Akó An Ateneo, or How Fr. Raul Bonoan’s Thought of School Became Every Atenean’s School of Thought

Akó An Ateneo, or How Fr. Raul Bonoan’s Thought of School Became Every Atenean’s School of Thought

Vision, aspiration, action: if this string of words were mentioned, no other story would read clearer to me than the one that began when I was a young student in the 1990s at Ateneo de Naga, headed by its then president, Raul Bonoan, S.J.

Father Bonoan was sent to Ateneo de Naga in 1989 at the verge of financial—or moral—precariousness, though not formal bankruptcy. During the 1980s, the school had faced serious financial struggles, declining enrollment, and operational challenges that made its future uncertain—so much so that, according to some accounts, he was initially sent to assess, and possibly close, the institution. Depending on whom I’d ask: Mr. Gregorio Abonal or Mrs. Ma. Liwayway “Y” de los Trino, both legendary high school teachers and administrators; or Dr. Paz Verdades “Doods” Santos, my distinguished college professor; or probably you, Atenista.

When Ateneo de Naga celebrated its Golden Jubilee in 1990, it was almost like the Olympics. The much-awaited homecoming was festive but also full of fellowship and community outreach. Of all the activities, it’s the torch parade that still lingers in my memory. Led by our moderator, Mrs. Bernadette Dayan, our LG 21 class, wearing Alive and Kicking shirts, paraded through the streets of Naga City alongside alumni from previous batches. Fireworks filled the sky.

That year was also significant for our principal, Mr. Abonal, whose own Silver Jubilee coincided with the celebration. It was also the year of my brother Mentz’s high school graduation. I am sure those who witnessed it would remember it as one of the most memorable days of their lives.

As a sophomore under Fr. Rene Repole’s LG 21 class, I did more than read about Ateneo de Naga’s CorPlan 2000—I eventually benefited from it as an academic scholar for six years. I remember seeing scholarships and financial endowments by high school batches, individuals, and organizations engraved on golden plates on the wall of the Four Pillars lobby, where the statue of Francis Xavier in robes, hoisting the Cross and preaching, stood for many years.

Equally challenged by stagnation and low morale, Father Bonoan revitalized the faculty by training them and sending them to pursue continuing education, primarily at Ateneo de Manila University, where he had served as college dean and administrator. I remember when Mr. Abonal was sent to study abroad and when Mr. Vernon de los Trino went to AdMU. I also recall how many of our teachers spent weekends at Bicol University for graduate school. Faculty development was in full swing, and so were the movements of Jesuit scholastics and newly minted teachers returning to the school to reinstate their careers.

For our teachers, like English Department’s Mrs. Evelyn Florece and Filipino’s Mrs. Carmen Ilao, it was probably a great time to teach. For me, it was a great time to be a student, benefiting from a faculty that was becoming a powerhouse

In all four years of high school and another four in college, I benefited from the Salamat Po Kai Foundation, a partnership Ateneo de Naga cultivated for many years. My brother Mentz, an economics and political science double major, received educational support from the Ateneo Endowment Fund. Even after our mother passed in 1996, the last semester of our sister Rosario, who finished her baccalaureate in psychology, was supported by the Alay Malasakit program under Ateneo’s Office of Admission and Aid. Admission and aid: yes, this visual alliteration did more than please my eyes.

Regularly meeting with its director, Mrs. Antonette Rodriguez, I helped organize the college group of scholars, which we aptly called Gabay. Among others, I enjoyed being a Salamat Po scholar with my high school classmates Menandro Abanes of Milaor, Christopher Abelinde of Tinambac, and Edgar Tabagan of Libmanan. Pol Abanes became an international scholar; Chris is now a highly respected professor at the same school; while Gary is now one of Camarines Sur’s alternative learning systems experts.
Alumni Connections and Leadership

More than anything, Father Bonoan sought the alumni to give back to their alma mater. From his stationery to the school’s announcements and promotional materials, his administration bannered the words “Serve Bikol and Country,” buttressing a miniaturized illustration of the Four Pillars. At times, we would travel to Manila or abroad to speak with alumni associations. The Atenista connection was undeniable. My scholarship, among others, was one of the fruits of his tireless and extensive networking. Nothing could have been more iconic. His lobbying for alumni sponsorships and donations went beyond persuasion or inspiration—it probably bordered on salvation.

The alumni association was very active, brimming with initiatives and fundraising for the school. It was moving to see, even years later, how alumni activities influenced our daily lives as students. Older Ateneans literally owned Ateneo in those days, with monthly fellowship, spiritual renewal, and fundraising events throughout the year, including raffles, Flores de Mayo, and Santacruzan. These activities fostered a strong sense of community among us.
Campus Transformation

As early as 1993, Ateneo de Naga’s physical infrastructure began transforming. The Fr. John J. Phelan, S.J. Hall, built even before Father Jack passed, signaled the evolution of the campus. Any former student returning would feel disoriented; the old campus they remembered had changed.

I experienced this feeling again in the mid-2000s, when the front soccer field already had Xavier Hall and the church. My field of dreams was gone. The grand Four Pillars still stood, but not as grand as when Mentz, Nene, and I ceremoniously marched out the doors with our mother and eldest brother, Manoy Awel, for our graduations in the 1990s. Yet, change is necessary—and Father Bonoan understood that.

Now I don’t find it hard to see the juxtaposition: like Xavier, who went to India to teach, Father Bonoan went out to the global pasture to “shepherd back” Ateneo de Naga’s alumni. I can only imagine how he must have told them that she is the “mother (mater) of their souls (alma).”

He sought to bring back Ateneo de Naga to its rightful owners: students, teachers, and the community. Giving them a sense of ownership, he not only promoted quality education but also personal growth. Bonoan’s “giving back” slogan, translated into the Bikol phrase “Ako an Ateneo,” clearly cascaded into the Atenean sensibility. What Bonoan preached was that only they could nurse their mother back to health. An avid Rizalista himself, he must have imagined the newly arrived Jose Rizal, fresh from medical studies abroad, curing his mother’s failing eyesight.

In a decade, Father Bonoan elevated Ateneo de Naga and transformed it like no one else had. In 1999, just after it became a university and with the new millennium approaching, he passed away. His mission was complete. It was as if a novelist had ended his last chapter because the story had reached its conclusion. Nothing sounds more bittersweet.

Songs of Ourselves

If music is wine for the soul, I suppose I have had my satisfying share of this liquor of life, one that has sustained me all these years.

All this time I have savored the timeless ballads of Matt Monro and Carpenters, have drunk much rock of say, Queen and Juan de la Cruz Band, which I have grown to love, or sometimes sipped from the modern R&B and acoustic alchemy concocted by younger songwriters and singers like Ogie Alcasid  and Ne-yo. My favorites range from chanteuse Grace Nono to Paul Potts to Patsy Cline to Rico J. Puno, and the alternative Labuyo to Richard Clayderman.



Such sense of music has been influenced by people around me and people whom I grew up with—my mother, sister and brothers—my family, or better yet, our clan who sang and danced our way through life, now and then drinking from own cups.



