Category: education

elderly divide – lumbera vs. salonga & bernas

it wasn’t a face-off, just three of our elders one-on-one with korina sanchez: first former senate president jovito salonga, then the jesuit constitutional commissioner father joaquin bernas, and finally national artist for literature bienvenido lumbera.

no doubt natuwa ang palasyo kina salonga at bernas who together took up 45 minutes of the hour-long show. di bilib sa people power ang dalawa. salonga is against “mob rule.” bernas is against a quick fix. both recommend that the gloria-resign forces expend their energy on rallying for electoral reform instead so the 2010 elections will be clean and credible. shades of the bishops and christian monsod. status quo. go by the rules. don’t rock the boat.

mas interesante si lumbera, who recently endorsed the u.p. council statement calling for the resignation of gma. clearly unequivocally against the status quo and not beyond breaking rules, breaking out of patterns, for the common good, lumbera speaks also for a group of political analysts, public policy experts and academic scholars whose attitude is, “Arroyo was installed to the presidency by people power, people power may also unseat her.” and since neither a noli succession nor a military junta is desirable, a citizens’ transition council might be just the thing.

lumbera soundbites:

I belong to the Center for People Empowerment in Governance, or CenPEG . . . [in our analysis] what could possibly be done is to set up a commission headed by the Chief Justice, and the task is to prepare for 2010, making sure that everything has been cleared up and every move has been taken to ensure real elections. How to get more people to support such a proposal, that’s the task of the movement right now.”

People should keep on demonstrating and expressing their will to get her out of power, and if she doesn’t resign, at least people learn how it is to participate in a group movement towards making her resign.”

Noli is part of the Gloria regime and therefore one can expect that his moves will be in line with what he got from associating with Gloria and her cabinet.”

It is possible that people right now behind Gloria’s decision to cling to power might begin to advice her to take cognizance of the demand of the people. Perhaps as the movement gathers more power, more support from people, then even provincial and local governments will begin to concede.”

This is the fruit of EDSA One and Two. We’re moving forward in the sense that now people are no longer personality oriented… People have a greater consciousness of the need for genuine change.”

I would not hazard a fearless prediction. All i can express is hope that there is going to take place certain realigments prior to 2010 which might involve people who will be give us hope for real change.”

Our political education has been moving in waves. First we were all convinced that the leaders we need are those America approved, then that our leaders should be those who are nationalist to a certain extent. When Cory took over, for a while there was real hope that the Philippines would find a new social order, but it was very disappointing; Cory proved to be a daughter, a child of her class. Then there was Fidel Ramos and we got to a point where the country was being dragged by the President to globalize. And then Erap; there was much hope that Erap, reputedly of the masses, would institute a government thats really for the masses. And then Gloria by accident was the one constitutionally installed; we were also bitterly disappointed that she did not live up to hopes of the people.”

I think the masses [are looking to] the politically educated to come up with moves that would bring about change. Our system of education has really distorted the minds/mentalities of our people. The colonial orientation of the educational system has made people think that only if we follow the Americans, then our country will be all right. There is a great hesitance to take a step that would depart from that mentality.”

I am full of hope that our country in a future time will achieve the kind of government that would give freedom and deomocracy to a greater number of people. How long is it going to take? It depends on the persistence and determination of those who are in the forefront of the Resign movement to get our population to realize that what needs to change is not simply the personalities in government but the system altogether.”

hmm, a two-year transition government to be headed by the chief justice. and who exactly would people the commission? excerpts from CenPEG’s issue analysis no. 5:

The trailblazing transition council will be composed of – and staffed by – representatives of people’s organizations, NGOs, and sectors that are struggling for the resignation or removal of Arroyo and are united by a concrete program of genuine social, economic, and political reform. These are the groups and sectors generally left out in Edsa 1 and Edsa 2 where the victories of people’s struggles were hijacked by members of the elite and ruled the country in the old tyrannical and corrupt ways that people power had precisely struggled to demolish.

