Monthly Archives: August 2023

Qwertyman No. 56: The Rule of Rules

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Qwertyman for Monday, August 28, 2023

HAVE A problem? No worries—the Philippine government will make a rule to fix it (maybe). Don’t have a problem? No matter—the Philippine government will make a rule to give you one.

Some days it feels like all that government exists for is to make new rules, because, well, it’s the government, and so it has to look and sound like one. Never mind what the preamble to our Constitution states, imploring the aid of Almighty God to “establish a Government that shall embody our ideals and aspirations, promote the common good, conserve and develop our patrimony, and secure to ourselves and our posterity, the blessings of independence and democracy under the rule of law and a regime of truth, justice, freedom, love, equality, and peace.” Forget the rule of law and all that jazz; all hail the rule of rules.

Two pronouncements by our hallowed poohbahs caught our attention in recent weeks. 

The first was an order from the Vice President and Secretary of Education, DepEd Order No. 21,  directing in its implementing guidelines that all public schools must ensure that “school grounds, classrooms and all their walls and other school facilities are clean and free from unnecessary artwork, decorations, tarpaulins, and posters at all times…. Classroom walls shall remain bare and devoid of posters, decorations, or other posted materials. Classrooms should not be used to stockpile materials and should be clear of other unused items or items for disposal.”

Why? Because these were distractions to learning, explained the good secretary, presumably including in her edict the pictures of past presidents, national heroes, posters of Philippine birds and plants, TV-movie idols, Mama Mary, cellphone and softdrink advertisements, half-naked women, CPP-NPA recruitment posters, the periodic table of elements, weapons of Moroland, and the winking Jesus. 

I actually found myself agreeing with the removal of some of these popular items of wall décor, especially the pictures of politicians, which doubtlessly produce anxiety and despair in those who might contemplate them seriously. The good presidents will make you ask, “Where did all that goodness go?” The bad ones will invite only dismay and even self-loathing: “How did these jokers even make it to Malacañang? So you can still be that kind of person and become President? What on earth were we thinking?” This leads to even more profound and troublesome questions about the nature and practice of democracy, which a poorly trained and underpaid sixth-grade teacher will be hard put to answer, undermining whatever little authority she still exerts over her students. (To her credit, Sec. Sara reportedly removed her own picture from a classroom she visited.)

But Rizal, Bonifacio, Mabini, Tandang Sora, and the usual pantheon of Philippine heroes decking our classroom walls? Will removing their visages encourage students to think more deeply about their Science or Math problems, or will young minds simply drift off to Roblox, Taylor Swift, and Spongebob Squarepants? Will making our classrooms look as bare as prisons (and even prisons have calendars and pinups) lead to a spike in student attentiveness and performance? What does it say of DepEd—with all the academic resources and intelligence funds at its disposal—that directives like this are issued apparently on a whim and without prior and proper study? Where was the attention to science and education that the secretary was aiming for?

The other new rule that sent us screaming to our group chats was the imposition of new guidelines for foreign travel by the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking, announced by the Department of Justice, supposedly to curb the incidence of human trafficking, which we all acknowledge t0 be a serious problem. But is this a serious solution?

Under the new guidelines, Pinoys going abroad to see the sakura in Tokyo or to watch the New Year’s Eve ball drop in Manhattan won’t get past NAIA immigration without showing their flight and hotel bookings, proof of their financial capacity to afford their trip, and proof of employment. That’s a lot of paperwork to bring along, and if you’ve seen how long the queues can get at NAIA even without these papers in the way, you can imagine what they’re going to be like with each single document having to be scrutinized by an immigration officer. There’s an even longer list of additional requirements for people traveling under sponsorship and for OFWs—including a requirement for a child traveling with his or her parents to present a PSA-issued birth certificate, which was already a requirement for that child to have been issued a passport.

Exactly what this rigmarole adds to the reduction of trafficking is unclear to my muddled mind, because it seems to me that any good trafficker worth his or her illegal fees will be smart enough to produce the fake documents their wards will need to slip through airport security. As experience has shown, it isn’t even fake documentation but corruption and connivance that have greased the wheels of trafficking. 

