Alaala ng diskusyon ng hubris ni Ma’am Dadu

 Academic vision seems set, and it’s safe (safe!) to say that all consultations are keyed to implementation: hows and whats, not whys and why reallys.

Kindly note that I remain unconvinced that the system has chosen the most humane course of action. I remain appalled at the ill-hid relish, for yes, the pandemic sped things up toward a certain pedagogical direction. I tried to think past the disgust, and laid the arguments on the table (ex: “the way the brains are wired today,” “the best of yesterday’s teachers won’t suffice,” etc.) but found them wanting (ex: our best teachers would not have tolerated faulty “wiring”).

Arguments are conflated, and for a while there it seemed that remote learning, learner-centrism, OBE, all held hands and teased equity, better education, our best selves shining through.  

Old things are passed off as new and untried. Life-long learner? Isn’t that what centuries of art and literature represented, strove for? Isn’t that what we in the Humanities (and our teachers, their teachers before them) have been working on all along?

Learning until it runs out.

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The impasse in implementation is the balance between compassion and quality, and while the plenaries and breakouts touch upon these, in the end the burden will fall on teachers if we deliver poorly or if our students suffer.

How I wish we set a better example to the HEIs, a year of truly vital thoughts and honorable acts, a year greater than, ooh, a pandemic, time to bring out the new toolkit.

Please be assured though that I will try my best within the given constraints. While not as feathery as “better normal,” I still hope we won’t come out of this too diminished.

You are likely taking much more than the rest of us, so again, thank you for your kind attention.

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Oh, more to read. If I was sending this pack, I’d start us off with “The Fantasy of Resistance” in How Will the Pandemic Change Higher Ed, p.6.

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Isang beses ko pa lang nababasa pero mukhang natatamaan lahat. Hay, pinaniniwalaan ito at sine-share nang wagas pero tayo rin naman ang kumikilos para buuin nang husto ang semestre at sa lalong madaling panahon. May ilang banda kung saan gusto kong i-tono o i-adjust o i-revise para mas makuha ang pinagdadaanan natin. Halimbawa, yung “atomization” ng artik vis-à-vis (not necessarily versus) yung “collaboration” na hinihiling sa atin. Ngayon ko rin lang nakasalubong ang salitang “responsibilizing”. Maraming hindi katanggap-tanggap para sa akin sa mga lumalabas sa admin featurettes pero siguro pinakamapanganib yung laging pangsara na ginagawa natin lahat ng ito dahil national university tayo. Na para bang hindi UP ang mga alternatibong pananaw at diskarte sa panahong ito. Maganda naman na at least sa mga sarbey at mga “like” sa Q&A, may pahiwatig na hindi 100% on-board ang faculty sa ibinebenta. Sorry sa term na “ibinebenta,” pero lagpas sa mga pedagogical terms at trends, lagpas sa covid-sensitive diplomacy, hindi ko tayo maibukod kay JoeCon.

Isang pag-iingat ngayon ay kung ano-ano ang mga ipasasalo sa faculty. Sa ngayon, tayo na ang hinihiling na maging maunawain sa admin at mapagkalinga sa estudyante, maging malikhain, mabusisi, at collaborative sa course material/delivery, at maging exacting(!) at quality-focused(!) pagdating sa sarili at sa mga estudyante. Iyan pa lang ang mga hayag, wala pa tayo sa mga kubling rekisito: hal., kalimutan ang covid at mga kaugnay na pagdurusa, huwag munang isama sa usapan ang pre-covid state of affairs na mas lumalala lamang ngayon. 

O malamang sa atin sa Humanities at SocSci: paki-integrate na lang itong mga ganap sa course pack.

Maganda ang artik lalo ang huling bahagi nito, pero iba ang bigat ng iyong ikaapat na pangungusap. Nangangamba rin ako para sa atin bilang grupo at bilang mga indibidwal, at baka mawala tayo. Sumulat na rin ako sa kanya bago pa mag-dialogue tungkol sa mga pangambang ito dahil gaya mo, umaasa rin akong hindi pa huli ang lahat.

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May kaunting tulo ang kisame namin dito; sana wala riyan! 

