Showing posts with label failures. Show all posts
Showing posts with label failures. Show all posts

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Heroes


This school year, our search is on for the new batch of heroes.


Despite the ill effects of the media and other similar influences, we would want to think that a culture of admirable students still pervades our schools today.

Everyday we see them going in and out of the campus, baring their persons in commendable degrees—a well-mannered, dutiful, cultured lot, whose real persons and stories need to be emulated; or to the very least, appreciated, at least appreciated.


We are inspired by students who are courteous, basically tactful, reasonably straightforward, and not necessarily quiet. We see hope in a devoted student who keeps his word about submitting his late paper on Friday. Or what a delight it would be to meet a young junior who greets you one unholy afternoon with a forthright smile and a warm “Hi, Sir!” or “How are you, Ma’am?”  By these students we cannot just help but be astonished. And inspired.

We see streaks of hope in a student who gives way to a teacher when he passes by their clique. We most admire one who asks to be given a task not only because he knows he will be graded for it but because he or she is convinced that there is something to learn from it.

How about a student who offers a teacher to carry their notebooks to and from their classrooms? Or an anonymous someone—barely a class officer—who readily borrows the eraser from the teacher and cleans the writing on the board?

We can’t help but be amazed by these admirable values which are redundantly the essentials. Sadly, however, some of our students may not be through getting to know them or any aspect of genuine learning, which can prepare them for life.


Yet, all the same we remain optimistic that we have hope in some others who are otherwise—who do otherwise. So we move on to looking beyond what is obvious here and now. Frankly we believe it is not so hard to find a hero, an odd man out. Daily we launch a search for a student who does not conform to a culture that is tolerant of the vices of a child, the whims of Peter Pan or the caprices of a Dennis the Menace.


He or she is one growing person who is willing to live and live well in good manner. One who will succeed and whose name will be worth every frame in a world’s nameless, priceless, unadvertised, and insignificant hall of fame—because he or she will be one etched in a teacher’s heart—one who will inspire the teacher enough until his or her retirement.

It will not be so difficult to stumble on admirable persons who can make sense of what we have been doing the most of our lives. The search for these persons has always been on going.

There are some students out there whose young lives can shed light to others—some who can deserve to be called not just students, but scholars.

Tuesday, April 05, 2011

Democracy: Philippine Style

When subjected to social criticism, Philippine democracy seems to be more ideal than real because of the economic gap between the few who are rich and the many who are poor. When viewed from the social, economic and historical perspectives, it is apparently less than acceptable.

We Filipinos believe that our government must have a positive impact on our lives. For example, the poor believe that one of the roles of a democratic government is to alleviate their living conditions, but if ever change is presently taking place, it is going on at a snail’s pace, hence its impact cannot be felt, if at all.

Today, we have politicians who are self-motivated, but who are also private interest-motivated; they serve their own interest at the expense of others, most often the exploited poor in the rural areas. This is where the need for change is truly felt. The search for the honest committed public servant is on, but is he around in Philippine politics?

Sitio Baybay, Barangay Santiago,
Barotac Viejo, Iloilo
April 2006
Today more than ever, we need a government that shall uphold a true and Filipino-oriented democracy. To some extent, the Philippine conditions depicted in the mass media do not portray the real picture. This might be so because the pictures created are products of perceptions rather than scientific investigations and research. In these forms of mass media, the pulse of the masses is not felt. The disparity between perception and reality is reflected in the alienation of the few who go by opinion as contrasted with the many who go by experience. Why not go down to the level of the majority—the rural and deprived areas where disenchantment and discontent about many things are strongest?

Despite the many shortcomings of Philippine politics, we are still a nation, united and strong against inequity and injustice.

The masses have no need for politics but what they need is an answer to their grievances and frustrations. Does the Philippine democracy we have now give freedom to every citizen? Or is it rather what they call political culture? One that gives central and crucial role to the politician.

While it is fashionable to call politics as a disease in our national life, we must face the fact a majority of the people depend on the government for their well-being. The political culture, therefore, must permit and encourage the use of political figures for a decent purpose. For one, accessibility is the measure of political success. Politicians must perceive accurately the welfare of their constituents and try to serve them well.

