Commemorating World Teachers' Day:
ACT now for greater education budget!
Mendiola, Manila
October 5, 2011
■ Bohol ■ Cebu ■ Davao ■ Masbate ■ Bacolod
■ Video ■ Bonus Tracks
Poems
■ CHALKolohiya ni Kislap Alitaptap
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Photos by Arkibong Bayan, Act Phils and Judy Taguiwalo as indicated by the filenames |
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ALLIANCE OF CONCERNED TEACHERS
ALLIANCE OF CONCERNED TEACHERS 2/f Teachers’Center, Mines St. cor. Dipolog St., Brgy. Vasra, Quezon City, Philippines Telefax 453-9116 Mobile 0917-8502124; 0920-9220817 Email act_philippines@yahoo.com Website www.actphils.com Member, Education International
PRESS RELEASE: October 4, 2011
Teachers to PNOY, don’t let us down, see us face-to-face on October 5 in Malacanang
“The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) will hold a nationally-coordinated activities to commemorate World Teachers Day on October 5,” Mr. Benjie Valbuena, the Vice-Chairperson announced.
Our “chalk walk and chalk talk “ with President Aquino at Malacanang is our third attempt to have a face-to-face dialogue with him. Teachers hope that this time, he will not miss this one important dialogue on October 5, 2011, World Teachers’ Day.
ACT chapters nationwide will hold simultaneous activities on October 5 to get Pnoy’s attention on our plight, Ms. France Castro , Secretary-general of ACT said.
“We need more than greetings and be called heroes for a reason. We need concrete answers on our 10-point demand for Greater Budget in Education. Our campaign for additional chalk and teaching supplies allowance is one of our demands. DepEd promised a P300 increase but this is not enough. Maybe Pnoy can consider granting our full demand for chalk and teaching supplies of P2,000/year. At least, he can make us smile a bit on World Teachers Day if he grants this minimum demand of ours in a set of ten demands,” Ms.Castro reiterated.
Mr.Valbuena explained that, “the campaign for additional chalk and teaching supplies allowance is part of our 10-point demand that essentially calls for Greater Budget in Education and Other Social Services. Other demands include regularization of all volunteer/contractual teachers; 104,000 new permanent teacher items; Salary Grade 15 for Teacher 1, Salary Grade 16 for Instructor 1 in the State Colleges and Universities and P6,000 Increase in Base Pay of non-teaching personnel; increase in base productivity pay to P5,000; Increase Clothing Allowance to P6,000; P91.5 Billion for Classroom Shortage & Other School Facilities; Adequate Budget for Universal Kindergarten program; Greater State Subsidy for PNU (Philippine Normal University) and All SUCs (State Universities & Colleges); and 100% Increase in MOOE in All Levels of Education.”
As Chief Executive of the country, we know for one that he is in a position to make World Teachers’ Day 2011 a memorable one. So Mr. President, don’t let us down , declared Ms. Castro.####
References/Spokespersons:
Benjie Valbuena Vice-Chairperson 09182399222
France Castro Secretary General 09178502124
Media Liaison: Zenie Lao – 09198198903; 09174998608
ACT Nationally-coordinated activities on October 5, WORLD TEACHERS DAY
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ALLIANCE OF CONCERNED TEACHERS
“We were only going to ask him to give an additional increase in our P700 chalk allowance. The Department of Education has already promised to give us an additional P300. This is not enough that is why we wanted to ask from President Noy the additional P1,000 to make such allowance P2,000,” Ms. France Castro, ACT Secretary-General told, “but it’s too bad that he did not even care to meet us.”
Mr. Benjie Valbuena reiterated,”
Thank you’s and various forms of government-sponsored celebration for us
teachers on World Teachers Day would have been more meaningful if we were
given augmentation in our pay or benefits. The increase in our chalk
allowance that we are asking for is very reasonable.”
