TEACHING BAD (Yes, a Teacher Can Be Held Liable For Humiliating A Student)

By Siesta-friendly

When teachers are the bullies, it is not bullying, it is ABUSE …
and should not be tolerated!

Recently, a high school senior committed suicide after being allegedly “bullied” by his teacher.

Nothing can match the heartbreak knowing that someone has hurt a child.  The devastation is unspeakable when the hurt child loses his life as a result. 

After reading insensitive and condemnatory online comments against the student and his family for considering filing charges against his teacher, we have to say that “condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance” [unknown origin].  But we digress.

Based on Merriam-Webster online, “bully” is defined as -

Bully    :  [noun] one habitually cruel to others who are weaker
              :[verb] to frighten, hurt, or threaten (a smaller or weaker person)
            : [verb] to cause (someone) to do something by making threats or insults or by using
            force

Thus, a teacher who humiliates, insults, threatens, or hurts a student is a bully; not to mention someone who is acting in abuse of his/her authority.

If we begin by choosing to value that both ourselves and our students have a HUMAN DIGNITY,

then we have a COMMON GROUND to establish a LEARNING RELATIONSHIP.

- Dale Knepper

It is distressing that despite the 25th anniversary this year of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), those in society who are given the custody and care of children are still lacking much in awareness, sensitivity and concern that, as the CRC’s Preamble states, children are “entitled to special care and assistance”, should be raised in an “atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding”, and, “by reason of [their] physical and mental immaturity, [need] special safeguards and care”.

And we are not exactly lacking in laws, rules and regulations made especially for the welfare of children and specifically applicable to teachers (and schools) regarding their roles towards their students: the Constitution, the Family Code, the Civil Code, the Anti-Bullying Act, and DepEd Order No. 40 s. 2012.

TEACHERS: Let your light shine so brightly

that others can see their way out of the dark.

 1987 Constitution

The 1987 Constitution specifically provides, under Section 3 (2) of Article XIV (EDUCATION, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, ARTS, CULTURE AND SPORTS), that all educational institutions shall “foster love of humanity, respect for human rights, … strengthen ethical and spiritual values, develop moral character and personal discipline“.

Bullying, as specifically addressed in the Anti-Bullying Act of 2013, includes causing emotional damage and distress.

Dear Teacher: the child that you like least
is probably the child who needs you the most.  

Anti-Bullying Act of 2013

Included in the definition of bullying in Sec. 2 of R.A. 10627 (“An Act Requiring All Elementary And Secondary Schools To Adopt Policies To Prevent And Address The Acts Of Bullying In Their Institutions” or the  “Anti-Bullying Act of 2013”) is –

“materially and substantially disrupting the education process or the orderly operation of a school; such as, but not limited to, the following:

xxx

a.      Any act that causes damage to a victim’s psyche and/or emotional well-being;

b.      Any slanderous statement or accusation that causes the victim undue emotional distress like directing foul language or profanity at the target, name-calling, tormenting and commenting negatively on victim’s looks, clothes and body; and

xxx”

Complaints of bullying and other acts shall be within the exclusive jurisdiction of the DepEd or the private school and shall not be brought for amicable settlement before the Barangay, subject to existing laws, rules and regulations. Complaints for acts covered by other laws shall be referred to the appropriate authorities. (Section 10.A)

While defining child abuse to include psychological abuse and emotional maltreatment, DepEd Order No. 40 s. 2012 also considers causing mental or emotional suffering as violence committed on a child.

“School should be a safe place for all students to learn and play

and it is the job of each teacher and administrator to ensure that safety.”

DepEd Child Protection Policy

Pursuant to Section 3 (2), Article XIV of the Constitution and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Department of Education issued DepEd Order No. 40 s.2012, the “DepEd Child Protection Policy” (or the “Policy and Guidelines on Protecting Children in School from Abuse, Violence, Exploitation, Discrimination, Bullying and Other Forms of Abuse”). 

