IN THE GUISE OF BEING NEUTRAL

http://withoutwalls-fandc.blogspot.com/2012/01/temperature-of-spit.html

 

One very smart public school principal in one of my classes in the graduate school mentioned the latest program that is now being implemented in the public school that sort of again shocked me.  The new program says the school has to maintain being neutral such that students should AVOID MENTIONING GOD.  Praying is no longer encouraged so as no to put any bias to any religion.  Since he is a principal I do understand that regardless of his belief, he is submitting to the mandate as instructed to them - the leaders of the school in one of those school principal's conferences. 

That statement produced flooded comments from our classmates.  One of those that captured my attention was from a priest that says "we are putting ourselves on a dangerous ground acting and doing what US has instructed its own public schools.  The Philippines has slowly become  an image of the western culture".

What would become of us?  In the guise of neutrality, we are fooling ourselves to catch the dictate of a group of lawmakers from outside of our country that are themselves not believer in our God.  So they feel that it is so easy for them to make us swallow some of their laws that they are implementing in their own country.  Again in the guise of being neutral, they want God to be out of the picture.  

I mentioned in class that perhaps we have missed to understand what being neutral really meant.  As a teacher myself I do understand that being neutral could mean facilitating.  Facilitating could mean allowing each student to speak up and let out their hearts including what they believe in.  I even mentioned that in one of my religion classes that I taught years back, I asked one Muslim student to lead a prayer while I asked all the other students to join in the prayer thinking of their own God. 

A teacher in its effort to be neutral should facilitate but never impose or suppress including for example religion or the exercise of one's faith.  As a country also, we do believe in the deepest recesses of our hearts that we cannot stop mentioning God nor deny the existence of a God.  Children in school come from families that believe in a God.  There is a strong history and tradition of faith that our country has gone through in the past.  And even if we try to impose on our teachers not to mention God still we know in our hearts that there is a God.

I don't want to meddle further with what the United States system of education has.  Let alone the US reflect on that.  But even the rootedness of the values that we want our children to emulate through the Values Education subject that we integrate in our program HAS ITS SOURCE in the GOD that the new public school program would want to AVOID MENTIONING...:-( 

I do hope and pray that there will be a re-view on this....God save the Philippines