I

How and why I have grown to like music—like every human being perhaps—I owe first to my mother, who must have adlibbed the best melodies only for me to sleep the cold nights of being left without a father. After my father’s demise, my mother’s melodies must have sounded more like elegies being sung by a widow who now as a single parent, had to fend for six growing children.

 


One evening, Mother told me a story of how she had to sing Victor Wood’s “Teenage Señorita” when she was being recruited for a sorority in college. I could only imagine she sang it in the corridors of Burns Hall where I first saw my very own teenage señorita Cecile Naldo, a bubbly DevCom major from Iriga who would sing the melodies of Celine Dion like an LP after our Biology class. The Celine Dion connection did not materialize much—just when my Cecilia’s singing of “If You Asked Me, Too” ended.


Mother loved Nat King Cole that whenever Manoy played “Stardust” and the rest of his collection nights after supper in Bagacay, the Banat household would be filled with her voice that sounded like it’s tiptoeing the corners of the house.


Her singing voice would delicately hit the right notes but contained “a certain sadness” that perhaps even Astrud Gilberto must have never known. Manoy recorded Cole’s collection on tapes—along with those of Carpenters and Pet Shop Boys—through our cousin Manoy Ynos’s stuff in Manila during his engineering board review in 1991.



One cool Sunday afternoon in 1993, Mother introduced me to Jerry Vale, when we were enjoying the coolness of the folding bed in our sala at siesta time. We listened to Vale’s “If You Go Away” being played on an AM radio program on the Sharp radio which Manoy bought upon her request.


She was perhaps singing away the moment thinking how to sustain in the following week her four sons studying in Naga—or perhaps she was humming away her gratitude that she was supporting only four students in the city. I and my sister stopped schooling that year.



Some seventeen years later, Mother’s swan song would be one graceful and heavenly melody, inspiring everyone in her last rites about how one single parent had weathered all odds through the years to make the best of all her six children.



II

In our brood of six, Manoy has biggest share of influence in each of us, younger siblings. While Ano and Alex also strutted their way to get our nerves equally break-dancing to the tunes of Michael Jackson and his local copycats towards the mid-1980s, Manoy’s influence in the rest of us has been indispensable.


Being the eldest, Manoy held the possession of the phonograph like the Two Stone Tablets, where the songs being played later became the sibling’s anthems. From the phonograph, everyone came to love Mother’s favorite trio the acoustic “Trio Los Panchos” whose pieces did not sound different from her aunt Lola Charing’s “La Tumba” number which she would sing during clan reunions. While Yoyoy Villame’s rpms would be played alternately with Baby Jane and Tarzan’s yellow plaka, it would be the “Santa Maria” chorus which would ring more in my memory. 

Yet, the phonograph music would last only until the time when there would be no way to fix it anymore after Manoy dropped it one day when he was retrieving or returning it from the cabinet which should have been out of our reach.

Everything else in the family’s long-playing collection had escaped my memory—I would be too young to even know how to operate the phonograph. We chanced to retrieve some of LP discs in the 90s after a long list of typhoons; I could only help my brother Ano in placing them on the walls as decoration. And they certainly looked classic there—like memories pasted on the wall for anyone’s immediate recollection.


Not long after, Manoy would be addicted to tapes that he would bring in a new recorded record of many artists in the eighties. The eighties was a prolific era--with almost anything for everyone.  On his  boombox and other sound gadgets, Manoy played Pink Floyd, Depeche Mode, Heart, Sade, America and Tears for Fears, among a million others.


He recorded songs while they were played on FM stations on the radio. It was his way of doing things. It was his way of cheering the household up--he played music when he would cook our food--his perennial assignment at home was to cook our food. He played music on the radio anytime, everytime that Mother would usually tell him to lower down the volume.



III

Creativity or art has never escaped my second eldest brother Ano’s keen senses. In the eighties, Ano did not only have a record of break-dance tunes in their high school days in BCAT—he also made an unforgettably cool tape jacket which became a bestseller among the siblings. While Ano and Alex break-danced to their hearts’ content, we younger siblings could only look at them in amazement, later adopting their moves to our own sense of enjoyment and thrill—wherever and whenever we found avenues for it.


This time, our anthems were now being played over the Sanyo radio, the family phonograph’s successor. Mother must have acquired it through a loan presented by lending businessmen whose special offers lured a number of public school teachers in Bagacay.

Ano loved the popular music, collecting pinups from song hits of say, Gerard Joling and mounting them as frames in our sala, as if he were a familiar cousin of ours. Of course, he maintained a collection of his tapes perhaps apart from Manoy's growing collection of recorded stuffs and original albums.

 

 

IV

Then, there was a time in our lives when music would not ever be sung for a long time. Nothing demoralized us more than being poor that music must have been forgotten as pastime—as growing young adults, our needs were more of corporeal rather than spiritual—"survival," not "theatrical."


I believe when someone in a movie said that nothing impoverishes the spirit more than poverty itself. Who would not be crushed by the fact that there was not just enough to sustain ourselves? Mother’s income had never been enough so that each of us had to hum our own melodies to sing our way through our days.


But just like wine, music’s soothing properties worked wonders. While the rest of us must have found avenues to continue singing their lives, brother Alex’s quiet and restraint was music itself. In him, we would not find so much loud melodies or even singing—because such countenance solicited friendship in cousin Bong, Auntie Felia’s eldest son who played and paraded the music of the eighties like soul food. With Bong, Alex’s sense of music has been sharpened—finding their voice in the groovy and still danceable and angst-ridden mid-eighties.


Later, Alex's tight-lipped restraint significantly found its voice in the sociopath Kurt Cobain and icons of the grunge era, among others. This was the time when Bong studied medicine in Manila, while Alex pursued engineering in UNC. Nothing better could have captured his sense of isolation than the pieces of Metallica, Guns and Roses, Bon Jovi and other intimacies which he now shared with new found frat brother Nanding, our landlady’s son in Diaz Subdivision.



After 1996, reverting back to the jukebox pieces was necessary for Alex to mingle with the crowd of fellow boarders working in the busy economic zone in Laguna. After all, Michael Learns to Rock, Rockstar and Renz Verano, for instance, could certainly help bring him back to the old Bagacay, which he sorely missed.  Alex would romance rock ballads even after he has established his own family in Laguna.

An Mga Ribongribong Sa Bagacay

Songs of Ourselves: Fragments

If music is wine for the soul, I suppose I have had my satisfying share of this liquor of life, one that has sustained me all these years.

All this time I have savored the timeless ballads of Matt Monro and Carpenters, have drunk much rock of say, Queen and Juan de la Cruz Band, which I have grown to love, or sometimes sipped from the modern R&B and acoustic alchemies concocted by younger songwriters and singers like Ogie Alcasid and Ne-yo. My favorites range from chanteuse Grace Nono to Paul Potts to Patsy Cline to Rico J. Puno, and the alternative Labuyo to Richard Clayderman.

Such sense of music has been influenced by people around me and people whom I grew up with—my mother, sister and brothers—my family, or better yet, our clan who sang and danced our way through life, now and then drinking from own cups.