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MASARAP ANG
"FIRST TIME" |
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Statement of Congress of Teachers and
Educators for Nationalism and Democracy- Alliance of Concerned Teachers
(CONTEND-ACT) on World Teachers Day
October 5, 2011
The Congress of Teachers/Educators for
Nationalism and Democracy joins the rest of the world in celebrating World
Teachers Day as we up the ante of our struggle for rights and welfare as
well as our noble efforts at defending the right to education.
The very recent and crucial resurgence of the
teachers’ movement represents a major contribution not only to the
education sector. It has also influenced and learned from the democratic
and patriotic forces in Philippine society whose organized efforts at
effecting genuine change in the country make our wager for education part
and parcel of the people’s bid for national sovereignty and genuine
democracy.
We have persistently challenged the
anti-people and pro-imperialist policies inflicted by the past Macapagal-Arroyo
and the current Aquino regimes with our demands for good governance and
greater state subsidy for social services. We have forged a strong unity
among teachers nationwide to join in the struggle of the basic sectors in
society in order to strengthen our most urgent call for greater education
budget.
Now, more than ever, our sector is empowered
by the strength of the organized youth, farmers and workers encompassing
all regions of the country. We underscore this unity because imperialist
globalization continues to mask itself as a process of democratization
that offers boundless possibilities for the so-called renewal of education
in order to meet “global demands.”
We strongly reject prescriptions that are
poised to market our students as either globally competitive professionals
or manual labourers both in the service of the “global village” that knows
only one rule: the accumulation of profit at the expense of turning people
into commodities to be bought or sold at the cheapest price that
management dictates.
Our struggle for a nationalist education is an
alternative to the current form of education that only serves foreign
interests at the expense of economic, social and cultural development. Our
bid for a scientific education is aimed precisely at challenging all
mystifications created by and for the ruling class whose narrow interests
are raised to the level of the state's national agenda through their
positions in the different branches of government and the filtering of
mainstream media. Our fight for a mass oriented education is an
alternative to an educational system that is exclusionary because
commercialized. A national, scientific and mass education is our response
to a pedagogy that is predominantly fascist on account of an institution
that is shaped by imperialist interests that necessitate the repression of
knowledge and practice that serve the interests of the basic sectors who
comprise the majority.
We, in CONTEND, recognize that our struggle
for the future of education must also immediately bear fruit for our
hardworking teachers. Our struggle for free education is not only a
guiding principle but one that comes with a blueprint of concrete action
that can only strengthen and empower our sector and its alliance with the
broader movement for social transformation. Today, on World Teachers Day
2011, we, together with the Alliance of Concerned Teachers, therefore
commit ourselves to push for the following demands for greater education
budget:
1. Regularization of all Volunteer
/Contractual Teachers!
A Happy and Militant World Teachers’ Day! |
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STATEMENT ON WORLD TEACHERS DAY
COMMISSION ON CONCERN 11: RIGHTS OF TEACHERS,
RESEARCHERS AND OTHER EDUCATION PERSONNEL AND THE STRUGGLE AGAINST IDEAS
AND RESEARCHES DIRECTED AGAINST THE PEOPLE
INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE OF PEOPLES STRUGGLES (ILPS)
Education Teaching Personnel.
The two recommendations focused on the responsibilities
and rights of teachers and highlighted the important role teachers (both
in basic and tertiary levels) perform in educating the youth and in
creating professionals and skilled personnel necessary for society’s
development.
Under the conditions of global crisis brought to the
fore by the widespread protests in all parts of the world and the current
“Occupy Wall Street” right in the heart of the United States, the
commemoration of World Teachers Day takes on a more militant analysis and
forms. Clearly the attacks on teachers’ gains in our struggles for higher
salaries, job security, for our right to form unions and the right to
freedom of assembly cannot be separated from the over-all attacks of
imperialism on the world’s peoples.
