GMRC, Values Education or whatever

Just weeks from the opening of classes in our public schools came the pronouncement of our education officials of using the term GMRC or Good Manners and Right Conduct —and strengthening it. Such subject name is familiar and to some extent popular in the past decades. Its popularity is owing to its essence of introducing real-life situations aimed at producing good-mannered, sensitive, and responsible citizens.

GMRC to the basic education curriculum would be part of a review of the K to 12 program. Lessons on proper behavior, considered part of the “basic skills,” would be imparted to students, particularly in the first three levels of education, teaching the schoolchildren the values of respect, love for self, others, family, community, country, and God.

Without others knowing it, these are exactly the same values that are being introduced in the subject Edukasyon sa Pagpakatao, national identity and nationalism in Araling Panlipunan, in addition to the overarching integration in all subject areas.

But let’s take a look at some major factors why our young have changed through time. There are many outside factors that can influence children’s values in the new age. For one, technology. Though it has brought so many wonders to improve our lives, the quality of human interaction is being sacrificed for speed in this digital and fast-paced world. We want our world to provide instant gratification for our ever-increasing and demanding needs. Many young employees who grew up with fast food meals no longer know how to use real spoons and forks, or much less observe table manners. Setting a table properly becomes a thing of the past, because most of the time we go for takeout food or fast food meals.

From this gadget-crazy world, we produce children who grow up equating success with making more points in Candy Crush, or beating an opponent in some internet game. And we produce children who also become impatient because if a gadget can bring results in no time, so should other things in life. Maybe this is what leads to lack of perseverance at work.

Another observation is when we laugh with approval at the crude antics of officials and other public figures, by doing so we are giving permission to our children to behave likewise. We reap what we allow others to sow in the minds and hearts of our innocent youth.

Ordinary citizens who see cops violate traffic rules. Or parents who don’t care to show their love to one another.

A lowly government employee demands small bribes from citizens transacting business because he knows that his immediate superior or head demands bigger bribes. And since the head is himself or herself corrupt, he or she doesn’t have the moral ascendancy to tell his subordinates to be honest. If the head does tell them to be honest, his orders fall on deaf ears as subordinates regard the orders with no sense of gravity and integrity.

Whether GMRC, Values Education or whatever term, they all aim to build character. Character builds values. And values make people what they are when they grow up.

It is probably because of the term GMRC that others would take it as effective in the past and that Values Education now is not. But it is the manner of handling and strengthening it that would allow both parents and students to be sensitive to the realities in order to achieve the desired competencies of the subject matter.