I
How and why I have grown to like music—like every human being perhaps—I owe first to my mother, who must have adlibbed the best melodies only for me to sleep the cold nights of being left without a father. After my father’s demise, my mother’s melodies must have sounded more like elegies being sung by a widow who now as a single parent, had to fend for six growing children.

One evening, Mother told me a story of how she had to sing Victor Wood’s “Teenage Señorita” when she was being recruited for a sorority in college. I could only imagine she sang it in the corridors of Burns Hall where I first saw my very own teenage señorita Cecile Naldo, a bubbly DevCom major from Iriga who would sing the melodies of Celine Dion like an LP after our Biology class. The Celine Dion connection did not materialize much—just when my Cecilia’s singing of “If You Asked Me, Too” ended.

Mother loved Nat King Cole that whenever Manoy played “Stardust” and the rest of his collection nights after supper in Bagacay, the Banat household would be filled with her voice that sounded like it’s tiptoeing the corners of the house.

Her singing voice would delicately hit the right notes but contained “a certain sadness” that perhaps even Astrud Gilberto must have never known. Manoy recorded Cole’s collection on tapes—along with those of Carpenters and Pet Shop Boys—through our cousin Manoy Ynos’s stuff in Manila during his engineering board review in 1991.

One cool Sunday afternoon in 1993, Mother introduced me to Jerry Vale, when we were enjoying the coolness of the folding bed in our sala at siesta time. We listened to Vale’s “If You Go Away” being played on an AM radio program on the Sharp radio which Manoy bought upon her request. She was perhaps singing away the moment thinking how to sustain in the following week her four sons studying in Naga—or perhaps she was humming away her gratitude that she was supporting only four students in the city. I and my sister stopped schooling that year.

Some seventeen years later, Mother’s swan song would be one graceful and heavenly melody, inspiring everyone in her last rites about how one single parent had weathered all odds through the years to make the best of all her six children.

II
In our brood of six, Manoy has biggest share of influence in each of us, younger siblings. While Ano and Alex also strutted their way to get our nerves equally break-dancing to the tunes of Michael Jackson and his local copycats towards the mid-1980s, Manoy’s influence in the rest of us has been indispensable.

Being the eldest, Manoy held the possession of the phonograph like Two Stone Tablets, where the songs being played later became the sibling’s anthems. From the phonograph, everyone came to love Mother’s favorite trio the acoustic “Trio Los Panchos” whose pieces did not sound different from her aunt Lola Charing’s “La Tumba” number which she would sing during clan reunions. While Yoyoy Villame’s rpms would be played alternately with Baby Jane and Tarzan’s yellow plaka, it would be the “Santa Maria” chorus which would ring more in my memory.

Yet, the phonograph music would last only until the time when there would be no way to fix it anymore after Manoy dropped it one day when he was retrieving or returning it from the cabinet which should have been out of our reach.

Everything else in the family’s long-playing collection had escaped my memory—I would be too young to even know how to operate the phonograph. We chanced to retrieve some of LP discs in the 90s after a long list of typhoons; I could only help my brother Ano in placing them on the walls as decoration. And they certainly looked classic there—like memories pasted on the wall for anyone’s immediate recollection.

Not long after, Manoy would be addicted to tapes that he would bring in a new recorded record of many artists in the eighties. The eighties was a prolific era--with almost anything for everyone. On his boombox and other sound gadgets, Manoy played Pink Floyd, Depeche Mode, Heart, Sade, America and Tears for Fears, among a million others.

He recorded songs while they were played on FM stations on the radio. It was his way of doing things. It was his way of cheering the household up--he played music when he would cook our food--his perennial assignment at home was to cook our food. He played music on the radio anytime, everytime that Mother would usually tell him to lower down the volume.

III
Meanwhile, creativity or art has never escaped my second eldest brother Ano’s keen senses. In the eighties, Ano did not only have a record of break-dance tunes in their high school days in BCAT—he also made an unforgettably cool tape jacket which became a bestseller among the siblings. While Ano and Alex break-danced to their hearts’ content, we younger siblings could only look at them in amazement, later adopting their moves to our own sense of enjoyment and thrill—wherever and whenever we found avenues for it.

This time, our anthems were now being played over the Sanyo radio, the family phonograph’s successor. Mother must have acquired it through a loan presented by lending businessmen whose special offers lured a number of public school teachers in Bagacay.

Ano loved the popular music, collecting pinups from song hits of say, Gerard Joling and mounting them as frames in our sala, as if he were a familiar cousin of ours. Of course, he maintained a collection of his tapes perhaps apart from Manoy's growing collection of recorded stuffs and original albums.

IV
Then, there was a time in our lives when music would not ever be sung for a long time. Nothing demoralized us more than being poor that music must have been forgotten as pastime—as growing young adults, our needs were more of corporeal rather than spiritual—"survival," not "theatrical."

I believe when someone in a movie said that nothing impoverishes the spirit more than poverty itself. Who would not be crushed by the fact that there was not just enough to sustain ourselves? Mother’s income had never been enough so that each of us had to hum our own melodies to sing our way through our days.

But just like wine, music’s soothing properties worked wonders. While the rest of us must have found avenues to continue singing their lives, brother Alex’s quiet and restraint was music itself. In him, we would not find so much loud melodies or even singing—because such countenance solicited friendship in cousin Bong, Auntie Felia’s eldest son who played and paraded the music of the eighties like soul food. With Bong, Alex’s sense of music has been sharpened—finding their voice in the groovy and still danceable and angst-ridden mid-eighties.

Later, Alex's tight-lipped restraint significantly found its voice in the sociopath Kurt Cobain and icons of the grunge era, among others. This was the time when Bong studied medicine in Manila, while Alex pursued engineering in UNC. Nothing better could have captured his sense of isolation than the pieces of Metallica, Guns and Roses, Bon Jovi and other intimacies which he now shared with new found frat brother Nanding, our landlady’s son in Diaz Subdivision.

After 1996, reverting back to the jukebox pieces was necessary for Alex to mingle with the crowd of fellow boarders working in the busy economic zone in Laguna. After all, Michael Learns to Rock, Rockstar and Renz Verano, for instance, could certainly help bring him back to the old Bagacay, which he sorely missed. Alex would romance rock ballads even after he has established his own family in Laguna.

Summer

Quiet, calm afternoons bring me back to my afternoons in our old house in Bagacay. To avoid the baking heat of the rooms, I often lay down on the canopy of our rooftop, safe under the eaves. There, I fell asleep until a cooler breeze from the backyard of the Absins, our neighbors who owned the house at the foot of the hill, woke me up. The late afternoon was the best time to linger, then someone from the house, Mother, brother, or sister, called me for an afternoon treat of linabunan na batag or gina’tan.

Flores de Mayo

Susog sa Obra Ni Clemente S. Manaog,
Mio Hermano Intimo
Agosto 2007


Bagacay, 1942

Kan si Rafael San Andres mga pitong taon pa sana, dahil naman gayod sa kahisdulan, igwang nakalaog na crayola sa saiyang dungo. Mga pirang aldaw an nag-agi, mala ta maski ano an gibohon kan ina niyang si Visitacion, dai nanggad mahali-hali an crayola sa dungo kan aki.