Independence Day

Dear Dr Recto: You may be pleased to know that I’m putting your bureaucracy lessons to good use. At least, I’m trying to. God knows though, “trying” sometimes just doesn’t cut it. God knows – one or another anyway – how difficult these words come. I just sort of “bit” into the first paragraph. Three sentences spit out, just like that. Then this friction. Each word gets erased even before I put it to pad. But since I’m supposed to be a man of letters, I guess I must push forward. Graduate to phrases, to sentences, to paragraphs. But always, ever and always arrive at the period. I got a promotion recently. “Of sorts,” really, as those in the know understand that these things only hold currency on paper. Not much weight to that. And not that I welcome any weight, real or virtual. You know, I didn’t notice I had a scowl on when they gave me the official documents. The Dean called my own face to my attention, “why are you frowning?” You would’ve known the answer better than anybody else. I see you, you know, as I write this. I never really paid my respects. And so, I see you only now. And we are talking as we used to, about leaders and professors, about the difficulties of hoisting up the PhD program across three colleges, about the state of the nation. About what I can do with what I have. All your whys and wherefores. I now see your smile and hear your voice. “Ma’am Mitang,” everybody called you that. Never got the hang of it. You were always Dr Recto. And now my mind astonishes me with a cruel command that breaks into this futile letter: “Doctor, heal yourself!” You’d forgive me my black humor, I know; in many ways, you never seemed to me a UP professor. I mean that as a compliment. I hear you laughing now, in the Center – my Batcave, marked with guano for life. I try to remember the smell: I can’t. I finished the degree a year ago. The secretaries told me that you asked about my status when I was on the last leg. Bless you for the thought. Bless you for making my transition to my adviser easy. Dr Santamaria was great help. Also, Dr Sobritchea and Ma’am Michiyo. I wish you were there when I finished. I didn’t care to march. I probably would have if you asked me. And I know that, were you active, you would’ve made sure I was attended. No way to say no. Anyway, yes, I’m about to begin another semester. Which means another foot into the end of the career; I have a couple of years to move up or out. The others think it’s a needless policy, cruel even. I don’t know. I want it to be my decision when the time comes, but I don’t think it’s too grave an emasculation if I just get myself kicked out. I mean, it’s a sem. It’s some months. I take what I can, push when possible, pull when necessary, one foot always in the end of all things – where both of your feet are now planted. Dear professor, your book is still with me, the Tao Te Ching. How to return it? I think you’d be pleased to know that I’ve built so much upon that seed you lent me – that which now cannot but be an incontrovertible give. Neither you nor Lao Tzu would think much of my “progress.” Well, I want you to know (but what could you know? Maybe, instead, just the plain desire to express this, to you or to the air that is not you nor God nor anything) how I never want to forget your kind face, but I probably will. I don’t want to forget your lessons but what of that desire? Time will eventually thwart it. Dadufalza, before you. In time, Atienza. In time, F– . In time, my parents. Obliquely, I discover the wisdom of keeping friends to a bare minimum. It’s not your thought. Surely not the idea of that silly intelligence who proclaimed that a day when one failed to make a new friend is a day lost. Rather, the day you make a friend is the day you fashion loss, the day you condemn your soul. And another’s. Dr Recto: whether we were friends or not, I declare that I shall not befriend your memory. All your lessons will automatically become mine, no more, no less. I shall forever refuse to accept your memory. And in this manner, I keep you. By always ending you, I forever resurrect you. This may puzzle you. I try – now – then now – then now – yet, I can’t bring myself to see you perplexed. I never saw your face when confused. I never will. In conclusion: this impossible feeling that I’ll live to write another day. Damn the everyday conceit of always assuming that you will see a day to its very end. Then the assumption of another stupid year. And another. As if eternity were just as easy as deceiving yourself. Dear teacher, your smile was more necessary on this earth. Dear mindmother. Still, you ran out of moments. Before I did. In pace requiescat.

Tomorrow

I will not make sense today. I really won't. I will just take a few minutes off this night and hope I can wake up early enough for Simbang Gabi. Early enough or not, I will definitely not keep the kids waiting for their prelims.

I used to do this a lot. I just list down everything I'm thinking of at the moment, related or not. Here it goes then.

No further ado.

Carol. Prof. Dadufalza. Birthdays. Beginnings. Ends. Jol and his mysterious problem. Nathan. Arlyn and Thursday. Angas. Monica will join us on Thursday. Asian Center. Jurgen Habermas. Kantianism. Dr. Serafin Talisayon. Christmas Monitos: Ronnie at the NGO, Norberto at the PTC. Kids. Parents. Blue and his awareness of his own pettiness. Alish and the question of happiness. Pauline and her secret problem. Omar Khayyam and his two classmates: Mulk and Hasan. Mulk became vizier to the sultan while Hasan is the man after whom "assassin" was named after. I wonder how Monica will fare? How is everybody doing right at this moment, 11:20 pm? Will the kids be the better for my classes? Critique of Knowledge. Mystic solution to the problem of evil.

Fitzgerald. Translators. Hasan, Mulk, and Omar made this youthful pact: whoever made his fortune will share it equally with the other two. I wonder if Jol and Nathan would agree to such a vow? Mulk got the fortune. Hasan asked for his share and an office under the sultan. He got both. Later, he would strike back at his benefactors. Mulk would suffer assassination from the progenitor of the word. Omar didn't take his half, only a small pension so that he could concentrate on learning. He would achieve eminence in the sciences. He would also create a unique Persian voice in world poetry.

In the Rubaiyat, we have his conclusion: there is nothing on this world to stand on, only here and now, in this moment we know as today. Tomorrow is unborn and Yesterday is dead, he says. I wonder. Tomorrow is the birthday of two people I know. And earlier today...

I wonder what my own conclusion will be?

Lantern parades. Naked oblations. Must go drinking with an Aussie for funds. Else, no clinic. Must check the kids' journals. And hear their English one more time before I retire for the holidays. Holidays.

Ends. Beginnings. Sense? I promised I won't make any. Will I make it early tomorrow? It's just a few minutes before tomorrow. Happy birthday, to whom it may concern! I wonder how everyone is doing. I look up at everything I wrote. I feel distant. Yet I am no different. Here, for example, I edited some things from this line of thought. So I have my own secret and mysterious things. I look up at my list, so much like the frayed ends of some hideous tapestry made from so many different pieces of cloth. Some pieces have more color, more significance. Others are hidden beneath stitches. Others aren't hidden although they aren't important either.

Nevertheless, they are there. They just are. I look up at the list, from a distance now so that I can see the whole. Maybe I'm hoping to put some unifying sense where there is none.

Oh I see. I am distant but no different. I am now also aware of my own pettiness.

(It will not matter much to you my dear celebrant - yes it's almost your birthday - but my tomorrow's Mass is for you and her. For whatever it's worth. Despite or because of everything, please have the best of the holidays.)