As an award-winning K-12 educator and international teacher trainer for education for sustainable development, Ilan Enverga commented in an article that appeared in a leading Philippine daily that there is only one Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) that has the unique power that can enable any society to achieve all 17 SDGs identified by 193 United Nations member states. That is SDG 4: Quality Education in which the Philippines is failing miserably. Enverga cites the sectors of society that must play an active role if quality education is to be achieved. The first obvious agent is the Government, which the Philippine Constitution of 1987 mandated to provide free basic education for all Filipino children and youth. This mandate does not apply to the tertiary level and, therefore, does not justify the unhealthy proliferation of low-quality state colleges and universities (SUCs). It is wise for Congress to cut the budget for SUCs drastically. At the tertiary level, private institutions—whether for-profit or non-profit—can do a better job of imparting quality education. At the post-secondary level, the Government must respect the principle of subsidiarity and allow the private sector to play the major role in operating colleges and universities.
Other stakeholders identified in the task of achieving SDG 4 are business enterprises, NGOs, civil society, and the youth as exemplified by SDG 4 Youth and Student Network of UNESCO. What is often ignored is the critical role of parents in the attainment of whole-person education which includes, not only the cultivation of the intellect but also the formation of the will so that each person is able to use his or freedom to choose the good and to avoid evil. In a recent column, former NEDA Director General Cielo Habito strongly advocated for the development of “soft skills” to prepare the Filipino youth for the challenges of Artificial Intelligence and the other components of the so-called Industrial Revolution 4.0 such as the Internet of Things, Robotization, and Data Sciences. Dr. Habito defined soft skills as personal attributes and interpersonal abilities that enable a person to interact effectively and harmoniously with others. They are to be distinguished from the hard skills, which are technical (accounting, information technology, carpentry, plumbing, farming) and job-specific. Soft skills have to do with how one works and interacts with others. It is well known in the global environment that despite the low quality of education of the majority of our OFWs, they are singled out for their “soft skills” in the way they interact smoothly with others, their habitual cheerful outlook, their caring attitude, etc. These positive attributes can be traced to family upbringing. This brings up the crucial role of parents and other members of the family at the basic education level.
The Philippines is a predominantly Catholic country. It would be enlightening here to refer to what the Catechism of the Catholic Church states as the role and duties of parents in the upbringing of children in order to stress the importance of involving parents—no matter how difficult to implement—in the education of their children, in collaboration with the teachers of the schools they go to. Paragraph No. 2221 of the Catechism clearly states that “the fecundity of marriage cannot be reduced solely to the procreation of children, but must extend to their moral education and their spiritual formation. The role of parents in education is of such importance that it is almost impossible to provide an adequate substitute. The right and duty of parents to educate their children are primordial and inalienable.
In what does this duty to educate children consist? As Par 2223 states, “Parents have the first responsibility for the education of their children. They bear witness to this responsibility by creating a home where tenderness, forgiveness, respect, fidelity, and disinterested service are the rule. The home is well suited for education in virtues. Although it will require a great deal of effort to get the parents and teachers to engage with one another in continuing dialogue, it is important that the values and virtues education that are part of the formation of the children in basic education be a collaborative effort between teachers and parents, with the parents performing the primary function.
As first articulated by St. Josemaria Escriva, Founder of Opus Dei, in fidelity to the teachings of the Catholic Church, “First Parents, Second Teachers and Third Students.” The students will be able to receive quality education in the full sense of the phrase only if we follow that order. Even as regards what happens in the classroom, the parents have the first command responsibility in the education of their children. But they first bear witness to this responsibility by creating a home where tenderness, forgiveness, respect, fidelity, and disinterested service are the rule (par. 2223). The home is the most suited for education in virtues. This requires apprenticeship in self-denial, sound judgment, and self-mastery—the preconditions of all true freedom. Parents, before the teachers, are the ones who should teach their children to subordinate the material and instinctual dimensions to interior and spiritual ones. Parents have a grave responsibility to give a good example to their children. By knowing how to acknowledge their own failings to their children, parents will be better able to guide and correct them.
The family environment is the natural one for initiating a human being into solidarity and communal responsibilities. Parents should be the very first to shield their children from the compromising and degrading influences that threaten human societies. This especially applies to the moral dangers that come with social media. As recently reported in the Financial Times (September 18, 2024), social media platforms have been criticized for doing too little to protect minors using their platforms from harmful or inappropriate content and from child predators and sexual exploitation. Concerns have also risen over the perceived negative mental health and addictive effects of the technology. For example, parents should be closely following certain measures being taken by the platform providers to prevent children from being harmed by irresponsible platform providers. Recently, Meta made teenagers’ accounts on its Instagram photo-sharing app private by default. The $1.3 trillion platform announced that teenagers’ accounts would be visible only to their followers unless they or their parents change their privacy settings. These users will also see less content deemed “sensitive” under the platform’s new “teen accounts” feature.
No matter how busy they are with their professional and/or household duties, parents must take the time to be knowledgeable about ways and means of supervising the use of social media by their children. They must be aware, for example, that under the new system being installed by Meta for child protection, parents will be able to see the topics their teen children are browsing and whom they are messaging, but not the messages. They will also be able to add restrictions, such as blocking their child’s access to the app at night. Parents’ supervision of the use of digital devices should even more strict as regards younger children. In fact, parents should seriously deliberate, asking for advice from experts, at what age should a child have access to digital technology, not only from the standpoint of mental and moral health but even also physical health. To be continued.