Kan bulan na iyan, Mayo, igwa nin pa-Flores si Visitacion sa saindang harong sa Iraya. Dawa na ngani gayod makulugon ang dungo, nin huli ta igwa baya nin tandan na sopas na tanggo saka galleta an mga  aki, nagbale sa Flores si Rafael.

Sa saday na harong ni Visitacion, an mga aki minadarara nin mga sampaguita, gumamela, dahlia, dahon nin cypres na ginurunting na saradit. Maparangadie muna an mga gurang mantang an mga aki nakaturukaw sa salog. Dangan maabot sa cantada an pagpangadie ninda sa Espaniol. Dangan maabot sa parte na an mga aki masarabwag kan mga dara nindang burak sa altar ni Inang Maria. Magkapirang beses masabwag an mga aki nin mga burak segun sa cantada.

Sa mga pagsabwag ni Rafael kan saiyang mga burak sa altar, basang na sanang tuminubrag hali sa dungo niya an crayola. Nagparaomaw si Visitacion asin daing untok na nagpasalamat sa nangyari. Nin huli man sa nangyari, nangayo-ngayo si Visitacion na gigibohon kan pamilya an Flores de Mayo sa masurunod pang taon bilang pasasalamat sa pagkahali kan crayola sa dungo ni Rafael.

Poon kaidto sagkod ngonyan, pinapadagos kan pamilya ni Visitacion San Andres an saiyang panata na dae mababakli ni isay man. Hasta ngonyan, tinutungkusan kan pamilya San Andres an pasasalamat kan saindang mga apoon, patunay na binibisto kan tawo an karahayan kan Mas Nakakaorog.

O, Clement, O, Loving, O

Remembering Clemente T Manaog [1910-1986]

Today I remember--some twenty years ago--my father's father who succumbed to a lingering illness he had had for a long time.

Some two decades ago today, our eldest brother Manoy Awel, along with Uncle Berto's eldest daughter Manay Gina, stood long hours for him in his deathbed.

Then, our entire family went to Iriga to pay our respects and last homage to the dead. Despite the warm company of our cousins and relatives, which must have overwhelmed the souls of our dear departed, I recall the sad mood--being left with no grandfather or father all together.

In more ways than one, Lolo Ente was our refuge. Mama frequently sought help from him especially in the most challenging days of solely bringing up her six children. Quite a feat for our mother, really. Clemente's son Manuel died in 1978, some eight or nine years before he himself left this world.

Clemente Taduran Manaog--born in 1910--said to belong to a lineage who pioneered clearing the land and "started civilization" in barangay Banao in Iriga City most probably even before it became a city--was a farmer whose simple and humble life lived with his equally magnanimous wife Rosario Monge Cepe, had not failed to inspire their seven children to strive hard and succeed in their chosen fields.

Clemente's two sons became members of the police and the military--Uncle Idong and Uncle Edmundo; four became public school teachers and servants--Auntie Cita and Adang Ninang, my Uncle Berto and my father Manuel; while his second eldest son Uncle Milo followed his own footsteps as a farmer.

I remember my grandfather's simple, dark but cozy room where he stayed in 128 Banao, Del Rosario, Iriga City. It was part of the ancestral house where the clan would gather and feast on exotic food prepared by the "iron chefs" of Banao. Such priceless moment is always something to go back to. Someday. Someday.

During vacation days, Lolo Ente would visit Bagacay from Iriga and bring us to the sea after visiting the tomb of my father. After prayers and rituals in my father's tomb, he would take us to swim in the beach near the cemetery, a familiar place I would later call The Sea House.

I remember how I was once thrown to the water along with my cousins, but I managed to swim up to where Lolo Ente was. The water looked dark and abysmal--it was blurred but warm. Young as I was, I was too afraid to swim that the experience had not been enough to make me learn to swim sensibly at all.

During his visits to Bagacay, Mentz, Nene and I would show Lolo Ente our good papers in grade school--from grade one until 1985 or at that time. He'd be so happy to look at them. In fact, he would really get our class papers graded "100%" or "Very Good" in exchange for a particular sum of money.

Although this would be enough to send us to Lola Mimay's store where we would buy balikutsa and Burly, it is interesting to know what he would do to these purchased products. Lolo Ente would use our papers, these precious proofs of our outstanding performance in school as his toilet paper.

Most of my Writing papers under Mrs. Cornelio must have ended up with Lolo Ente's moments catering to his call of nature. Very well earned, indeed. Interesting that our lives as "businessmen" already started when we were young.

I just want to stop writing here or else I would really want to cry. So long for a grandpa's life well lived with his orphaned grandchildren.

I can just wish I could retrieve Lolo Ente's last letter to mother written in two or three pages of tablet paper which he sent through Manoy Awel some twenty years ago.

If I can just recall it right, Lolo was very much saddened by our poor situation back in the Bagacay house--where his son's widow, our mother, the sole parent of six growing children, scrimped and scrammed just to make ends meet. Just to make ends meet.

But I suppose the same letter also came with a half sack of rice or so and other fruits or crops which were harvested from the old man's farm where he toiled with his own blood, sweat and tears for his grandchildren who were far away from him.

The old man must have missed them dearly as much as he must have badly missed his son Manuel, their father who was gone too soon, too early.

Clemente's son Manuel's college graduation picture, Mabini Colleges, Iriga City, 1965

But as they say, God's time is never our time. So I just repose and say--all things must have happened for sensible purposes--and everything happens right in God's own time. In his time.

May God bless your kind, loving and warmhearted soul, Lolo Ente.

Eternally.

Amen.

      

Cancion Kan Taga-Bagacay

I

Mga aki sa Bagacay kun dai nag-iiriskwela,
minsan nagkakarawat, o nagkakara-karanta

Kaibahan kan mga magurang ninda
Sa radyo maghapon dangog nin drama—
Mayo na gayod hahanapon pa ta gabos yaon na—

Presko an duros, nag-uuran sa may harong
Magurang, pinsan, kahoy, mga dahon

May ayam, may ikos, may orig sa tangkal
Pagkatapos kan lumlom, may init an saldang,

Pag bakasyon, may aurora, o pabayli,
Pag habagat o aya-ay, may pabiga', pasali.
 
Sa pamilya, magayon an iribanan,
Mayong turuklingan; nagkakairintindihan;

Nag-iirinuman—pag naburat, bagsak;
Pag dai nakabangon, kabaong.

Urutangan, siringilan, murulestyahan,
Minsan sirilyakan ta’ dai nagkakadarangugan

Pero maugma ta’ abang prangka
Mayo kitang masasabi ta’, basta.

An kalbo pugo man giraray;
An kawayan butong man giraray;

An mga aki mayong kalson man giraray.

An may buhok nabubulugan man; an nagtitinda nabebentahan;
An nalilipot naiimbongan; anuman na mainit nayeyelohan;
An naglalantuag nakakauli man; an may helang inaaswang.