Which reminds me, I received a letter some time ago from an expat Briton and a longtime Philippine resident named Thomas O’Donnell, complaining about such unnecessary requirements as the filing of annual reports by foreigners in this country. The Philippines has a reciprocity agreement with other countries such as the UK, Thomas says, but the UK doesn’t require Philippine residents there to do the same thing. So was it—like many of our other rules—just something to keep our bureaucrats occupied (or possibly, profitably occupied)? Where was the fun in the Philippines, Thomas lamented, and how was a fellow like him supposed to love it? 

Having lived here for 23 years, Thomas clearly has found other, countervailing reasons for staying on, but he has a point. Despite an anti-red tape law in the books, we still invent ways to complicate the simplest things. And answer me this: if the DepEd chief thinks that bare walls can lead to clearer thinking, shouldn’t we declutter our travel processes as well, so we can all sit in the departure lounge in peace with an hour to spare, waiting for our flight (that will likely be delayed, but that’s another story)?

Qwertyman No. 55: Persona Non Grata

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Qwertyman for Monday, August 21, 2023

THE HON. Victor M. Dooley was in a foul mood, and no one knew that better than his Chief Political Officer and rumored girlfriend, Yvonne Macahiya.

When his whiskers began to twitch like he was about to sneeze—but didn’t—then something was upsetting her boss. He was trying to say something but couldn’t find the words for it, so his pursed lips went this way and that way, and Yvonne understood that it was an SOS from the senator whose maiden speech she had crafted a year earlier.

“What’s up, boss? Looks like you have a great idea trying to wiggle out of your brain.”

“Have you seen the latest surveys? 2025 is coming up and my poll numbers are going nowhere! There’s 12 slots and I’m in No. 16, behind two lawyers with a hair piece and buck teeth! These preschool feeding and rural literacy programs you’ve come up with are doing nothing for me—babies don’t vote, and even their mothers prefer cash!”

She bent low and purred into his ear. “We needed to soften your macho image, to make you look cuddly and caring—“

He put his arm around her waist. “You mean I haven’t been cuddly and caring enough?”

She slunk out of his grip and pretended to dust the plaster Maneki Neko cat on his corner table. The senator liked to wave back to it and giggle when he entered or left the room, feeling like it gave him good luck.

“Boss, you have my vote. One vote. You need ten million more from people who’ll never know how kind and generous you can be when I blow air behind your ears to put you to sleep.”

He smiled at the pleasurable memory and nearly forgot what he was all upset about. But then the Three O’Clock Prayer came on the Senate PA system and he suddenly remembered. Yvonne respectfully lowered her eyes and mumbled her devotions but the Hon. Dooley’s eyes grew wide with  realization.

“Holy Mamaw, I know what we should do! You hear that prayer? You know that—that Luka Luka something who impersonated the Lord and who, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority, offended 85 percent of Filipinos?”

“Yes, the drag queen who performed the Lord’s Prayer and who was declared persona non grata by eight municipalities. Why?”

“You see the media mileage he/she/they got?” Dooley had attended an obligatory gender-sensitivity program and was very careful with his pronouns. “It’s all over the news and social media! Even when I’m watching all these sexy reels on TikTok, I keep seeing this, uhm, person!”

“So what do you want to do? Get yourself declared PNG? Are you out of your mind? You want me to dress you up as Mary Magdalen?”

“No, no, no, that’s not what I meant. Let’s declare someone persona non grata! I’m sure it will make waves. Not Luka, that’s done. I hear even Barangay Suluk-sulukan in Tawi-Tawi, which isn’t even Christian, is declaring him/her/them PNG. We need to find someone new.”

“And who might that be? It will have to be someone everybody hates.”

For a minute, the two sank into deep thought. Dooley stared at Maneki Neko as though the white cat had the answers. He had brought it back as a souvenir from an official visit to Japan, tossing aside the Yayoi Kusama teapot gifted to him by the Ministry of Culture to Yvonne, who promptly sold it on eBay.

The Japanese figurine gave him an idea. “You know, with what’s happening out there, everyone in the region hates China. I mean, not Chinese food or Chinese fakes, everybody loves those, just Chinese bullying. So why don’t we declare Xi Jinping PNG?”

“Why, is he coming over for a visit anytime soon? No point in naming him PNG otherwise. And who cares about Xi when we’re letting in 150,000 POGO workers from China?”

“You’re right. Chinese presidents don’t come here—ours go to them.”

“Even exes,” remarked Yvonne. “

“Oh, him?” said the senator. “Now that was one ballsy guy! Imagine him cursing the Pope and calling God stupid? And there wasn’t one barangay or parish that declared him persona non grata for it!”

