MANILA, Philippines – As we celebrate Education Week, we take stock of what the teaching profession has had for us and for our education clientele throughout the years.

Definitely, the most significant breakthrough of teaching as a profession was the enactment of RA 7836, “The Teachers’ Professionalization Act of 1994.” The whole education world had cause to rejoice upon promulgation of the law, for now the teaching profession was at par with the other 41 professions of the country. The Professional Regulation Commission had listed teaching as the 42nd profession in the Philippines. From hereon, nobody would engage in the profession without a license.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the law defined teaching as “the profession concerned primarily with classroom instruction at the elementary and secondary levels in accordance with the curriculum, prescribed by the Department of Education, Culture, and Sports whether on part-time or full-time basis in private or public schools.”

And so, in this same column on September 20, 1998, we asked: “Is College Teaching a Profession?” As far as the law is concerned, where does college teaching come in? Are college instructors/professors not engaged in teaching?

It may be argued that some college instructors/professors are already licensed in their own respective fields, so that it would be a duplication if they had to get another license for teaching. And yet, a lawyer who wants to practice accounting has to take accounting subjects, obtain a degree, pass the accountancy board examination, and apply for an accountant’s license separate and distinct from a lawyer’s license. So with the accountant who wishes to go into law practice. Similarly, a registered nurse or licensed veterinarian who decides to pursue a career in medicine has to take courses in the field, consequently pass the medical board examinations, and apply for a license for the practice of medicine. For their part, doctors of medicine reveal in not so intimate conversations that due to the urgent need for nurses in the United States and elsewhere, many of their kind take up nursing, and subsequently obtain a license for the practice of the profession after complying with the needed requisites. Needless to state, medicine is a longer course and would be considered by many, with due respect to the nursing field, a more lofty profession not only in terms of length of study, but most of all in prestige, clientele, and practice. And yet, unlike the university professors in the teaching profession, doctors of medicine have to obtain a license for nursing both in the Philippines and in the US to be able to engage in the field.

For a time, the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) launched a massive retraining of college faculty members who had not yet earned a master’s degree, answering for the tuition and monthly stipend of all enrolees. This was to enable all concerned college instructors to comply with the past DEC memorandum requiring a master’s degree for college teaching, which for all intents and purposes, the commission wanted to pursue.

Now, did this apply to all college professors?

Are members of the Conservatory of Music, College of Industrial Relations, College of Medicine, College of Arts and Letters, to name a few, college faculty members? And again, are they engaged in teaching and may, therefore, belong to the teaching profession? If so, don’t they need a master’s degree and a teaching license?

No, because the teaching license is only for the elementary and secondary school teacher, who like the college professor is engaged in teaching. This of course is like saying that an accountant’s license is required only for those handling the books of accounts of the sari-sari stores or small-time entrepreneurs, but not for big-time multinational corporations. How would it look if a lawyer’s license were required for practice only in the municipal and regional trial salas but no longer in the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court because those who practice in the higher courts are more knowledgeable and possess more wisdom, wit, and skills than those in the lower courts; or a nurse or a dentist who must be registered in order to qualify for the position of School Nurse or School Dentist, but may be accepted sans the required license, if he/she applies as a University Nurse or University Dentist in some tertiary level institution. Of course, if we have to come to grips with reality, it would be difficult, next to impossible, to require an accomplished poet laureate or a university professor emeritus, to take the Licensure examination for Teachers (LET) just because he/she is handling some literature subjects in a college, or to compel a prominent lawyer in demand, as professor of criminal law, to obtain a teaching license.

But then, teaching is now a profession like all other professions. Why is it an exception to the rule being applied to, and followed by, the other 41 professions -- to engage in their respective practice only if they are licensed. Is this probably one of the reasons why teaching is regarded as lowly? And who were consulted, involved in the preparation of the bill which became RA 7836, the Teachers Professionalization Act of 1994. They must have been prominent educators who have a very high regard for the teaching profession but decided to exempt themselves from the basic requirement for its practice as is obtaining in all the other professions.

Meanwhile, accountants, nurses, lawyers, who cannot handle bar/board subjects in college without their respective licenses, may now ask: Are the present college professors, LET passers themselves? They are handling professional education subjects and mentoring Teacher Education students who later will take the Licensure Examination for Teachers (LET). In other words, does RA 7836 which requires the licensure examination for Teacher Education graduates as a pre-requisite for the practice of the teaching profession, impose the same requirement for the College of Education which will train, review, and guide these students to pass the LET? Bar and Board are required of those who teach bar and board subjects.