An siisay man na gutom nagkakakan—
Kun bakong gina'gang karne, mahamis na ginatan;

Mirindalan pinakro, bulgur, sinuman;
Pulutan, kutsinta, kun ano na sana man.

 
II

Sa sugalan, mga gurang tiripon lalo na kun hapon,
May nagtitinda pang sitsaron; sa tindahan, mamon.

Sa binggohan, kadaragahan o may mga agóm urumpukan.
An mga aki sa magurang aba anang pakinabang—

 

Sa laog kan harong, o sa tindahan,
Linilibot an lahot hanggang sa simbahan.

An putong tinitinda uurutangon;
Mauli an aki sirisingko an gugom; Nom!
Bagas na pamanggihan mayong tutungudon.

An mga omboy makunswelo man
Nahulog sa hagyan, nabakros an laman;

Kun mayong tipdas, kinukumbulsyon,
Kun bakong lugadon, maniwangon;

Garo mga talapang; mga tulak darakulaon—
Urugmahon dawa gurutom.

Mga daraga kapot an komiks maghapon
Mga soltero pugapo, sugpo papabakalon,

An mga ama sa pantalan maghapon—
Baggage o labor sa lantsang pa-Siruma-hon,
Bani, Popoot, mga biyahe pag sinárom.

Pag-uli kun hingaw, problema yaon;
Kun burat, iiwalon an agom;
An masaway magurang o tugang kan agóm.

Pag nagkakurulugan, harabuan;
Malayas, mabuwelta; may nalingawan na kwarta,
An mga aki dara, et cetera.

III

Maestrang sa high school bakasyon na, dai pa nag-uli ta’ siya
Saka estudyanteng taga Iraya nagkairintindihan na;

Nagkairiyuhan, mayong napugulan; pag uban-uban, turuytuyan,
Burunuan, harandaan; mga abay paturuyatoy sa simbahan.

Pero dawa arog kaini, Marhay an buhay ninda digdi—
Nakangirit kadaklan sainda; sa saro, dai ka magsuba-suba
Ta’ pag napasala ka, nya! Pasensya!

Hali sa dagat an bahod dangog-dangog
An mga parasira biyong nag-aaranggot

Ta’ mayong pasayan; tikong an nadakop
Sa Mauban mauran; dakulaon an bahod.


An langit sa bukid abang lumlom
An bagyo yaon na daa sa Quezon

Tapuyas sana man daa,
Pero nagsasalimagyo na baga!

Pag nagbaha na, dai ka magluwas
Kun habong maingas o mabasa nin tapuyas;

Ta’ pag maanayo, masakit ipatawas;
Mahal; an presyo kan bulong makangalas.

Kun aya-ay na, an banggi malipot;
Mayong niisay man na naaanggot—

Paraoma, sungo an hakot; parasira, saklay an hikot;
Mga aking sinusurugo pag banggi, tarakot;
An tinampo mahalnas; sa harong mapulot.

An lugar na ini habong halian ta’ marhay an pagkakan
Maski ralabot an istaran nakakaraos man.

Basta butog an tulak an isip daing hugak
Mayong maraot ta’ dai ka maaanggot.


IV

Kun pista, urugma; o dawa Kwaresma
May salabat o galleta an nagpapabasa.

Mga ilaw kan poste pundido daa
Pero naglalaad kun aga, baterya
Pag banggi na nauubusan daa—

Kaya madiklom, malipot
Sa harong an agóm maimbong;
Daing kasing na’góm.

Sa pag-agi kan aldaw
Pu'on kan santol minarambong
Kaya sa harong madoot, madahon;
May hinilunuhan kun maation—
An sawa pag nadakop, asalon;
Pag tinuka’ ka, kinyentoson.

Magsalang basog, gutom;
Kun bakong mataba’, helangon;
Kun mayong agóm, poro’ngoton;
Kun daraga, nakaporma;
Kun daragang gurang man, nakasaya;
Kun mayong sambay, relihioso;
Nin huli ta Hermano, politiko.
 
Digdi samo sa Bagacay
Ordinaryo an buhay, simpleng maray—

Mayong gayong problema
Apuwera kwarta, kun tinitikapo na.

Daing kaartehan, mayong lilikayan
Mayong aalanganan, mayong aralanganan.

Dakulang Kalugihan

Or How Memories Are Lost Or Stolen Because They Aren't Made in the First Place

Dakul an kalugihán kan mga estudyante nin huli kan pandemyang ini. Bakò tà dikit o mayo sindang nanonòdan sa mga module na itinatao o sa Google Classroom na pinapagibo.

An pagkanood ngonyan gamit an module o internet yaon sa sadiri nindang panghingowa na intindihon an mga leksyon kan saindang mga maestro sagkod maestra.

Mayo ini sa saindang magurang, mayo sa maestra. Pwedeng makanood an siisay man sainda kawasa pipilion gugustuhon gigibohon ninda ini.

Alagad an mamondo ngonyan ta—an mismong social life ninda an nagsasapò.

Si kadakuldakul na oportunidad kuta na nindang mabisto an mga kaklase o kagurubay, o maintindihan an pagkatawo sagkod pagkanood kan saindang mga maestro sagkod maestra—na iyo man sana nanggad an matatada mawawalat maroromdoman pag-agi kan panahon—an mga ini dai na ninda makukua.

Dawa idtong haralìpot na panahon o pagkakataon na iyo an mabilog kan saindang mga alaala kan saindang elementarya, sekondarya—dai na mangyayari.

Máyò na.

Idtong darakupan daralaganan sa may pahurusan o sa likod kan daan nang Marcos Type—o si arambagan rulutuan karakanan sa Home Economics kan Gabaldon Building.

O idtong pagkahiling pagkatagalpo paglikaw sa hinahangaan na kaklase na uto’doy—uminagi sa Wooden Building?

Si hirilingan surubahan hurulnakan sa Hernandez Hall; si koropyahan hiringhingan purusngakan sa O’Brien Library?

Ano an saindang babalikan bubuweltahan maroromdoman pag sinda na gururang?


#BikolBeautiful

THEN AND NOW, YOU

A Gen Xer, you feel fortunate to have witnessed the evolution of digital media all these years.

In the 1990s, you began learning how to operate a computer and begin typing into the green screens using WordStar, WordPerfect, and Fox Database.

You used large floppy diskettes to input—encode—process and print your thesis using the Dot Matrix printer in your school paper’s office.

In the 2000s, you began e-mailing your friends and families a lot and watching trailers and movies on YouTube until the wee hours. You also began blogging, finding so much fun in embedding images and photos onto your essays and blogs that you published on multiply.com or blogger.com.

In the 2010s, you sent videos, too, via your e-mails and shared news, photos, and videos with your friends on social media. You also looked forward to how the videos would stream into your news feed on Facebook and Twitter accounts.

You also joined LinkedIn, Instagram, and Vimeo, among many others, now being so overwhelmed by so much information just using your handheld gadget. You also joined and maintained accounts on Goodreads and Tumblr. For you, the sleek layout of photos and Tumblr was indispensable.

