In fairness to the MAPEH teachers

That may not have come across very well... my sentiments on MAPEH teachers taking over mentor posts in Baguio City National High School's Special Program for the Arts. As one commenter pointed out, they too underwent training on the subjects covered: Music, Arts, Physical Education, Health. But here's why I think it's not enough.

We are talking about students who have shown potential to become really good in either one of the different specializations, and if the idea is to hone, enhance, develop such talents, we need teachers who can provide way more than basic education in Music, or Arts in general, which is basically what MAPEH teachers are trained to provide.

If my car needs its oil changed, I can to basically any car repair shop, even a gasoline station, to have it done. The personnel there may know a bit about car engines, where the spark plugs are, where the air filter is, but they won't be able to take down that whole engine and work it from the inside out because they have neither the knowledge nor skill and most probably the tools to overhaul an engine. So if I need to enhance the performance of the engine itself, that would need a specialist. Someone who, on top of knowing how to change the oil, or the air filter, or the spark plugs, also studied the art and science of car engines, has a deeper understanding of how each piston, each spark plug, each moving part contributes to the over-all performance of an engine. Someone who knows how different one engine is from another, because each one is different, with different parts, different capabilities, knows that some engines run on diesel and some on gasoline, that some will do better on open highways at high speeds while others do better climbing hills.

The previous article did not mean to put MAPEH teachers down, I'm sure most if not all of them are good on the subject, but their training was meant not for a special program for theater, or visual arts, or dance, or media arts (by the way, MAPEH covers basically two fields of expertise: visual arts and music, and theater/media arts/dance aren't covered by the subject).

With this, I can only hope that the school would go out of their way to really equip the new teachers with the appropriate knowledge and skills to be able to really produce the country's future artists who can help each of us have a better understanding and appreciation of the world around us, and life in general.