Good manners

Upon instructions of President Duterte, the Department of Education is now reintroducing GMRC, or Good Manners and Right Conduct, as a real subject in the basic education curriculum. I was surprised to learn it was no longer in the curriculum. No wonder so many children today get into trouble so easily.

GMRC, or simply Conduct as it was taught as a subject back in the 1960s when I studied at the Colegio Del Santo Niño, used to be an important tool to instill values in children, that they may learn to distinguish right from wrong at an age when formation of character still mattered and actually worked.

Of course, GMRC begins in the home, and should be rooted in the home where it finds practice within the members of a family. But during school age, children spend very extended hours in school, away from family. That is why it became necessary for schools to take over the role of parent and teach children the good and right things about themselves.

Duterte may be one of the most controversial figures to emerge in the world stage at this point in time. Some even consider him a bad man. But as no one is totally bad, there must be some good as well in the man. I would like to believe that Duterte learned the bad things along the way but the good rooted in him when still very young, probably in the public school system.

One thing that struck me about Duterte is that both before addressing an audience and after finishing, he never fails to bow before them. I myself remember being taught to do this as a way of showing respect, and I did in the few times I had the occasion to do so. But I submit I have forgotten to do so as an adult. Perhaps lack of practice dulls memories.

But I never fail to find it humbling and moving to find the president of a country still bowing before an audience just as he had been taught as a boy. And I find it truly amazing that many young people do not even seem to notice. Truth to tell, I am willing to forgive the many sins of Duterte just for that. Because if there is still some good in a little boy, all could not be lost in a man.

There was a time when it was customary to take the hand of a relative or an elder to one’s forehead as a sign of respect or to utter the appropriate greeting, even to strangers, depending on the time of day it was. Children did not interrupt the conversation of elders. People stopped for the flag or the Angelus. We said Grace before meals.

Now children do not even know the names of their teachers. How sad that a world that has come to acquire knowledge so vast it is now possible for some to even challenge the very notion of God would be the same world that forgets the basic difference between good and bad, between right from wrong, and that these distinctions should start early with our children.