In the 1990s, you went to computer laboratories to encode your academic projects—and the dreaded senior thesis in your university. In the 2000s, you needed to contact your internet service provider so they could fix your company’s troublesome internet modem.

And in the 2010s, you would have to be hooked on a good Wi-Fi if you were to video-stream and witness Pope Francis’s visit to the Philippines outside the country’s capital of Manila in real-time.

All these multi-modal conveniences, through the years, have reinforced any information that you consumed. They have leveled up your interaction and you have become a more learned person owing to these affordances—but most importantly, they have also allowed you to produce knowledge that you can now share with the rest of the world.

#DigitalEvolution
#GenerationXer
#ThenAndNow

Anthems of Our Youth, Now Rare

With the Internet, I could just randomly easily find the rare songs of my youth. 

Recently I found that Spotify has the album “Dreams” by Fra Lippo Lippi, which came out in 1992—thirty years ago.

 

FLL is that Norwegian new wave duo whose songs played on local FM stations were just easy to listen to. 

 

At the time, we, members of the graduating class of Ateneo de Naga High School, were all excited about graduating. 

 

Sometime in March of 1992, in spending the last days of our high school, having our clearances signed by our teachers and the offices where we spent four wonderful years of learning, waiting for awards announcements, or having our autographs signed by each other in our classic long manila folders, I remember how we also sang to “Stitches and Burns”.

 

The “Dreams” album provided such unforgettable anthems of our youth—“Stitches and Burns” and “Thief in Paradise”, among others. It was a hit in those days—enjoying ample airplay on the local FM stations, that we just found ourselves singing: 

 

“Now I don't want to see you anymore/ Don't wanna be the one to play your game/ Not even if you smile your sweetest smile/ Not even if you beg me, darling, please.”—as if we knew them for a long time. 

 

When my classmate Gerry Brizuela bought a copy and brought it to class, many of us wanted to borrow it. Eventually, I was lent the copy and listened to my heart’s content on my brother’s cassette player. 

 

While “Stitches and Burns” and “Thief and Paradise” were the easy favorites because they were the ones first played over the radio and shown on MTV, and probably because of their upbeat tunes, I got to like “One World”, and particularly “Dreams,” the titular single, which is one of the many tearful cuts in this rather dolorous album.

 

Some years earlier—beginning school in 1988, I grew up listening to FLL’s early hits like “Light and Shade” and “Angel” being played from our cousin Glen’s room next to ours.

 

I grew up listening to and eventually mouthing the lyrics of “Every time I See You”, “Shouldn’t Have to Be Like That,” or “Some People”, among others—while reviewing for the Algebra exam of Mr. Rey Joy Bajo or reading the Gospel Komiks for Miss Cedo’s Religion class or making the Social Studies project under Mrs. Luz Vibar.

 

But during my senior year in high school, the songs in Fra Lippo Lippi’s “Dreams” album sounded different but I liked them all so much. 

 

I wonder why I felt so good listening to these songs. I wonder why my heart seems to sing, too, when the songs of any singer all seem to be crying. Why have I, all this time, always taken delight in these lyrics: “How many rivers to cross—/ Tell me how many times must we count the loss/ Did you see the face of the broken man, head in his hands?”

 

Why have such sad songs thrilled me so much—that I cannot get enough of them; or that I would rather choose to listen to them than the others: “Open your eyes to the world/ Light the light for the ones who are left behind/ Love is in need of a helping hand/ Show us the way?”

 

“Once in a while, you feel like you’re on your own/ And nothing can keep you from taking a fall/ Like there’s no way out/ Hold on to your dream...”

 

“It’s all I’m thinking of/ It’s all that I dream about/ It’s right here with you and me/ and still it's so hard to see/ still finding my way... still finding my way…my way.”

#FraLippoLippi 

#HighSchool 

#HardToFind  

#NewWave  

#Rare

 

Madonna of the Chair

CALAUAG, NAGA CITY—Of all the photos taken at my cousin Maita Cristina’s daughter’s birthday celebration last night, this one makes me take a second look. The way my cousin holds Celestine Faith in her arms reminds me of Raphael’s Madonna of the Chair which I first saw in my Grade 6 class in the late 1980s, which I have not forgotten since.
An iconic High Italian Renaissance art from the 1500s, Raphael’s masterpiece portrays the Blessed Virgin cuddling a cherub-like baby Jesus, as his cousin John, son of Elizabeth, watches adoringly.

But more than anything, this last night’s photo shows a poignant image of how a mother could still cuddle and comfort her child after she had a very long day. In the midst of the crowd, it is the serenity from within the mother that hushes the child. At the end of the day, what is simply pure and true is the warmth: the strength and assurance only a mother could give not only to her child but really to herself.

‘Don’t English Me, I’m Panic’

Iníng mga nagpaparapansúpog o nan-iinsúlto sa mga tarataong mag-irEnglish—na ngonyan inaapod sa social mediang “English shaming”, “smart-shaming”, o kabáli na sa mas dakúlang terminong ‘anti-intellectualism’—daí man daw sinda an enot na pinasurúpog kan mga aki pas'na?

Tibaad kadto, sinda nag-iskusar man na mag-inEnglish sa klase ninda sa elementarya o dawà gayod sa sekondarya. Alagad kawásà si maestro o si maestra—in vez na si potential na makanuod nin tamà—mas nahíling, pigparatuyaw dangan pigparadudúan si mga salà ninda. Kayà nagin self-fulfilling prophecy logod ini sa mga buhay ninda. Dai na sinda naka-“move on” sa trauma.

Kayà pag-agi kan panahon, poon kadto pag-abot sa high school, college asta ngonyan na gurúrang na sa trabaho ninda—sa pabrika magin sa opisina—  “sourgraping” na s’na an gibo ninda.

Kawásà dai matukdol kan layas na ayam si nagkakaralay alagad haralangkawon na úbas, sinabi na saná kaining maaalsóm sinda. Kawásà súboót dai niya na maipadágos o mapaáyo an kakayahán sa English—dawa ngáni pwede niya man pag-adalán saná ini—sinasabi niya na sana sa katrabahong Inglesero o Inglesera, “Uy, spokening dollar’!” 

“Ano na 'yan—haypalúting ka baga!”

Nakanood ka sanang mag-English, very another ka na.

Abaana.

Mayo man naginibo idtong balisngág na English policy sa klase kaidtong mga 1980s—ásta ngonyan igwá pa—na mabáyad ka sa class treasurer kun mádakop daáng nagtatarám nin Bikol sa laog kan classroom.

Kun mádangog na dai nag-Eenglish, matao nin fine; kun dai man madakop, marhay sana. Kayà si iba ta nganing dai magbáyad, nagparáhiringhingan na s’na. Dai pigparápadángog si totóong dílà ninda. Ginibong aswang si sadiring tataramon ninda. Tiniklop sa cartolina. Iniripit, Alagad nag-uruldot si iba. Itinágo sa paldá. Linuom. Nagmayòmò. Pagsangáw, maparàton na. Si English, iyo na ngonyan si kontrabida. 