It is in the spirit of joining our voices with those of
other education colleagues, with the youth and students and the masses of
workers and peasants all over the world standing up against imperialism
that the ILPS Commission on Concern 11, reissues the main points of the
analysis approved by the ILPS Fourth International Assembly held last July
8-9, 2011 in the Philippines.
The Current Context: Education and Imperialism
The global capitalist system is structured by the
hierarchic relations of nation-states currently dominated by the US
imperialist state. As as a mode of crisis management, neoliberalism has
been controlled and operated mainly by the US-led ruling elites in
imperialist nations and their allied elites in the neocolonies through
their hold on key social institutions.
While labor production remains the principal site for
capitalist exploitation, educational apparatus serves as the most potent
ideological apparatus for the reproduction of neoliberal policies and
ethos. It has become one of the principal contested sites where various
social forces aiming at solving the problem of overproduction and
providing legitimacy to the crisis-ridden global finance capitalism.
Private-Public Partnership takes on the form of
outsourcing of educational services, outsourcing of non-educational
support services, research partnership of public universities and
industries, and promoting commercialization of public research. PPPs also
take the form of the government subsidizing private schools through the
system of vouchers.
So while early SAP dictated by the IMF/WB encouraged
total state abandonment of education, the recent phase of neoliberal
capitalism in the face of pervasive crisis has accelerated the state’s
role in promoting the reign of the free market.
The Continuing Assault on Rights and Welfare of
Education Workers
All over the world, the need for teachers is
increasing, particularly in developing countries. Based on new UNESCO
Institute for Statistics projections, 99 countries will need at least 1.9
million more teachers by 2015. More than one-half of them are needed in
sub-Saharan Africa. Despite this, however, more and more teachers are
facing unemployment in their countries.
Hundreds of newly qualified teachers in Ireland are
without regular work. School opens in September and there are only 700 job
openings in primary schools.
According to reports from Canada, many Canadians with
degrees in education are forced to find work abroad because they cannot
find work at home. Universities in Canada are training teachers with
education and English degrees to work in English-as-a-second-language
(ESL) schools in Japan, Korea, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Furthermore,
many Canadian university administrations support Israel’s Zionist policy
and Canadian mining firms abroad wreaking havoc on the environment, on
ancestral domains of indigenous peoples.
In the United States, charter schools, a particular
form of public private partnership in education is proliferating as public
schools are gradually being phased out. Attacks on teachers and staff
unions and their right to collective bargaining are intensifying.
Retrenchment of thousands of teachers in New York is being implemented in
spite of a large budget surplus of the state.
In Germany, unions and employers failed to reach an
agreement for some 600,000 workers across the nation. Temporary teachers
are getting the short end of the stick as they receive less than their
regular counterparts. In negotiations, teachers unions call for salary
increases of at least five percent and for union wage for teachers
employed on a temporary capacity.
In England, many teachers and other public sector
workers who serve some of the most vulnerable people (people with
disabilities, alcohol problems, asylum seekers and youth with drug
addiction problems) have been laid off. Teachers unions, in the meantime,
are gearing for strikes against redundancies, the removal of pension
rights and a pay freeze which will slash 12 percent of salaries of working
teachers, and 20 percent from pensions of retired teachers.
In South Korea, a national security law threatens the
open formation of anti-imperialist and militant teacher’s organizations
and corruption pervades educational institutions.
In Indonesia, contractualization of teachers is rampant
and those hired received salaries as low as US$50 a month.
In the Philippines, the Department of Education has
made contractualization and hiring of volunteer teachers as a policy
solution to the diminishing state’s subsidy to education. Public
universities and colleges have had their budgets slashed and are compelled
and encouraged by the state to compensate for the shortfall through higher
tuition and other student fees, increased contractualization of teaching
and support staff, and dependence on corporate investments. Furthermore,
heightened militarization of schools and universities take on various
forms from actual occupation by soldiers of school campuses, to soldiers
enrolling as students to do intelligence work and to military conducted
seminars in schools red-tagging teachers’, students’ and other progressive
organizations.