“The citizens’ transition council will address the public clamor for a non-traditional, pro-people political leadership that may likely draw support from other key players such as influential members of the interfaith, business, and the military. For this option to become feasible, however, the pressure that will force Arroyo to resign should be strong and insurmountable in a supreme act of sovereign power by the people allowing them – extra-constitutionally – to entrust powers to this caretaker body.

“The short-term and minimum agenda of the proposed citizens’ council is to initiate immediate reforms starting with the electoral system to ensure a clean and democratic election in 2010. So long as this is made clear – alongside with the fact that the council will exist only for a specific duration – then it will likely draw the support not only from the disparate political forces arrayed against the regime but also significant segments of the broad public. Elite and traditional politicians should admit that they have already lost their self-proclaimed right to dominate leadership while the people have begun to realize they should assert their sovereign power if comprehensive reform in governance is to be instituted. . . .

“The search for a political alternative is a communal work in progress. Its shape and configuration will evolve in the process of widening and increasing the momentum for replacing a widely-perceived corrupt and most despicable regime. But the answer for an alternative leadership must soon be cobbled together by all democratic and patriotic forces as it will serve as the bridge toward building the “critical mass” needed to put an end to a regime of greed and fear. The arduous and contentious process of political reconstruction should begin with the first step.”

interesting. possibly because i’m not sure about noli anymore. caught him being ugly, scolding media for being makulit. how unpresidential.

of med schools & sluts

O.A. na talaga the howl over the desperate housewife’s dig at diplomas of philippine med schools. besides the class action suit to be filed by filipino doctors in the u.s. against producers abc/walt disney, a second lawsuit is being planned daw with philippine-based lawyers representing the medical schools. “there was blatant defamation, not only against filipino doctors but also against philippine medical schools,” sey ni california-based ted laguatan to inquirer yesterday.

naku, ha. sana pag-isip-isipan muna nila. baka in the end, mapahiya lang tayo lalo. sey ni former doh secretary dr. alberto “quasi” romualdez jr. in his malaya column:

“The unfortunate fact is that the line had some basis in the true situation of Philippine medical education today. Since the early 90s, when a misguided secretary of education deregulated medical schools in the belief that market forces would determine the quality and quantity of the physician education in this country, medical schools have proliferated in this country – from the original seven in the 80s to more than 40 today.

“The results are reflected in the dismal passing rates of most new schools in the medical board examinations. Appropriately trained teachers in both basic and clinical sciences are now in short supply. In addition, clinical training facilities in the form of academically oriented tertiary medical hospitals are sorely lacking.

“Moreover, as a consequence of poor quality pre-medical education in the country, the number of qualified applicants to medical schools has dropped down considerably. For this reason, most of the new schools have directed their marketing efforts to attracting overseas students who have problems getting into medical schools in their home countries.

“In the past, this need for placement in foreign medical schools was filled by institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean. Today much of that need is served by the excess medical colleges in the Philippines. This is why TV jokes now refer to ‘Philippine med schools’ instead of Caribbean or Latin American.”

as for the ‘slut’ swipe, i actually caught that jon stewart segment asking if america was ready for a woman president, cut to other countries’ women presidents, and i was expecting to see gloria dissed, not cory, so natawa ako, si cory pa, at slut daw, haha, she and her other daughters don’t even know the meaning of the word, sey ni inkredibol kris.

but check out dean jorge bocobo’s aren’t all filipinas sluts anyway? where he takes to task inquirer‘s “quintessential writer on philippine women’s issues” rina jimenez david for making light of a slur rooted in “the old stereotype brought home by American servicemen who had the best sex they ever had in places like Clark and Subic that all Filipinas are sluts, wonderful sluts!”

oo nga. ayaw ni nicole ng ganyan.

Serendipity (St. Scho in the ’60s)

Serendipity was originally published in Daughters True, St. Scho’s centennial offering, which won the National Book Award 2007.