Kan sinisingil na kan tesorerang si Malyn si Pablo ta mga dies pesos na daá an babayádan niya, simbág saiya kan taga-Bigáas na matibáyon magbasábas, “Recess baga ko ka’to nagtarám—hay’paluting ka! Dai mo daw ‘ko. Don't me!”

Knowledge Production before the Age of Internet

In the 1990s, I attended high school and college classes where we would be periodically asked to “research” on some of the topics covered in the syllabi. This was before the age of Google and Wikipedia. 

Based on project-based learning, our subjects covered topics that would now and then require us to research from knowledge coming from the local community—interviews with the local people and yes, folk wisdom and social history.

In other words, not all the things we tackled in class come from the top-down knowledge flow led by the teacher. This was because these teachers—primarily those in the social sciences—did not rely on the textbook. In more senses, I have been a participant and witness to the rather lateral knowledge flow in the classroom. 

When classmates reported on legends culled from the local folks; or when we submitted interviews with overseas Filipino workers on economic diaspora; or when we asked our parents to become parts of answering questions related to family, we were being active components of the knowledge production. 

Once in our junior high school Practical Arts class which covered “Retail Merchandising”, I was asked to profile our local electric cooperative two rides away from our school campus. So I spent several afternoons rummaging through their archives and learning the dynamics of power distribution, and losses owing to jumpers and all other forms of pilferage, etc. 

I was fortunate to learn about the power supply in the process. It was participatory learning galore. 

For that project alone, I could say, I was not only assessed by my teacher but also appraised for efforts that rendered my output originality and authenticity inasmuch as it had come from the invaluable knowledge supplied by our local community.

Writing: Then and Now

In the 1990s, I would write letters to family and friends on paper and send them through the post office. But in the 2000s, when the internet and cellphones became the norm, I began texting and e-mailing them. 

Back then, I would crumple papers to rewrite my letters from the very beginning because of my erasures—I wanted them to be neatly written. I also once tried typing my letters and signed them with my name in the end but it was laborious. 

But using the keyboard or keypad now, I am amazed how I can articulate my expression with precision. I can delete wrong words if I need to or just want to. I can also compose my sentences more neatly than before because of the “Delete” function of any computer or mobile phone. 

Any gadget’s “Delete” function has gotten rid of the scratch papers I would have otherwise needed so I could rewrite my words and sentences and finish a clearer letter or article. 

When I thought of changing a word I just wrote, I crossed them out—but since I knew I didn’t have the luxury of paper, I would first carefully think of the right word to use before I wrote them. 

Meanwhile, the word processing machine—I mean, the computer—has given me more options. With it, I could now write more freely—or more aptly, faster—I can now type whatever comes to mind because I know that I can delete and edit these words anytime later if I need to.

When I began using computers in writing, I was also amazed how my spelling can be corrected by the machine. The Spell-check feature of the computer informed me of more words than I knew. I also became aware of which better words to use using the Shift F7 or to get alternative words I can use for what I wrote. I used to do previously by referring to a thesaurus. 

The formatting feature of these gadgets also adds to the clarity—and beauty—of my expression. As an image, for example, a carefully chosen font can add to the tone of my message.

With the personal computer, laptop or Smartphone nowadays—writing for me has leveled up dramatically. I became more efficient in writing letters and sending messages. Now I could write better than I did before.

I have also been blogging since the 2000s. In blogging a post, from then until now, I have posted my articles, but also have them rewritten later. 

Sometimes, when someone reacts to my post on social media, they virtually become my “reviewers” if not co-authors—pointing out a typographical error in one or correcting my words or facts in another. When this happens, I promptly correct such and other errors so that my writing would be clearer and better to them. I even revise the piece altogether based on any comments of the readers online. 

Furthermore, the “Edit” feature online does not only help me correct a written blog—it also allows me to add more ideas that enriches the original article. 

In sum, the more open writing space afforded by the social media and internet allows my ideas to be expressed freely—with the added incentive of being corrected and even enriched by those who read my articles. 

Finally now, in posting this article, the Grammarly app installed as extension on my browser suggested to me the tone of my own article, saying that it sounds not only formal and confident but also optimistic. 

It also asked me whether these said adjectives are just right; and I just clicked on the three checks to agree!

Privileges of Learning

When I started school, teachers and textbooks were the sources of learning. At times, my parents, too, were my teachers. As a pupil, I virtually did what I was told—and as I was told. I read my books and came to know things and learned from the teacher.

In high school, I probably did the same thing because of the rules we had to follow but I enjoyed it especially how our teachers made us engage with lessons.

Within the halls of Ateneo, my senior year in high school was particularly memorable. Toward the end of the year, we were required by our English teacher to dig deep into the life of one prominent person in history from A to Z. Assigned to the letter “F”, I made a shortlist which included Michael Faraday, Robert Frost and Sigmund Freud. Eventually, I chose Freud.

Up until the 1990s, I had to browse books and scour card catalogs from the library to make that paper. These were no days of Wikipedia—my classmates and I had to source out the lives of these famous people from tomes of books in Amelita’s Verroza’s kingdom called Periodicals Section of the old high school library on the ground floor of the Burns Hall.

Some of us even had to invade Ms. Esper Poloyapoy’s and Aida Levasty’s College Circulation across the hall in the Burns Hall. There in the College Library was where I found the juicier Freud—in the definitive biography by his bosom friend, Ernest Jones. Encyclopedia Britannica, World Book, Encyclopedia Americana, all encyclopedias and primary sources—these were the heyday of index cards filed in that brown box—title, author and subject cards. I did not know why but why of all these cards, it’s the subject card that looked the most beautiful of them all. And from that class, some fifty personalities were featured enough to collect in a compendium of sorts. That project I think was legendary.

 Does this mean that the approach used by my high school teacher border on the reflexive? Was it evident in the way I was given a choice by my English teacher to work on something and I personally chose Sigmund Freud? Did this, too, mean I practically helped design my own learning? If it were so, then I would have more of these eventually in college when almost all projects for the courses I enrolled in allowed us to produce the output of our own preferences.

After our high school graduation, my classmates went to enroll in universities while I stayed in the same school. At the time, studying in a bigger school in Manila— the country’s capital—was a status symbol.

For any youth at the time, there was nothing cooler than that. It did not only mean pursuing courses that suited your taste; it also promised an idyllic academic environment we’d see in the university brochures. It probably also meant “more knowledge”—even as these universities would place prominently in the world rankings, and so on. So did it mean having better chances to succeed in life? Yes.

In college, meanwhile, some of my course papers and essays were more directed to answering key questions to satisfy their rubrics. But certainly, other outputs in the humanities and social sciences were born of my own insight and creativity. Were the didactic and the authentic approaches prominent in my college education? Probably.

Nevertheless, all knowledge that I could have known only lay everywhere—from the books and encyclopedias to almanacs to journals—but were they accessible to me? No. Did our school library have a big collection of these? Not really.

So this was the time when one had to go to a university to access a piece of information which was only available from the exclusive collection of this school or that university. Knowledge before the age of the internet was so precious and rare—one had to search it as if on a mission, as it were.