By tailoring the educational curriculum to the
imperative of neoliberal ideology, new courses and departments have been
created and developed with the sole purpose of catering to market demands.
Thereby reducing education to a private good devoid of any public content.
With the academe subjected to commodified social
relations, educational workers are predisposed to fragmentary thinking
exemplified in the popularity of postmodernism. Detached from the basic
sectors of society academic workers are seduced into reactionary politics
that rejects totality, does away with grand narrative, questioning the
centrality of class and economy, the reduction of politics to discourse,
and the wanton randomization of history.
A Bright Future
The contradictions of capitalism bread resistance from
the exploited classes of society. Teachers and other education personnel
globally have stood arm-in-arm with the students, workers, farmers, other
professionals and individuals in asserting that education is a right and
in defending the rights and welfare of education workers and the people.
While mainstream education is used to promote, defend and expand
dominant/imperialist interest, progressive organizations and unions of
education personnel, together with militant student organizations have
continued to assert, inside and outside the classrooms and in theory and
in practice the liberating role of education that is in the service of the
marginalized and the oppressed.
Last April, hundreds of teachers in California and New
York held protests demanding that state officials extend tax hikes to make
up budget cuts against public education. The teachers said that higher
levels of funding for public schools are necessary.
In Michigan, teachers and their supporters are also up
against budget cuts which would translate in $300 fewer provisions for
every student in the state.
In Los Angeles, teachers unions are against
privatization. In Wisconsin, Indianapolis and Washington State, teachers
are fighting tooth and nail to defend their collective bargaining rights
even as they demand higher state subsidies for public education.
In April, massive protests led by teachers and other
state workers were held all over Easter Germany. Demonstrators called for
better working conditions and improved job contracts for new and trainee
teachers.
In the Philippines, the educational sector has forged
solidarity among its ranks by decisively participating in the
parliamentary struggle that will push for the rights and welfare of
academic workers and students nationwide. ACT Teachers Partylist won a
seat in Congress in the last 2010 elections and has since its founding in
2009 worked with teachers, education support staff and the basic sectors
(comprising of workers and peasants) to advance the anti-imperialist and
democratic struggles of the people.
Teachers and other education worker’s organizations
forge solidarity with anti-imperialist youth, farmers, workers, women
organizations to strengthen their own anti-imperialist and democratic
objectives. In turn, the support of the education workers to the struggles
of the basic sectors provide much needed broadening of public support for
their demands, such as land reform and demand higher wages.
The attack on education can only be defeated if
education workers come together as anti-imperialist force to address the
root cause of the education crisis. Addressing the root cause of the
education crisis compels us to link up with the broader national and
global alliance against imperialism. Only then can we succeed in our
vision of making education serve the world’s peoples!
OUR COMMITMENT AND OUR PLANS
It is in this context of the worsening global crisis
brought about by imperialism, the intensifying attack on education as a
right and as a public service on the one hand and the resurgence of
collective actions of education workers and students around the world on
the other that Workshop on Concern 11 reaffirms our commitment to
advancing education workers rights and welfare and struggle against
imperialism and puts forward our plans for the next three years.
1. Fight for the basic rights as workers in education
(in their home countries or as migrant education workers), which include
full salaries and benefits, security of tenure, the right to professional
growth, and academic freedom.
2. Organize teachers, researchers and other education
personnel in their home country or abroad and launch popular campaigns and
struggles against imperialist policies, particularly those that pertain to
education.
3. Demand an increase in access to education, to public
spending for education in particular and for social services in general
which is most often sacrificed in favor of debt servicing and military
spending. Oppose corporate control and education. Put an end to state
violence and repression.
4. Establish and strengthen solidarity ties among the
many education workers' organizations worldwide based on a common
anti-imperialist stand.