“Oh, he’s already PNG upstairs for sure, although I guess he already knew that,” said Yvonne.

A new song came on over the PA system and Yvonne recognized it instantly, emoting with its lyrics. Soon she was singing along: 

But she wears short skirts

I wear T-shirts

She’s Cheer Captain

and I’m on the bleachers….

“Who’s that?” asked the senator.

“Who else? Taylor Swift! She has  79 million Facebook fans, and last year Spotify listed her as the most listened-to artist in the Philippines. And she’s coming soon to Tokyo and Singapore!”

“Hmmm, that’s interesting. Why don’t we declare her persona non grata? I’m sure that’ll generate a lot of buzz!”

“Are you crazy? Taylor Swift? She’s not even coming to the Philippines for her Eras Tour!”

“That’s exactly it. We declare her PNG for excluding us from her world concert.”

“We can’t declare someone PNG and stop them from coming here because they’re not coming here—“

“Let’s call it racism or something. No, that won’t work if she’s going to Tokyo and Singapore. Those Tamils are browner than us. Let’s think of something else.”

And then the song changed, and Yvonne went into an even dreamier state, gliding across the floor with some cool stops and turns.

Cause I-I-I’m in the stars tonight

So watch me bring the fire and set the night alight (hey)

Shining through the city with a little funk and soul

So I’ma light it up like dynamite, whoa oh oh

“Who’s that?” asked Dooley.

“You never heard of BTS? No—no, boss, don’t even think about it! They have what’s called an Army, and it’s bigger than all the people who ever voted for you!”

Qwertyman No. 54: Two Valedictories

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Qwertyman for Monday, August 14, 2023

TWO SPEECHES delivered by graduating students of the University of the Philippines made the rounds of social media last week, garnering generally positive responses for their forthrightness. One was more strident than the other, but both carried essentially the same message: we need to reframe the way we look at the education of the poor, and what true success should mean for the working student.

The first was Val Anghelito R. Llamelo, summa cum laude and class valedictorian, Bachelor of Public Administration. The son of an OFW, Val began working at a very young age at a BPO, as a marketing assistant, and as a tutor to support his needs and that of his family’s. He was, almost needless to say, the first UP graduate his family produced, and finishing summa against all odds was the icing on the cake.

He wasn’t there, he said, to deliver the usual valedictory speech you’d expect from a person with his kind of success story. He was grateful for his opportunities, but he didn’t feel like celebrating his hard-won triumph, which people would typically applaud for its sheer improbability. And that, precisely, was the problem, according to Val.

“Why should I be an exception?” he asked in so many words. “Why can’t more Filipinos from my background do well in college and finish like I did? Why does access to a quality education remain the privilege of a few? During the pandemic, how many poor students underperformed because of their lack of access to digital technology?”

Again I’m paraphrasing here, but Val went on to say, “I don’t want to be your inspiration or role model. No one should have to endure what I faced. I want you to be disgruntled enough with the system to demand something better and not settle for less, to yearn for a system where working students, indigenous people, and individuals from impoverished families can have fair opportunities to study and to succeed. Praising us gives politicians in power an excuse to renege on their commitment to improve our lives. We overvalue resilience. Using the familiar analogy of the glass that’s half-full and half-empty, we’re often made to feel that we should be contented with the fact that it’s half-full, but we should focus on the fact that it’s half-empty, and should hold our leaders accountable for filling it up.”

The other speaker was Leo Jaminola, a BS Political Science cum laude and MA Demography graduate who juggled six jobs—as an encoder, transcriptionist, library student assistant, tutor, writer, and food vendor—to complete his bachelor’s degree. 

“Graduating with honors back then was nothing short of a miracle,” says Leo. “In the years that followed, the list of jobs I took just grew longer as I became a research assistant, a government employee, a development worker, and a consultant for different projects with some engagements overlapping with each other.  

“The past years have been a long-winding maze of seeking financial security and I have still yet to find a way out of this crisis. From full-time work, part-time work, and competitions, I did my best to provide not only for myself but also for my family. 

“While some of my peers have hefty investments in high-yield financial instruments, here I am still overthinking whether I deserve an upgrade to a large Coke while ordering at the local fast food chain. 

“During my childhood, I saw how poverty manifested itself in the form of cramped makeshift houses, children playing near litter-filled canals, and senior citizens succumbing to illnesses without even getting a proper diagnosis. Growing up, I thought of these as normal occurrences that should be accepted as it is the way of life. Now, I do not think that this should be the norm. 