But when every school had interconnectivity, things changed. Schools in the regions now “mattered”. They became equally competitive—along with the leveling up of the graduate-level faculty who now came back to their departments.

I was surprised that I could now find books easier through an online public access catalog or OPAC in our school. If then, I relied too heavily on what my teachers had to say, this time, much knowledge and information were efficiently at my disposal.

Everything that I only probably wondered about because I heard them from my teachers or was sparked by their discussions I could now probably know elsewhere. I have been so enamored by so much information I can now find online. And since then, I have not stopped.

 Advances in technology—the digital media and the internet—significantly leveled the playing field for universities and colleges. “Decentralization” and “regionalization” became the bywords. “Periphery” also became a relative term. Because knowledge became more accessible through the new media, the modern learner became more empowered than ever before. (The new generation really grew up being babysat not only by television but by the internet—gadgets and all.)

Years ago, I had to spend hours in the library to come up with my project, I had to compare notes with my classmates on their own and I had to see my teachers in the Faculty Room personally to submit to her the required journal, now, everything is different.

 In the 21st century, my students must have a personal computer, laptop or Smartphone to connect online and attend my classes—they must log in the Classwork Attendance I posted on Google Classroom; meet me on Google Meet once a week; download the modules I prepared in PDF or PowerPoint and screen the instructional videos I attached; and upload their own drawn emojis as part of their Reflection Paper.

 And one day, I just found myself in one small corner of the world, my room with interconnectivity—where I can teach and learn—is now my sanctuary.

Traditional, Progressive Or Both?

A few years ago, I read a post by one of my students on a social networking site, telling his classmates how he met me in a student press congress in Aklan.

He was my freshman student at the Philippine Science High School or PSHS, the state-subsidized high school where Science- and Mathematics-gifted students were taught and trained to pursue science courses when they step onto college. More or less inspired by the Dewey school of thought, this school is programmed to supply the nation’s body of scientists.

In the post, he said he was surprised to see me and went on to say he could not forget their classes with me a few years earlier. In particular, he recalled how their English class was conducted—how, for example, I’d ask them to get “one loose sheet” (of pad paper) to start each lesson or how I’d also tell them to skip one line as they wrote on it.

He also commented on how I would write my full name on the handouts and/or periodic tests I gave them. (At the time, our periodic exams were made by individual teachers following only one syllabus).

He also recalled how I awarded them certificates for their individual achievements in Homeroom (I was their class adviser, too.). For instance, I gave one of their classmates “Best in Journal Writing” while another was awarded for her congeniality, and so on.

Did he hate doing those things? Did they hate me for those things?

Did I “run their class like a slave plantation,” where they were just “told to do or accomplish something”? Was that how I made him or them feel? Probably. Probably not.

Did I make them feel the way Charles Darwin or Winston Churchill did in their Latin classes? He must have wondered about the purpose of making them do it again and again. So did I ever tell them why they needed to do it? Probably. I must have implied its importance to them. But did I help him process or understand it? Should I have?

I did them because I thought they were the right thing to do.

Being enrolled in the country’s premiere science high school, my student must have been swamped and exhausted by their biology, chemistry and physics classes that observed methods, procedures and all that. So did he expect something else from his English class—that it would do away with the methodical ways of doing things? Maybe. But whatever I did, I am certain that I didn’t want to make them feel like the prisoners in Fresnes.

Reading his post only made me recall how I was aware and overly particular of my routines as a teacher. It reminded me of the consistency I wanted to cultivate in them, which surely formed part of an honestly traditional approach.

Years later, I would begin to appreciate the post because more than anything, it made one thing clear to me—that along with those instructional routines, I did not only promote order in class but also sought to “cultivate their individuality”.

I must have replicated the traditional discourse I inherited—what my teachers did in their time some ten or twenty years back. I even used the same phrases my teachers used in our own high school—even adopting their mannerisms in instructing students in class. Of course, I knew some of my teacher’s pet words back in those days. And they never left my memory—they became my very own.

I virtually echoed my teachers in my own classrooms at the time. I could say I learned so much from the organization and the routine of it all—I am sure not all of my students appreciated it; but I’m glad that that’s what my student also remembered.

In their class activities and projects, I started with calling the roll, prayer, and so on—order and routine—yes, consistency—but I also made sure I allowed them to express themselves in the form of learning outcomes and assessments.

While their armchairs were all lined up separately—that is, six rows by five columns—yes, 30 of them—I made sure I broke them into groups during seatwork, quizzes, and projects. Every now and then, I would ask them to work with a partner or in threes or more to finish a group essay.

I must have also allowed the architectonic dimension—the configuration of the learning space—to work for them. So, say, in a session, armchairs would be uprooted from their usual spots—and lifted (usually dragged) to groups of three or four.

            Once they did that, I’d feel relieved because by then, when the noise and the chatter already began, I knew that they wouldn’t feel isolated anymore. I knew that doing things in groups would help them work better.

But then again, I’d direct them to focus on their task. Giving them discussion questions, I’d ask them to churn out ideas and insights from each other and come up with collective answers to the questions.

In these instances, I loved how the routine is made to work constantly with “deviations from sameness”—by reaching out to their individualities. How the structure of groups allowed them to open their minds to free expression—and how the same let them work as a group so their minds were drawn to cohere to one idea or statement.

Did I succeed in trying to make them more reflective persons? Maybe. Were the ten-or-so essays plus their quarterly projects they themselves helped choose or determine for the whole year make them more introspective? Maybe. Across the lessons, I would also ask for individual output—but these were also shared to the class in the sense that I wanted to always affirm them.

I remember how they also performed well in grammar exercises but also remember how I looked forward to reading their essays and reflections. Following a syllabus, I chose to have fewer grammar exercises and made sure they rather devoted more hours to finishing their “Book of Myself” scrapbooks which they submitted at the end of the first quarter.

In all these, I think that the traditional and the didactic was pervasive in my classes, from the instructional routine—I regularly telling them to observe the order and the specifics of a particular output—to the tests or assessments—how their individual ideas should be made to cohere to a more sensible whole. But the same can be said about how I chose to be progressive—which was expressed in the routine group work where each of the student’s interests and personalities was given space and expressed so that it stood out.

I must have—in the ideas of Rousseau—let my scholars “reason” for themselves. After all, I only literally “put the problems before them and let them solve it themselves”. I gave them guide questions and it was up to them to draw their own papers, presentations and/or any other output. I relished how such progressive approach drew their varied and exciting output, performances, or participation.

Reflecting on my student’s sentiment, I rather chose to think that that was not everything in my class. What he wrote was probably only what made some impressions upon him.

If it were so, then were these the only things he learned from that class? What did he really learn from it?

Did I only help build a social architecture of sameness or did I, too, help produce creative thinkers and introspective individuals?

The said routines may have been a form of “forcing something on them”—or at least some of them—but I also remember, in various instances I “let them do what they want to do in their own time at their own pace”.

I am sure at one time or another I had also been more agreeable in their class or lenient in their participation or their submissions—probably to the extent that A.S. Neill of Summerhill may even be smiling at me.