Technical lapses in cases
Leonie J Galvez
13 July 2011
Out of Frustration
I don’t condone what that idealistic classroom teacher allegedly did to her pupils. It partakes the nature of corporal punishment. That’s plain and simple. The teacher lost her composure due to ‘below-par’ performance of her pupils. Her wards – the captive victims of her ire – were at the receiving end of her frustration.
It’s a fact that there are unreported physical abuse(s) especially in barangays that do not warrant a space in the police blotter. In fact, parents, to some extent, allow their kids to be physically but subtly disciplined. Take it from me. I was a teacher for more than two decades.
The school head whose position requires a delicate balance between siding with the teacher and upholding the rights of parents to seek redress has been surprisingly silent. Is he anticipating that he/she might be included in the charge-sheet?
The parents have the right to file charges directly to the police or to the prosecutor’s office. But, with due respect to the DepEd, they should have first exhausted all administrative remedies. There were several instances where cases were dismissed because of technical lapses. I hope the present case won’t suffer the same fate.
Insurmountable pity cases abound in the system that ‘popularity-seeking’ mortals seem to ignore. For concerned mentors, they have built-in reservations. During my time as division supervisor, various reports with different settings have reached me. Case in point: A teacher dressed down a group of students for violating the “Speak English Only” campaign. She was worried that a verbal abuse case might be slapped against her. I admonished her to calm down and relax. I ask what happened and this was her version as told by the two erring kids. “I called the attention of Pedro why his classmate, Juan is crying. The former explained that he threw ’the eraser the board’ to his classmate’s face because he was hit earlier with ‘sweep the floor’.
There are times when cases that call for disciplinary action are not actionable.
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