5. Encourage and support pro-people critical thinking,
action-based learning and anti-imperialist activism among our students at
all levels.
6. Undertake simultaneous activities on October 5,
World Teachers Day and ensure the participation of teachers, researchers,
and other education personnel in anti-imperialist activities in our
respective countries on May Day and March 8, International Women's Day.
7. Support the anti-imperialist struggles of peasants,
workers, migrants, women, youth, indigenous peoples and other oppressed
sectors.
Teachers of the world unite! Oppose neo-liberal
policies and programs!
Defend public education and social services for the
people!
Strengthen the people’s anti-imperialist ranks! |
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Office of Representative Antonio L. Tinio
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Full text of Rep. Tinio’s Privilege Speech in
commemoration of the World Teachers Day
4 OCTOBER 2011 VIEW COMMENTS |
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Mga Magbanua
Sa pagtuturo ko ng panitikan sa klase,
minsanan naming napapasadahan ang ilang sa mga bayaning hindi na gaanong
kilala ng mga mag-aaral sa kasalukuyan. Isa na rito si Teresa Magbanua,
isang babaeng galing sa angkan ng mga rebolusyonaryo. Isinilang sa Iloilo
at nakapag-aral sa Maynila. Nang bumalik siya sa Panay, doon niya
ipinagpatuloy ang pagiging babaeng mandirigma.
Hindi lang si Teresa Magbanua ang naging
gurong mandirigma. Sa panonood naman ng pelikula, pinagtiyagaan ko noon
ang kuwento ni Teodoro Asedillo na pinagbidahan ni Fernando Poe Jr. Isa
ring guro si Asedillo na napilitan mamundok dahil na rin sa pagmamalabis
ng mga Amerikano sa kanyang bayan. Binanggit din na naging organisador si
Asedillo ng mga manggawa sa Maynila upang doon higit na isapraktika ang
kanyang pagiging guro, hindi na lamang sa loob ng silid-aralan, kundi
higit lalo ng lipunan. Naging matunog din noon sa mga guro ang pelikulang
Mila na kinatampukan naman ni Maricel Soriano. Bagaman nakapanghihinayang
ang kanyang naging katapusan sa pelikula, ipinakita naman doon ang halaga
ng kolektibong pagkilos ng mga guro upang lutasin ang iba't ibang pang-aapi
at karahasan na ating kinasasadlakan. Dito inilahad na ang domestiko at
personal na suliranin ng mga guro'y epekto ng mas masalimuot na tunggalian
sa lipunan.
Greeting card from a student |
guro ng makabagong panahon
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NEWS RELEASE
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Hindi apat na taong kurso
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CHALKolohiya
8 Setyembre 2011 |
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| The faculty: out of the classrooms and into the streets | |||||
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ALLIANCE OF CONCERNED TEACHERS
a. The Payapa at Masaganang Pamayanan (Pamana)
Program of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace Process. During
the plenary deliberations for the budget of this agency, it was revealed
that this office does not have the absorptive capacity to implement the
PAMANA Program. For instance, the Staffing Summary does not record a
single permanent item for OPAPP—the entire Personnel Services amounting to
P55,169,000 is intended for “Contractual, Casual and Emergency Personnel”
, which has been the system since 2010. Per the admission of the
administration, OPAPP is not an implementing agency. Therefore it is
highly anomalous for a largely armless agency to be given charge of a
project worth P329,343,000 (accounting for the 141.5% increase from the
current year’s appropriations). This could be realigned to fill up the
shortages in our education sector.
