DURING my elementary school days, the education department conducted an annual National Achievement Test (NAT) in the public schools, an unusual method of testing the competency of teachers by determining the learning proficiency of public school pupils under them.
The NAT involved the conduct of examinations which determined the average score of the students in a specific school and this was compared to the scores from other schools within the district. The best achievers, both schools and teachers, were given awards and commendations.
So, the teachers, who wanted to win awards for themselves and their schools, encouraged the young students to cheat or even arranged a cheating scheme to make sure that the goats in the class would have better grades in the examination so as not to pull down the rest of the class with them.
I remember very vividly how the bright students were made to sit among the class goats so that answers to difficult questions could be shared with them.
It backfired in our case though. One of the questions in the test given to our class asked for the name of the then Constabulary provincial commander in North Cotabato who I remember was an officer named Col. Catral. I shared this answer with everybody around me by telling them ?Si Catral? (It?s Catral).
When the test papers were checked, those I shared the answer with wrote in their test papers ?Si Catral,? thus easily exposing our puerile cheating operations.
It was fun and hilarious in those days but now looking back I realize and understand why cheating, lying and corruption have been ingrained in the Filipino culture and corroded our values as a people.
When teachers themselves encourage their young wards to cheat, including the misdeclaration of young athletes? age in the national youth sports competition, you will have a country of dishonest and corrupt people.
And this perhaps explains why this nation which used to be so proud of ?dangal? (honor), ?katapatan? (trustworthiness) and ?palabre de honor? (word of honor) has degenerated into a country where people gloat when they are able to pull a fast one on unsuspecting victims and where everybody has learned to accept bribery and corruption as part of life.
From the immigration officers at the arrival desks in our international airports who wink at returning overseas workers, to customs appraisers who leave their desk drawers open so bribes could easily be dropped, to traffic policemen hiding under the bridges to mulct from traffic violators, to teachers assisting in the cheating during elections, to public prosecutors who could slant their resolutions depending on the thickness of the envelop, to judges whose decisions have price tags, to military officers who receive tens of millions of pesos in ?pasalubong,? to politicians who openly flaunt their unexplained wealth, to church leaders who publicly declare that they will receive contributions even from Satan himself, it has become undeniable that the cancer has metas-tasized into the very soul of the Filipino nation.
The insensitivity to corruption has paralyzed the nation to the point that nobody would dare stand up and denounce it because the moneyed and the powerful will always prevail in the end.
Jun Lozada of the NBN ZTE controversy and other iconic figures who stood up and told the truth are the perfect examples of how futile and frustrating the effort to expose irregularities in the Philippines could be.
That was until Benigno S. Aquino 3rd became president of the Philippines.
