WE EXPECT so much from pit public schools.

Our public schools are de facto community centers. During regular days, they provide relatively safe haven for our young as they acquire basic skills and competencies. Our schools also serve as staging areas for elections, when people have the opportunity to exercise their democratic rights. Finally, when our communities get hit by storms like ?Ondoy,? our schools become a refuge for the dispossessed, dilapidated sanitation facilities and non-existent basic services, like clean running water and stable power, notwithstanding.

And yet, when it comes to learning ? which is why we build schools in the first place ? it seems that we really don?t expect that much from our public schools. The Department of Education calls a 66 percent average national achievement ?near mastery? perhaps to assuage apprehensive public opinion, even if their own education experts are painfully aware that 75 percent is the baseline figure. In the interest of expediency, the contact time that a teacher has with her students has been reduced by as much as an hour despite the fact that a ton of empirical evidence exists that establishes the crucial link between achievement and learning time.

This is really unfortunate because our public schools are tasked with giving our youth ?a broad general education that will assist each individuals in the peculiar ecology of his own society, to attain his potentials as a human being, enhance the range and quality of individual and group participation in the basic functions of society; and acquire the essential educational foundation of his development into a productive and versatile citizen.? At least, that?s what the Education Act of 1982 says.

And then there is the continuing debate on values education. Through the Foundation for Worldwide People Power?s Mentoring the Mentors program, we constantly try to impress on the principals and master teachers who make up the bulk of our participants that learning happens best in an atmosphere of trust.

This concept is something that our teachers have known all along but they point to the Revised Basic Education Curriculum which integrates value formation with civics, history and practical arts into a subject area called Maka-bayan to illustrate the fact that they really don?t have that much time for values education.

Not too long ago, I had the privilege to talk to Manny Valdehuesa Jr., who describes himself as ?a rancher-farmer based in Cagayan de Oro? but of course he is much more than that. He is first and foremost an Atenean. He was a scholar at Columbia University School of International Affairs. He has been a Unesco director, a convenor of the Task Force for Good Governance in Mindanao and deputy presidential adviser for constitutional reform in 2004. The list of his achievements is more than impressive. Over and above all these, he is an astute student of politics and political systems which has led him to ask, ?Do we need values education??

Valdehuesa says that many people feel that values education is what Filipinos need, and they usually mean religious values. Indeed, Makabayan cites being prayerful (?madasalin?) and having faith (?may pananalig?) as desirable Filipino traits.

Valdehuesa argues that ?there are religious values and there are political values. Mixing them up may have unpleasant consequences.? He points out that Jesus Christ himself underscored the need, on one hand, to respect the boundary between the Divine and the Human Order, and on the other, to willingly submit to the consequences of violating the law even where the system of justice is imperfect.

Valdehuesa adds that the world has seen disastrous experiments in ?values education.? As examples, he cites Fidel Castro?s Cuba which ?sought to substitute the State for God, or statism and secularism for religion? and Iran under the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini which sought to superimpose theocracy over civil government. ?Rather than induce a state of equilibrium and harmony between the spiritual and material concerns of their people, they merely succeeded in upsetting society?s balance.?

Valdehuesa believes that ?if Theology teaches that Satan never sleeps, that he takes many forms [and that] his malevolent designs can be foiled only by avoiding temptation and resisting entrapment aided by prayer, fasting and watchfulness, then that?s the way it is on the spiritual plane.?

There is of course a clear parallel in the corporeal world, where temptation comes in the form of graft and corruption. In this instance, avoidance is definitely not enough.

?Graft and corruption persists because people do not view the laws designed to discourage wrongdoing or assure good governance as their personal concern. Others will say that education is the best solution. Of course education is important, but it is not enough. If there must be values education, let it be on political values?ethical behavior in a democratic society. Let it be learned for instance that responsible stewardship is the essence of statesmanship, that public office is something an official owes to the people, not something he owns; that it is something to account for, its accounting to be made known or transparent at all times,? says Valdehuesa.

Butch Hernandez (butchhernandez@gmail.com) is the executive director of the Foundation for Worldwide People Power.