Under Sec. 3.I, “[C]hild abuse refers to the maltreatment of a child, whether habitual or not, which includes any of the following:

1)      psychological or physical abuse, neglect, cruelty, sexual abuse and emotional maltreatment;

2)      any act by deeds or words which debases, degrades or demeans the intrinsic worth and dignity of a child as a human being;

xxx”

In addition, Section 3.L states that “[v]iolence against children committed in schools refers to a single act or a series of acts committed by school administrators, academic and non-academic personnel against a child, which result in or is likely to result in physical, sexual, psychological harm or suffering, or other abuses including threats of such acts, battery, assault, coercion, harassment or arbitrary deprivation of liberty. It includes, but is not limited to, the following acts:

xxx

3.      Psychological violence refers to acts or omissions causing or likely to cause mental or emotional suffering of the child, such as but not limited to intimidation, harassment, stalking, damage to property, public ridicule or humiliation, deduction or threat of deduction from grade or merit as a form of punishment, and repeated verbal abuse.

4.      Other acts of violence of a physical, sexual or psychological nature that are prejudicial to the best interest of the child.“

We note that Sec. 3.P sets the following guidelines for educators -

“Positive and Non-Violent Discipline of Children - is a way of thinking and a holistic, constructive and pro-active approach to teaching that helps children develop appropriate thinking and behavior in the short and long-term and fosters self-discipline.  It is based on the fundamental principle that children are full human beings with basic human rights.  Positive discipline begins with setting the long-term goals or impacts that teachers want to have on their students’ adult lives, and using everyday situations and challenges as opportunities to teach life-long skills and values to students

While Sec. 8 emphasizes the “Duties and Responsibilities of School Personnel” as follows:

“Article 218 of the Family Code of the Philippines provides the following responsibilities of school administrators, teachers, academic and non- academic and other personnel:

1. Exercise special parental authority and responsibility over the child while under their supervision, instruction and custody. Authority and responsibility shall apply to all authorized activities whether inside or outside the premises of the school, entity or institution.

Articles 220 and 233 of the Family Code of the Philippines, Presidential Decree No. 603, and other related laws enumerated the following duties and responsibilities of the abovementioned persons and personnel over the children under their supervision, instruction and custody:

2. Keep them in their company and support, educate and instruct them by right precept and good example;
3. Give them love and affection, advice and counsel, companionship and understanding;
4. Enhance, protect, preserve and maintain their physical and mental health at all times;
5. Furnish them with good and wholesome educational materials, supervise their activities, recreation and association with others, protect them from bad company and prevent them from acquiring habits detrimental to their health, studies and morals;
6. Represent them in all matters affecting their interests;
7. Inculcate the value of respect and obedience;
8. Practice positive and non-violent discipline, as may be required under the circumstances; provided, that in no case shall corporal punishment be inflicted upon them;
9. Perform such other duties as are imposed by law upon them, as substitute parents or guardians; and
10. School personnel shall also strictly comply with the school’s child protection policy.“

Finally, under Section 20, “[a] complaint for child abuse, violence, exploitation or discrimination in a private school shall be filed with the School Head/Chief Executive Officer and shall be acted upon pursuant to the school’s rules of procedures on administrative cases. The penalty shall be that which is provided by the rules of the school, subject to the requirements of due process. The administrative case shall be without prejudice to any civil or criminal case that may be filed.” [emphasis supplied]

The best part of teaching is that it matters.
The hardest part of teaching is that every moment matters, every day.
– Todd Whitaker

Family Code

The Ant-Bullying Act and DepEd Order No. 40 s. 2012 cited above are specifically applicable to primary and secondary school students, regardless of age.

