at home; develop upon them the capacity to work independently; increase their attentiveness in class; develop in them healthy minds; among others. These good traits of a student are slowly fading in this generation.
By advocating strong values education in schools we can make this country a better country again for future generations. The strength of a nation can be built through well rounded, disciplined and patriotic countrymen equipped with good values.
Filipinos are well-known to be hospitable, respectful, loving, caring, and religious. They are the people who value their families the most. They have a strong bond with their families. Filipinos are very generous. They are one of the strongest people in the world that even though in the midst of tragedies or calamities, they remained to be strong. These are good Filipino values that we need to preserve through Values Education.
