The country’s largest Catholic school network has a blunt message for its alumni implicated in the current corruption scandal in government projects: ‘Nakakahiya naman kayo.”
Fr. Karel San Juan, SJ, president of the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines (CEAP), shared this messaged during a press conference on Tuesday, September 30, the first day of the association’s annual national convention.
CEAP’s gathering this year, San Juan said, is itself a message to its “millions of alumni” amid the ongoing government probe over anomalous flood control projects: that the values instilled in classrooms must be lived out in public life.
“We have a lot of things to tell. Because I think holding this convention is a strong message to our students and to our millions of alumni in the Philippines,” San Juan said.
“Remember your school and the values we taught you. Live them out as consistently as possible,” the CEAP president said. “Fight for integrity in whatever profession you have chosen… fight for truth.”
The CEAP president urged alumni of its member schools – which number around 1,500 – to ‘rekindle your spirit’ and return to the values of ‘truth, decency, social justice, and social transformation’ that comprise the foundation of Catholic school education.
‘Nakakahiya naman kayo kung Catholic school graduate kayo tapos nagku-corrupt kayo, kasi you’re living lives contrary to the very essence of the values that we have taught you,’ San Juan said.
(It’s a shame if you’re a Catholic school graduate and then you are corrupt, because you’re living lives contrary to the very essence of the values that we have taught you.)
But he also stressed that the responsibility for forming ethical citizens goes beyond schools. “It takes the whole community, the schools as one part of that community to raise a child and to raise a student and a graduate,” he said.
At the same time, San Juan stressed that CEAP is ‘mighty proud’ of alumni who have remained honest and who continue to serve as doctors, lawyers, teachers, and government leaders, among others.
‘They are nation builders, they innovate, they are compassionate to the poor,’ he said, noting that many CEAP-trained teachers even help run the public school system.
Ethics ‘not optional’
CEAP leaders framed the corruption crisis as a failure of moral formation, not just governance.
The group’s executive director, Narcy Dionisio, warned against removing ethics subjects from the general education curriculum, saying such a move would undercut the fight against dishonesty in public life.
‘We’re talking about good people, initially, when they graduate from school. Then eventually, they turned into thieves,’ Dionisio said.
‘And that’s for the same reason why CEAP is currently opposing the removal of ethics in the general education curriculum. Ethics is not optional. It is essential,” he added.
A suggestion to remove ethics from the General Education curriculum in college was raised during a House basic education committee hearing in May, when lawmakers discussed the current redundancies between senior high school and tertiary education.
CEAP was one of several voices in the education sector to have aired their concern over the proposal, saying in a June statement that college students should continue to develop their “moral reasoning” beyond basic education.
‘Corruption is a process of death’
During the press conference, CEAP Vice President Fr. Wilmer Tria also shared a critique of how corruption is itself the “root” of the country’s learning crisis.
‘Actually, corruption is the very root of the educational crisis, both in the public and private education,’ Tria said. ‘Our failure to deliver quality education is rooted in corruption.’
He warned that society today is haunted by ‘ghosts’ of corruption – from ghost voters to ghost students, now to ghost flood control projects.
‘Our problem is our dead conscience. We don’t have a conscience. And the problem is we don’t have burial grounds for dead consciences. That’s why they keep haunting our society,’ Tria said.
CEAP previously issued a strong statement against the flood control corruption and participated in recent mobilizations for transparency and accountability, including the Trillion Peso March on September 21, where CBCP President Pablo Virgilio Cardinal David attended and delivered a speech at the rally.
Tria on Tuesday called on oversight bodies and courts to “act swiftly, impose real penalties, and make corruption cases public.”
He also specifically criticized the private nature of the hearings by the Independent Commission on Infrastructure, the body that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr..
“[We] are against the conduct of the ICI being done privately. It must be broadcasted,” Tria said.