The following Family Code (E.O. 209) provisions on Parental Authority apply to unemancipated minors –

“Art. 220. The parents and those exercising parental authority shall have with the respect to their unemancipated children on wards the following rights and duties:

(1)   To keep them in their company, to support, educate and instruct them by right precept and good example, and to provide for their upbringing in keeping with their means;

(2)   To give them love and affection, advice and counsel, companionship and understanding;

(3)   To provide them with moral and spiritual guidance, inculcate in them honesty, integrity, self-discipline, self-reliance, industry and thrift, stimulate their interest in civic affairs, and inspire in them compliance with the duties of citizenship;

(4)   To furnish them with good and wholesome educational materials, supervise their activities, recreation and association with others, protect them from bad company, and prevent them from acquiring habits detrimental to their health, studies and morals;

(5)   To represent them in all matters affecting their interests;

(6)   To demand from them respect and obedience;

(7)   To impose discipline on them as may be required under the circumstances; and

(8)   To perform such other duties as are imposed by law upon parents and guardians. (316a)”

Those exercising parental authority include teachers pursuant to Art. 218 and 233 –

“Art. 218. The school, its administrators and teachers, or the individual, entity or institution engaged in child are shall have special parental authority and responsibility over the minor child while under their supervision, instruction or custody.

Authority and responsibility shall apply to all authorized activities whether inside or outside the premises of the school, entity or institution. (349a)

xxx

Art. 233. The person exercising substitute parental authority shall have the same authority over the person of the child as the parents.

In no case shall the school administrator, teacher of individual engaged in child care exercising special parental authority inflict corporal punishment upon the child. (n)”

… what you say and do to other people in your life holds power –

the power to lift someone from the depths of darkness,

or rip them to shreds.
- Kate Walton

Civil Code

But even without legal provisions focused solely on the welfare of students and minors, our laws recognize that there are certain acts, though not deemed criminal, are actionable nonetheless because they have caused damage.  Some of these are acts are called quasi-delicts and are covered by the Civil Code -

“Article 2176.  Whoever by act or omission causes damage to another, there being fault or negligence, is obliged to pay for the damage done.  Such fault or negligence, if there is no pre-existing contractual relation between the parties, is called a quasi-delict and is governed by the provisions of this Chapter.”

Children have distinct needs and rights; and because of their age and immaturity, children need special protection.  We have the laws to protect children and their human rights.  We need to make sure everyone in society – especially those with parental authority over children – knows and observes them and are appropriately punished for breaking them.  We adults should know better and need to step up.

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Where’s the Truth Commission on Human Rights Abuses?

By Siesta-friendly

From Argentina to the U.S., truth commissions have been established to reveal human rights violations and violators.  The Philippines is up there in world rankings relating to human rights abuses.  We rank 3rd - after Iraq and Somalia – in the CPJ’s (Committee to Protect Journalists) 2010 Global Impunity Index (of countries “where journalists are slain and killers go free”).[1]

In 2009, the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) included the Philippines in its report on 8 of “the most troubled places in the world … which are either experiencing situations of armed conflict or armed violence or suffering their aftermath”.[2]  We are in the list together with Afghanistan, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Georgia, Haiti, Lebanon and Liberia.

In 2007, the UN was already so concerned that they sent Special Rapporteur, Philip Alston, “prompted by reports of a large number of extrajudicial killings, especially of leftist activists and journalists, over the past six years or so.”[3] 

Also in 2007, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), sent a fact-finding mission because of [“i]ncreasing allegations that the Filipino government’s fight against terrorism causes specific human rights violations … The preliminary conclusions of the mission are very worrying: it appears that torture, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings are common practice in the Philippines …”[4] 

Local human rights group Karapatan (Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights) reports that from 2001-2009 (the Gloria Arroyo regime) there have been 1,188 extrajudicial killings, 208 enforced disappearances, 1,963 illegal arrests (excluding mass arrests) and 288 political prisoners.[5]

Yet despite our notorious human rights record and culture of impunity, the new Aquino government chooses instead to set up a truth commission to uncover corruption. To be fair, our culture of corruption deserves serious focus as well.  But it is telling of our government’s priorities when President Aquino’s 1^st State of the Nation Address (last July) enumerated allegations of corruption and no hint of human rights abuses, and his first Executive Order is the establishment of the Truth Commission on corruption with hardly any pronouncement, to date, on the government’s efforts regarding extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances.