But in most cases, politicians regard the idea of democracy as personalized and individualistic instead of populist. Right now, it is the minority who are concentrated in the middle class who favor the political culture. Politics has been institutionalized to promote their personal and economic interest  rather than the welfare of the majority. Unless a change takes place, politics will remain the world of the few who are able to manipulate everything in their favor.


Portions adapted from Eleuterio G. Bernardo’s “Democracy: Philippine Style,” Panay State Polytechnic College Faculty Forum 1 (2): 4, 10. Mambusao, Capiz: Panay State Polytechnic College, 1989.


Friday, October 30, 2009

Finding Hero

Brats and Other Failures, Scholars and Success Stories

We cannot remain silent anymore. We do not wish to contain this discontent to any further extent. It would be sheer hypocrisy and outright uselessness on our part, or on the sensibility of those teachers and other constituents in this community who commit their time and effort to help produce a genuine scholar, one student whom we do not consider ideal—but rather one real, attainable person.

There is a pervasive culture of spoiled brats in our school today. Everyday we see scholars—students of the Philippine Science High School Diliman Campus—going in and out of our high school, baring their persons in disgraceful degrees of being unruly, undisciplined, gang-like, virtually becoming a bunch of hooligans. These people have to be told something, at least something.

The solid waste management campaign we recently initiated during the Do Day has the most visible proof of apathy and lack of concern—erosion if not a disgusting absence of values—among our students. The students’ recommendation that there be one janitor in charge for every floor to clean their classrooms only presents a depressing scenario for us, teachers—does it now mean that students cannot deliver the simple task of segregating or at least throwing their trash sensibly to where they belong? What a scholar-ly modest proposal!

In the boys’ main dormitory, most if not all students are hardly disciplined—they read Sunday papers and leave all pages scattered and crumpled. Maybe they expect their maids to put their litter properly. Unfortunately they have to be told they are not in their homes—they have to be reminded they are dormers. Or maybe they have to be told about an axiom that says live and let live.

Oftentimes dormers bang the office telephone and the phone in the booths. They dribble basketball even during nighttime inside their rooms, in the corridors, and the lobby. Most of the time they watch television in an unreasonably loud volume. They leave electric fans switched on after they used them. They slam the doors of their rooms every time—every time, any time.

They are hardly grateful for any help offered them on their fast food orders or laundries by a teacher or staff desk volunteer. After eating their stuffs, they scatter styros everywhere—ground floor benches, water dispensers, stairs, everywhere.

Some of them scamper around the halls minutes before midnight—even when some of their roommates are already asleep. They make noise and all noise in the dead of night. They scatter their trash and leftover food like there is no tomorrow. The janitors—who have come and gone one after the other—constantly lamented the waste perennially scattered everywhere in the comfort rooms and the halls.

Many times in the cafeteria we encounter students interrupting the queue to get their orders ahead of those who are persistently falling in line. In this instance, a cafeteria staff would be kind enough to accommodate these singits while the rightful people are kept waiting. This is chiefly unforgivable. The basic rule of falling in line and waiting for one’s turn is as elementary as a kindergarten policy. Students who hardly see others in front of their noses just need to be told to go back to kindergarten. We pity these students if ever they do this inconsiderate act with a queue of cafeteria-goers who compose Bin Laden’s lot or Bush’s army. We do not know where they might find themselves once they get to face their fellow brats.

In classrooms, students are said to haggle everything with the teacher—from lessons to grades. They always negotiate to do other stuffs aside from the ones the teacher has designed or agreed with them to do. Even though it is too unreasonable, they would insist on doing what they want. What? It seems that they want to believe they know better than the teacher because the teacher always ought to “take off from where students are coming from.” We do not think the teacher is just there to be among their clique—intelligent or otherwise. In other words, a little bit of respect for the teacher—at least the fact that the teacher is older than them—should send them to think they need to first listen to a teacher before they negotiate anything, regardless of their predicament. If they need no instruction or directions, then, they must be told they must have come to the wrong place.

In spite of their brilliant ideas, which we recognize, acknowledge and applaud—they have no right to be arrogant about their knowledge. Such attitude only validates the fact that they do not really know enough. Failure then looms for these persons who see their teachers as inferior to them because in their own senses, they know they are better. This is too sad.

