IF there is any irresponsible and villainous statement made this week, it is that which is attributed to Secretary of Education Jesli Lapus who said that the teacher in charge of a classroom shall be made to pay for things and equipment lost or stolen from the room. The statement was prompted by reports that despite the repairs made by the Department of Education in public schools whose rooms had been destroyed by cyclonic storms and mudflows, these rooms were further subjected to robbery.

        Secretary Jesli Lapus was in Naga City early this week to inspect the classrooms whose repairs were funded by the government in its rehabilitation program after they were left roofless and if not totally destroyed by super-typhoons Reming and Milenyo in the last quarter of 2006.

        This statement is uncalled for. And for it to come from the Secretary of Education himself is “most unkindest”.

        Never mind if the public school teacher is the most overworked of all professionals in the civil service. Teaching may be a noble profession but under Lapus the teacher should get all the blame for all the evil that happens in the educational system.

        Never mind if the public school teacher stakes life and limb in conducting a free, honest and clean election in the local or national level. After all, the teacher gets paid for the work, even if at times the teacher is burned alive or harassed by terrorists or by goons of politicians.

        Never mind if the public school teacher is burdened with so many seminars that the teacher must attend and reports that must be accomplished. When a superintendent arrives, the teacher is obliged to prepare the best food as well as the accommodation as if the visitor were the Duke of Windsor. The teacher shall be made to attend seminars after seminars on new trends and thoughts that come with the assumption into office of every new Secretary of Education.

        Nobody but the public school teacher is to be blamed for the poor performance of students in any examination or evaluation, be it in the local or national level. The teacher and no other deserves the rebuke. But when student performance is outstanding, the honor is credited to the principal or even to the superintendent if not the mayor.

        Under the Lapus predicables, the public school teacher is the sacrificial lamb as well as the man Friday in the educational system in the country. The obligation to pay for things lost in the classroom is an attribute and property of being a public school teacher.

        Such a philosophical predicable is obviously based on distorted logic. It is just like asking the manager and tellers of the bank held up by robbers to pay for the amount carted off in the heist. In like manner, it is like asking Antonio Trillanes and his fellow Magdalo soldiers to pay for the wreckage in the Manila Peninsula Hotel wrought by the forceful entry of a tank into the lobby of the hotel. In like manner, it is like asking the volunteer firemen of Chin Po Tong to pay for any destruction caused by any fire incident in the City of Naga.

        Even if Secretary Lapus might have relatives in the Bicol region who had honorably participated in the guerilla movement during World War II, still that does not give him the wisdom to chastise just anybody, particularly teachers, and to dictate a distorted logic.

        Shakespeare describes such a person as one who is a little more than kin and less than kind and the kind who may smile and smile yet still be a villain.