Why are human rights abuses not a top priority?

The need to investigate human rights abuses

On July 12, 2010, a hopeful Human Rights Watch (HRW) wrote President Aquino its hopes, concerns and recommendations.[6]  Its first recommendation?  To investigate police and military personnel implicated in killings -

Human Rights Watch has found that police investigators in alleged extrajudicial killing cases often adopt a posture of irresponsible passivity, doing nothing themselves to investigate these crimes and placing the onus entirely on victims' families, many of whom have no idea who murdered their loved one. Police investigators routinely ignore anonymous leads, despite the fear of retaliation that compels witnesses to resort to anonymity.

Instead, investigators have told Human Rights Watch that they will not launch an investigation until someone is brave enough to risk his or her life by delivering a signed statement. Even when victims have allegedly been abducted by security forces, the police typically conduct only a perfunctory search. The Arroyo government made much of the human rights training that is given to the police but the lessons learned in the classroom are quickly unlearned when police officers see that no one is held accountable for such lackluster investigations of human rights abuses.

In your first 60 days in office, you should:

·         Order the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) and the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to investigate police and military personal, particularly at the command level, who have been implicated in killings and enforced disappearances.

·         Issue an executive order directing police and NBI investigators to vigorously pursue crimes allegedly committed by government officials and police officers or themselves be subject to disciplinary measures for insubordination or a criminal investigation for obstruction of justice or graft and corruption.

·         Publicly order the chief of the Philippine National Police to open hotlines or comparable lines of communication to receive anonymous information on extrajudicial killings and other human rights abuses.

To round up the HRW’s 6 recommendations, here are the remaining 5: 1) Take immediate steps to protect the witnesses to human rights abuses and their families; 2) Pass a law to criminalize and prevent enforced disappearances; 3) Abolish militia forces; 4) Institute tougher controls on local government procurement of weapons; 5) Dismantle "death squads" and investigate government involvement.[7] 

Of course, the HRW is hardly alone.  The UN Special Rapporteur and the FIDH fact-mission recommended effective investigations as well, among other things.   In its report on The State of Human Rights in the Philippines in 2009, the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) discussed “[t]he failure to investigate hundreds of political killings attributable to the State” as a topic of concern.[8] Below is a brief summary of their findings.

Government actions

Task Force Usig

In the AHRC report are listed the Arroyo government’s attempts to address extrajudicial killings.  (Unfortunately, only extrajudicial killings have largely been focused on, if at all. There has been no special agency to handle illegal detention or enforced disappearance cases.) 

As reported by the AHRC, Task Force Usig was created in 2006 under the Philippine National Police “to resolve at least 'ten cases of alleged extra-judicial killings within ten weeks'. Over three years later, there is no evidence to suggest that the task force has been able to meet the target.”  The report also notes that “[e]ven if the task force had been able to meet its target of resolving one case a week, in mid-2006 there were already some 700 allegations of political killings and this would have taken the task force 14 years to complete the job.”[9]

Task Force 211

It seemed that Task Force Usig was deemed insufficient because shortly after its creation or in 2007, Task Force 211 under the DOJ (Department of Justice) was created.  As of February 2010, Task Force 211 has only handled 265 cases of extrajudicial killings (versus 1,188 reported by Karapatan), more than half of which are either already archived, cold or dismissed[10] -

CASE CLASSIFICATION	TOTAL
I. Archived/ Accused at Large	70
II. Cold Cases	50
III. Dismissed   Cases	65
IV. On Trial	35
V. Under Police Investigation	13
VI. Under Preliminary Investigation	14
VII. Terminated (Trial on the Merits)	18
TOTAL	265