b. When former President Ferdinand Marcos
repealed the previous law which provided for a debt cap, he removed one of
the most effective restrictions on the borrowing power of the Executive
branch. This was the very reason for the uncontrolled borrowing of the
President from foreign and local financial institutions and corporations
with the least amount of checks by Congress, which in turn allowed the
ballooning of dubious debts under Marcos’s regime. This system has been
maintained by the subsequent administrations.Since then, government debt
has surpassed ideal and manageable levels, even reaching 378.7% of the GDP
in 2004. The Philippines had also been paying interests double than what
other countries pay (8.7% as opposed to only 4% or 5% for other
countries), without the Congress knowing the details of the payments. Last
year, the consolidated debt obligation of the national government was 57%
of the gross domestic product (P2.537 trillion internal debt, P1.921
trillion external debt). In light of the failure of the Bureau of Internal
Revenue and Bureau of Customs to meet collection targets, the
administration will not accomplish its avowed aim of reducing the budget
deficit, expected to
The various measures pending on both Houses of
Congress on putting
either a debt cap or moratorium are far from
being ill-advised. Enforcing limits on borrowing is one of the ways with
which the government can reduce deficits, instill discipline in public
finances, and channel more resources to social services like education,
health, and housing. On the other hand, retaining the absence of
restrictions, raised by the Aquino administration against proposals for a
debt cap or moratorium, violates the Constitution in several ways. First,
the borrowing power of the Executive Branch and its power to realign funds
are by no means boundless; these powers are not superior to the power of
the Legislative Branch to act as a check against abuses of the Executive,
nor do they supplant the plenary power of Congress to enact laws that it
deems necessary to repeal previous laws inconsistent with public interest.
Congress can pass an appropriations act containing a debt cap provision
should its Members feel that wise debt management will free up more funds
for social services. Second, the non-impairment clause cannot be used
against a debt cap as it only protects legitimate contracts. It cannot be
raised to protect unlawful contracts especially odious debts contracted by
the government. The power of the State to safeguard the general welfare is
the higher interest
c. To realign funds from the Conditional Cash
Transfer-Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Program (4Ps) of the Department of
Social Welfare and Development. |
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Sa aking mga guro, in commemoration of world teachers day by Roland Tolentino on Tuesday, October 4, 2011 at 11:00am
republished from 2007
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| The 10-point demand for greater education budget | |||||
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BONUS TRACKS Enjoying a swim at the estero beneath the historic Mendiola Bridge |
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 While the teachers were holding their rally on the Mendiola bridge, these boys of school age are enjoying a swim in this murky, really filthy estero that flows beneath Mendiola |
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This swimming pool is much cleaner and
more sanitary but you can only swim here if you can afford it. |
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Tomorrow,
October 5, all nations all over the world will observe World Teachers’
Day. This date has been chosen to commemorate October 5, 1966 when UNESCO
and International Labor Organization adopted an important document known
as the Recommendation Concerning the Status of Teachers. It is a landmark
document establishing international minimum standards protecting the
rights and welfare of public school teachers worldwide. This served as the
inspiration for our own Republic Act 4670, or The Magna Carta for Public
School Teachers.
Sang-ayon
na rin sa ilang tala sa kasaysayan, kilalang asintada si Teresa Magbanua.
Angat ang kanyang kakanyahan bilang mandirigma na mangilang ulit na ring
nakipaglaban sa mga kolonisador na Kastila at Amerikano. Subalit sa lahat
ng ito, isang guro si Teresa Magbanua. Matapos makapag-aral sa Colegio
Santa Rosa at Colegio de Santa Catalina, nakamit niya noong 1894 ang
lisensiya sa pagiging guro. Kapag nalaman ng mga mag-aaral na isang gurong
mandirigma si Teresa Magbanua, ilan sa kanila ang magkakaroon ng dagdag na
interes kung ano ang kanyang kinasapitan. Doon ko ilalahad na naging saksi
at nakibahagi si Teresa Magbanua sa rebolusyong sinimulan ng mga kilusang
nagnanais ng pagbabago sa Pilipinas.
“As
the world honors the women and men tasked to mold future generations, it
is but fitting to call on those who have been molded to become leaders of
our nation to return the favor and ensure that future generations will
have teachers sufficiently equipped to give children quality education.”