I was five when I entered St. Scho and sixteen when I left for U.P. Diliman. After twelve years of convent schooling and nuns hovering, it was great to be free at last! After all this was in the mid-sixties, when the youth (in America and Europe and colonies like ours) were questioning social convent(ion)s and testing limits, and the U.P. campus was an exciting place to be, inside the classroom, down in the basement cafeteria, out on the steps, and over at the parking lot.

But looking back on high school now, forty years later, I see that the sixties spirit was in St. Scho, too, sneaking past the Benedictine sisters at odd moments and rousing us to moments of mischief that we remember with glee. Like decorating the ladies’ room ceiling with wads of toilet paper (each wad had to be just wet enough and thrown upwards with a certain force and flick of wrist—a creative skill!). And playing pranks on each other behind closed doors – while we changed from gym suits to uniforms after P.E. a kamison might start flying around the room, and the owner would chase it to shrieks and cheers that one day got so loud it brought the nuns running. Another time some of us got caught drinking smuggled Coke, again while dressing behind closed doors, and our PE teacher got so mad she lost it, so to speak, and the nuns had to step in. When we were seniors, despite rules that bangs should not touch the eyebrows and hemlines should touch the floor when kneeling, some bangs got longer and longer, and some skirts shorter and shorter. Until one day someone’s bangs got snipped away and another’s hemline was ripped down, and finally we got the message.

Fortunately or not, such episodes were few and far-between. Mostly we were resigned to our fate, no escape from books and exams, not if we wanted to keep up, and keep moving on to the next level.

***

What I didn’t know then that I know now is how significant a time high school was pala in terms of starting me off as a writer. I didn’t think then that I could really write – I could never come up with a decent plot for a short story, and my best efforts at poetry were pathetic, without rhythm or rhyme. But our class teacher in fourth year, Sister Mary Sylvester Marpa, who was also the high school principal, assigned me the task of writing high school news for the college paper, and there was no saying no, so I learned how to write news; then I tried my hand at a gossip column, and that was fun, and a big hit with the girls. Still, I didn’t take up english or literature or journalism in U.P. I took up psychology instead, thinking I could get into counselling, or go on to medicine and become a psychiatrist. But as it turned out, by the time I was 30 I was writing feature articles and a TV review column for a weekly magazine; by 40 I was also writing for television, stage, documentary video and film; by 50, I was writing political commentary and had published two history books on EDSA – a chronology in English and a critical essay in Filipino.

Sister Sylvester was right, I could write. But I suppose that first I needed those psych courses to give me a scientific handle on things. Also I needed to be exposed to the culture of U.P. which turned me on naturally to the nationalist cause. Next I married a musician who travelled a lot, and it was while I was bringing up our babies and watching too much TV that I finally started writing critiques of local television and showbiz culture for a weekly magazine. As it happened, this led to all kinds of writing gigs, many of them cause-oriented, that took me deep into national concerns (the deplorable state of the environment, the failure of development programs, widespread poverty, the oppression of women, the foreign debt, the diaspora…) and St. Scho receded from my consciousness, a past life that seemed barely relevant in the real world.

Or so I thought. In the late ‘80s I was doing research for a docu script (“Kiss Maria Clara Goodbye”) for the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women when I stumbled on the definitive historical essay on the high status of Filipino women in pre-colonial times. It was written by the national chairperson (1986 – 2004) of the activist women’s alliance GABRIELA, who was also a St. Scho nun, no other than Sister Mary John Mananzan, now Mother Prioress, who taught us religion and history in the sixties.

I was impressed no end by the scholarly work and thrilled by her passionate advocacy of women’s rights. It was like a jolt of electricity reconnecting me to my St. Scho roots and affirming my politics, telling me in no uncertain terms that the nuns, too, had evolved, and that we were moved by the same feminist nationalist cause.

I have since kept track of Mother Mary John through the world wide web, every time exulting in St. Scho’s commitment to academic excellence and social responsibility, and celebrating every inch won in the struggle for social, economic and political salvation in ‘a land where injustice and oppression abide.’

It’s great to be a Scholastican in these interesting times.

Angela Stuart-Santiago
High School Class ’66
April 2006