Special Courts

Also in 2007, the Supreme Court (SC) issued Administrative Order No. 25-2007 (a copy of which we could not find so we are relying on Court of Appeals Associate Justice Lucas P. Bersamin’s “Available Judicial Remedies In Cases Of Extrajudicial Killings And Enforced Disappearances”)[11] for the SC AO’s contents.  The SC designated “about 100 Regional Trial Courts throughout the country as special courts to hear, try and decide cases involving killings of political activists and members of the media.  Such cases are given priority in the trial calendars of the special courts and shall undergo continuous trial (to be terminated within 60 days from the commencement of the hearing) and determined within 30 days from the time the cases are submitted for decision, unless a shorter period is provided by the law or otherwise directed by the Supreme Court. To expedite the proceedings, no postponement or continuance shall be allowed except for clearly meritorious cases.”[12]

AHRC’s report notes that SC has guidelines to the special courts "to include the status of the extra-judicial cases in their monthly report of cases." “Despite the SC's guidelines, however, there are no known monthly status reports available. It is not known whether any sanctions were imposed on judges and court staff as a result.”[13]

To put a long story short, not only do these government efforts fall short of substantially addressing human rights abuses but their existence only emphasize the failure of government avenues normally used for the redress of such abuses.

We need the whole truth and nothing but the truth on all forms of abuses before we can even think of starting afresh.  And so we go back to our initial question: Where’s the truth commission on human rights abuses?

 

---

[1]  Getting away with murder. (2010, April 20). Retrieved from http://www.cpj.org/reports/2010/04/cpj-2010-impunity-index-getting-away-with-murder.php#index

[2]  Summary report: afghanistan, colombia, democratic republic of the congo, georgia, haiti, lebanon, liberia and the philippines. (2009, June). Retrieved from http://www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/views-from-field-report-240609/$File/Our%20World%20-%20Views%20From%20Countries%20-%20Summary%20Report%20Part1-BKMRK.pdf

[3]  Alston, P. (2007, March 27). U.N. General Assembly, Human Rights Council, Fourth Session Agenda Item 2, Implementation of general assembly resolution 60/251 of 15 march 2006 entitled “human rights council”. Preliminary note on the visit of the special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, philip alston, to the philippines (12-21 february 2007), (A/HRC/4/20/ADD.3). Retrieved from http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G07/120/95/PDF/G0712095.pdf?OpenElement

[4]  International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates (PAHRA) Submission for the first session of the Universal Periodic Review 7-18 April 2008 Republic of the Philippines. (2008, April 7-18). Retrieved from http://lib.ohchr.org/HRBodies/UPR/Documents/Session1/PH/FIDH_PHL_UPR_S1_2008_InternationalFederationforHumanRights_etal_uprsubmission.pdf

[5]  2009 year-end report on the human rights situation in the philippines. (2009, December 12). Retrieved from http://www.karapatan.org/2009-HR-Report

[6] Roth, K. (2010, July 12). Letter to president aquino regarding extrajudicial killings in the philippines. Retrieved from http://www.hrw.org/node/91567

[7]  Philippines: ending killings should top aquino’s agenda. (2010, July 12). Retrieved from http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/07/12/philippines-ending-killings-should-top-aquino-s-agenda

[8]  The state of Human rights in the philippines in 2009. (2009). Retrieved from http://material.ahrchk.net/hrreport/2009/AHRC-SPR-007-2009-Philippines-HRReport2009.pdf

[9]  Ibid, p.8.

[10]  Total number of cases. (2010, February 23). Retrieved from http://www.taskforce211.com.ph/bk_sub/bk_sub/ejk/ejk_total_sub.html

[11]  Bersamin, L. (n.d.). Available judicial remedies in cases of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. Retrieved from http://sc.judiciary.gov.ph/publications/summit/Summit%20Papers/Bersamin%20-%20Extrajudicial%20Killings%20Summit.pdf

[12]  Ibid, p.3

[13]   The state of Human rights in the philippines in 2009, supra; p.10.

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