In this teacher writer’s three classes, many students failed in the first quarter. These failing students hardly complied with most class requirements necessary to pull up their grades. In language arts and journalism classes, we cannot help but wonder why most students would not turn in critical papers for evaluation—classic reviews, poems, homework, group or quad output. Despite countless extensions of deadline, some students would not turn in anything. They could not simply seem to care. Maybe we have extended the deadline more than enough that they lost interest in the subject matter—because they were stolen the thrill or pressure with which they can finish an impressive work. But we cannot just accept such excuse. A sensible student can always do better than staying mediocre the rest of his student life.

We recognize that all these apparent attitudes—the students’ value system—have to be redirected and led into something which everyone can admire or at least hope for. We cannot be so sadder than now, given such attitudes affecting our sensibility. Something has to be done—something has to be done. And we will, we will.

If we do not, we would simply spoil students and make them all brats, who will later mutate into successful monsters in any civilization where they can choose to thrive. Suffice it so say, anywhere they go, brats will never succeed—unless we accept that ours is a world ruled by brats. Yes, indeed Bush and other brats are ruling the world now. But we believe further that the world will not end in him or Bin Laden or Saddam or other brats who made news and money out of some childish folly or some foolish childhood.

As far as our brats are concerned, their gross lack of any values—technically, virtues—poses a challenge to all of us around here who still believe that basic and traditional values can prove true all through.

Our students—scholars, as we aptly call them—need to be told to grow up. They cannot remain pampered in all wrongly defines senses of the word “nurture.” We cannot just give them the fattest fish all the time. We will be forever condemned if we realize one day we would have not taught them how to fish by which they can survive all their way through. We would have been useless. This would be utter futility.

On the contrary, we see traces of an admirable scholar in some students. In their presence we see a glint of hope that all our efforts here—present, past, future—appreciated, underrated, or uncompensated—will never go to waste.


There is an apparent culture of admirable scholars pervading the school today. Everyday we see scholars—students of the Philippine Science High School Diliman Campus—going in and out of our high school, baring their persons in commendable degrees—a well-mannered, dutiful, cultured lot, whose real persons and stories need to be emulated. Or to the very least, appreciated. At least appreciated.

An inspiration we can obtain from the presence of students who are otherwise courteous, basically tactful, reasonably straightforward, and not necessarily quiet or submissive. In this environment inhabited by hooligans and grade hagglers, we can find a dormer who still secures gate pass duly from the dorm manager when he goes to the church on weekends or worship days. We also have a devoted student who keeps his word about submitting his late paper on Friday. Or what a delight it would be to meet a young junior who greets you one unholy afternoon with a forthright smile and a warm “Hi, Sir!” By these students we cannot just help but be dumbfounded. And inspired.

We see streaks of hope in a student who gives way to a teacher when he passes by their clique. We most admire one who asks to be given a task not only because he knows he will be graded for it but because he or she is convinced that there is something to learn from it. How about a student who offers a teacher to carry their notebooks to and from their classrooms? Or an anonymous someone—barely a class officer—who willingly borrows the eraser from the teacher and cleans the writing on the board?

We salute these scholars.

These basic, admirable values are redundantly the essentials. Sadly, however, some of our students referred in the first part of this lamentation are not through getting to know any elemental thing about these or any aspect of genuine learning, which can prepare them for life.

All the same we remain optimistic that we have hope in some others who do otherwise; who are otherwise. So we move on to looking beyond what is obvious here and now.

Frankly we believe it is not so hard to find a hero, an odd man out. Daily we launch a search for a martyr who does not conform with a culture that is tolerant of the vices of a child, the whims of Peter Pan or the caprices of a Dennis the Menace.

He or she is one growing person who is willing to live and live well in good manner. One who will succeed and whose name will be worth every frame in a world’s nameless, priceless, unadvertised, and insignificant hall of fame—because he or she will be one etched in a teacher’s heart—one who will inspire the teacher enough until his or her retirement. It will not be so difficult to stumble on admirable persons who can make sense of what we have been doing the most of our lives. The search for these persons has always been on going.

If the failures referred here cannot be molded anymore, there will be some out there whose young lives can shed light to others—some who can be the genuine scholars.

For sure, there will be some.



Songs of Ourselves

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