This indeed is a tangle of dilemmas.

But perhaps, as we wished and wrote in this column in 1998, a middle ground could be worked out. This wish, we echoed in national conferences where we had the privilege to attend as resource speaker, as member of the Technical Panel for Teacher Education of CHED, and an active participant in the pioneering efforts of the Teacher Education Council to establish an office and subsequently develop policies for Teacher Education at DepEd.

The middle ground eventually came in the form of a CHED Memorandum Order, more than a decade after the promulgation of the law in 1994. This we call “a middle ground” only because the law has remained as is, and the CHED memo is only a policy with limited application. In CMO No. 52, s. 2007 (Addendum to CMO 30, series of 2004 entitled “Revised Policies and Standards for Undergraduate Teacher Education Curriculum”), Section 2 (Program Administration) provides that “if the college offering the education degree is a college of education, the dean must be a doctoral degree holder in education or a related field, and a holder of a valid certificate of registration and a professional license (LET).” Of course the professional license which is required does not refer to the LET which is not always required. As provided by law, one may obtain a teaching license without necessarily having to take the licensure examination, as in the case of a university professor who has been teaching in college for at least three years, or a basic education teacher with seven years experience during the initial years of the promulgation of the law. As for other tertiary-level institutions offering an education degree, the memorandum order stipulates that “if the unit... is not a college of education, the chair/head of the unit must be a doctoral degree holder in education or a related field, and a holder of a valid certificate of registration and professional license.”

Those are the requirements for the dean and the head, and it seems more is required for tertiary-level mentors. “Faculty members teaching the professional education courses in a teacher education program,” states the CHED memo, “must be a holder of a valid certificate of registration and a professional license for teachers.”

The requisite is anchored on RA 8981 (PRC Modernization Act of 2000) where under “Persons to Teach Examination on All Professions,” the law states: “...all subjects for Licensure Examinations shall be taught by persons who are holders of valid certificate of registration and valid professional licenses of the profession and who comply with the other requirements of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and of a master’s degree in education or from any of the allied fields.”

Meanwhile, in the US today, on-line come-ons beckon educators to a “Doctoral Program: Teaching License Degree and Programs,” from “Teaching License to Teaching Ph.D. through Online Education” to “Featured Teaching License Degree and Programs.” In a publication labeled “Fast Facts: Teaching License,” the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and National Center for Education Statistics rattle off a significant number of over 4 million preK-12 teachers, a projected job growth and the median annual earnings of $43,588-$48,690 for license holders.

In other words, in the US, the teaching profession does not distinguish a practitioner with a baccalaureate degree from another with a string of Ph.D.s, an instructor from a university professor. What counts most is a teaching license for the practice of the teaching profession, which in the Philippines is supposed to be at par with all other professions.

In Thailand, there are two options for a non-education degree holder who is currently teaching in that country, to secure a teacher’s license: either to take the Professional Knowledge Test administered by the Teachers’ Council of Thailand, or to enrol in the Graduate Diploma in Teaching offered by universities in Thailand and abroad. Whatever the option, a teaching license is required which is valid only for five years, after which the license holder may apply for renewal.

And so, perhaps on this Education Week, the organizations concerned with the education, welfare, and “dignity” of teachers and of course the teaching profession – the Association of Concerned Teachers (ACT), the Teachers’ Dignity Coalition (TDC), the Philippines Association for Teacher Education (PAFTE), the State Universities and Colleges Teacher Educators Association (SUCTEA), the National Organization of Professional Teachers, Inc. (NOPTI), to name a few – could get their act together to “coalesce” for the dignity of the teacher and the teaching profession, to make it really at par with all other professions of the country which require a license for their practice with no compartmentalization of levels, as is in RA7836, the “Teachers’ Professionalization Act of 1994,” “An Act to Strengthen the Regulation and Supervision of the Practice of Teaching in the Philippines...” which seemingly excludes college teaching from the teaching profession. As a pundit once quipped, “basic education teachers are in the teaching profession while college professors/instructors are in the professing/instructing profession.” Is a “43rd profession” perhaps in the offing at the PRC?