KAGAYANon.net, Cagayan de Oro City Forum

charmz18 · by **charmz18** on June 8th, 2008, 2:25 am

Goldstar News
Feedback:
By: atty. joe pallugna

A hilarious police project

I am not bent here on criticizing the police. My brother-in-law, Rex Acabado is a police superintendent. Doy Trampe is a police senior superintendent and a classmate in law school while Superintendent Tony Montalba is a longtime friend.

In fact, I have a long list of policemen who are my fraternity brothers, classmates, drinking buddies and longtime friends. They are all gentlemen and upright policemen.

Thus I won’t criticize this new police program implemented in Metro Manila wherein the policemen are deputized and assigned as teachers in schools. Policemen as teachers in Metro Manila? I won’t say it is a crazy idea. It is neither pretentious nor ambitious. Of all irony of ironies, having policemen as teachers in elementary schools is just plain hilarious. It is funny, to say the least.

We all know that there is a shortage of policemen all over the country. The ratio of policemen to the general population is disproportionate. We have much less policemen than we ought to have. Even in Cagayan de Oro, the policemen manning the ten precincts are so low that the precincts are severely undermanned.

This situation gets worse in Metro Manila where there are millions of people densely spread over the metropolis. The policeman to population ratio is incredibly low. On the contrary, we have hundreds of thousands of teachers, the licensed ones, waiting for appointments with the Department of Education. Many have applied for jobs as salesladies at the malls, as clerks in government offices or are engaged in selling beauty products and Tupperware just because they can’t get teaching jobs.

So what are policemen doing as teachers? They should be in the streets fighting crime. They should be investigators solving crime or simply manning their posts where they are needed most.

But acting as teachers? That’ hilariously absurd. That’s a cheap gimmickry and plain political advertisement intended for no other long-term benefit than sure coverage in front pages of newspapers. That’s ungentlemanly for the police chief to think of and implement.

We all know that teachers are trained to do teaching work. Their training includes child psychology and effective teaching methods. The lesson plans are coordinated with all the subjects and there is a yearlong plan with means of review, evaluation and improvisation to be most effective. Now what happens if a policeman is suddenly implanted into the system? Chaos and confusion occurs.

So I pity the school principal and classroom teacher who is suddenly faced with the prospect of a policeman in her school or in her classroom.

The entire class schedule is altered and the school curriculum is messed with. A policeman, even how intelligent and well-intended, is not trained to teach young people. Kids would become confused and wrong approaches may be implemented by the policeman-teacher. A new environment is created that the kids may have difficulty adjusting to.

We should well remember that a teacher-pupil trust is created first for the learning process to bloom. This is not so with a sudden policemen in uniform acting as teachers. This is not play-house where roles could be assumed all too suddenly and reversal of roles may also ensue. School is not a game but a noble institution that policemen should not desecrate with cheap gimmickry.

And I pity the policeman who is assigned as a teacher and who could not complain. Obey first before you complain is a common rule to maintain discipline in the service. Should that also be taught to the pupils in elementary schools? Follow the chain of command? Should this also be the guiding rule with the policeman standing before the chalkboard? Hilarious at the least? No. Illogical at best.

But as I have said I wont criticize this police project then I will just laugh at it. Not make a mockery of it for that would be too brutal to the helpless policeman assigned to teach in schools against their will, most probably.

I can just laugh and I hope the police chief in Metro Manila will just cut that program short and stop it to stop me from laughing. The police chief should just stop from being hilarious and funny.

He should bring back his policemen to the police precincts and bring the teachers back to the classrooms. He should stop the unfair competition or maybe just give away police uniforms to the jobless teachers and deputize them as quasi-policemen to man the gates of schools. At least, in doing so, he employs the jobless teachers and prevents severe police shortage in the precincts.

In doing so, he stops being hilarious and begins being serious in police work. Yes, being serious and not being hilarious.

(Send feedback to joepallugna@yahoo.com)

--o0o--