PTAs and the nation

MANY people have mixed feelings about Parents-Teachers Associations (PTAs), the word evoking images of stodgy school administrators collecting more fees and rattling off more rules while parents gossip about each other.

But I've also seen PTAs that are quietly helping this nation survive against all odds, maybe even move forward. I don't mean mobilizing people for rallies and mass protests; I think PTAs should remain non-partisan as much as possible because politics has a way of fragmenting associations.

I'm referring to PTAs that take up civic responsibilities and, in doing so, provide role models for the next generation of Filipino citizens. These are the PTAs that transform "values" from abstract concepts discussed in classrooms to moral compasses to be used day to day.

Adopting a student

I got the idea for today's column when an excited Dr. Francie Laxamana, a friend from the Department of Health, told me about their PTA at the University of the Philippines (UP) Manila campus.

I was surprised to hear about a university-level PTA, but then why not? Maybe it's even more important we have PTAs for colleges and universities because the students are at that particularly difficult age.

Francie told me about one initiative she'd suggested for UP Manila's PTA, and this was to encourage more parents to adopt classmates of their children who are from outside Metro Manila. She had actually done this with one of her children's classmates who was from Mindanao and who had no relatives in Manila. It started out with her inviting that classmate to spend weekends with them. Eventually, that student's parents decided to migrate overseas but the student chose to continue to study in Manila. And what do Francie and her husband do? They offer to take the student into their own home!

So here was Francie asking other parents of UP Manila students to do something similar. She thinks it's especially important that PTAs help out with the medical students from the provinces. Medical school itself already poses enough stresses without students having to spend their weekends alone.

I'm giving one example of something that PTAs can take up on their agenda. These adoption schemes are easier said than done. You need cultural sensitivity to be able to respect differences in ethnicity and religion. PTAs allow for parents to talk about their experiences here, and help others to assess if they're in the position to take up the heavy responsibilities.

Food, drugs and traffic

I gave the adopt-a-student initiative only as one example of how PTAs can become a civic organization. There are, of course, many other areas where PTAs can become active, without necessarily involving as much commitment as an adopt-a-student plan.

Public school PTAs can be amazing with their initiatives to help keep the area around schools clean, and safe -- "safe" meaning free from drugs, alcohol and pornography vendors. The idea here is to get parents to understand that you can't expect government to take up all the responsibilities of cleaning up (literally and figuratively) the streets.

Don't forget the school campus itself also needs to be safe in its broadest definitions. For example, you can talk your heads off about nutritious foods but if your kids' schools continue to sell junk foods, you've lost the battle. PTAs should push hard to get school cafeterias to help mold healthy nutrition habits. (And here's a challenge for UP's PTA: I notice in UP in Diliman, Quezon City, how instant noodles have become best-selling snacks, the stores providing hot water for this atrocious "food.")

"Safe" also means traffic enforcement. The public schools have parents volunteering to help kids cross streets, a real nightmare in our cities. Private schools need to deal with the traffic created by their own cars. It's not enough to hire more traffic aides. I wonder how many parents in these schools have brought up car pools as a way of reducing the traffic.

I know, I'm talking to the wall. So if car pools won't click (it did in my time, but that was years ago) at least use the PTAs to talk about educating family drivers. Much of the traffic snarls are caused by drivers who pick up their employers' arrogance, creating their own counterflows, refusing to follow the traffic aides' directions. Just today, I saw a school security guard nearly run down by an SUV, careening down the road with high beams on. (This was at 7 in the morning.)

Role models

I get particularly agitated by bad traffic habits because the kids see their drivers (or their own parents) breaking the rules. Now what right would you have to tell them to follow the country's laws if you break the laws every day, or allow the driver to do so?

I'd go a step further: get the students involved in PTA hearings, as a way of introducing them into the real world of negotiations and consensus-building. I was reading an interesting article the other day about a controversy in a high school in small town Pennsylvania where some parents had succeeded in getting their school board to ban a book that was required reading in high school, on grounds that it had some graphic descriptions of sex. Another group of parents challenged the ban and called for a PTA meeting that brought in 200 people, 10 times more than the usual number.

Students themselves got to give their views. When one of them appealed, "Don't insult our intelligence by keeping the book from us," a parent retorted, "This is not about a child's opinion. This is about parents."

An English teacher gave her view: "No one is more critical of literature than English teachers. Do you really think we as educators choose literature in terms of its titillation? Do you not realize we are battling the same immorality you are?"

In the end, the board reversed its decision, but the negotiations continue, the conservative parents calling for teachers to provide them with reading lists, complete with summaries of the books and a rating system.

Such exchanges are not confined to the States. I heard there have been attempts to ban as well books like Harry Potter locally, on grounds that the books glorify sorcery and witchcraft. PTAs should be used to challenge such views, and allow for a healthy exchange of views on issues that parents themselves feel are important. The civic sense develops, even as democracy itself is put to work. And even if the students don't attend the PTAs, parents can and should talk about the meetings when they return home, discussing what happened and how the decisions were made. The meetings and the discussions at home will go a long way toward building communities -- and a nation.