“Some people will say that poverty is a personal failure and that the members of my community should work harder but I know better. One of the things that I learned from my experience is that hard work as the primary factor in being successful is a myth. That’s not to say that it doesn’t play a role but privilege and access to resources have greater impacts on whether a person ends up successful or not. 

“If hard work is all it took, then the many young breadwinners I know who continue to support their families while chasing their own dreams would not be constantly organizing their budget trackers to find ways how to stretch their salary until the next payday. 

“Others will read this and use it as some kind of living proof that people, even those from the most marginalized groups, can make it in life simply by working hard rather than addressing structural barriers. But what of those who didn’t make it despite working as hard or even harder than me? How are their experiences not evidence of the continued inaccessibility of education and opportunities in our country? 

“Rather than success, we should see my experience and the stories of so many others as systemic failures. If anything, my story should make us angry and move us to demand a much better society—one that allows our people to live with dignity, dream freely, and enjoy equal opportunities.”

The speeches echo each other, but then so have the “model” valedictories that Val and Leo so forcefully seek to subvert. Indeed, the usual narrative we hear is that of the poor boy (or girl) made good, followed by congratulatory praises for his or her tenacity and faith in Divine Providence. (Some of them, like the poor boy from Lubao, even become President.)

I have to admit that we find such stories inspiring if not necessary, because they offer the possibility of salvation for a lucky and plucky few. But we have to bear in mind as well—as Val and Leo emphasize—that for every summit achieved like theirs lie hundreds if not thousands of others who never got past base camp, not for lack of talent or will but simply for lack of means. To succeed as a nation and society depends much less on producing exceptional one-offs than on leveling the playing field for most.

(Photos from Philstarlife and pep.ph)

Qwertyman No. 53: Too many laudes?

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Qwertyman for August 7, 2023

LIKE MANY alumni and casual onlookers, I couldn’t help but be bothered by the announcement that more than half of this year’s graduating class of the University of the Philippines Diliman were finishing with Latin honors—2,243 out of 3,359 undergraduates, 305 of them summa cum laude, 1,196 magna cum laude, and 742 cum laude. Critics were quick to point out that it was a sure sign of grade hyperinflation, that UP had turned into a diploma mill, and that a UP education was no longer what it used to be.

Having taught in UP for almost 40 years, I disagree with the harshest of these conclusions—there are many external indicators to prove that UP graduates and UP as an institution are globally competitive and remain high above national averages in terms of professional certifications and such. 

But the surge in honor graduates is indeed so high that it leads many to worry if a summa today means the same thing it did ten years ago, when only 15 out of 4,365 graduates claimed that distinction. What happened in between? Did both UP students and their professors become so suddenly much better that they outperformed historical expectations? Can we back this up with scientific data, or at least with some reasonable conjectures?

My own guess—and that’s all it is, an educated guess—is that we’re seeing the outcome of an enforced leniency in grading during the pandemic, when the normal grading rules were stretched to be as accommodating as possible to the situation that our undergraduates found themselves in—under lockdown, taking classes on Zoom under highly variable conditions of connectivity, with little or no access to physical libraries and laboratories, with little social interaction face to face, and under the critical eye of hovering parents and siblings at home. 

During the pandemic, in UP (and perhaps in other universities and colleges as well), a “no-fail” policy was put into effect; no student could be given a failing grade, except in cases of intellectual dishonesty. The normal one-year period for resolving “Incomplete” grades was extended. Professors could not “drop” students for absences or lack of communication. Students could opt to have their grades “deferred.” University rules on scholastic delinquency and retention were suspended. And because universities worldwide had to shift abruptly to online teaching, resulting in many adjustment problems on both sides of the video camera, UP decided that numerical grades earned during this adjustment period would not be factored into the General Weighted Average (GWA), on which Latin honors are based. Note that under normal rules—which, to my knowledge, are mostly if not entirely now back in effect—any one of these infractions or deficiencies could have cost you your laude; their relaxation meant that the door was now open for many candidates who might have been disqualified on technical grounds. 

But then again, that’s just my personal explanation for this aberration (which statistically it is, if you’ve seen the charts). I don’t mean for any of this to diminish the pride, happiness, and sense of accomplishment that I saw on the faces of the graduates and their parents that waterlogged morning of July 30 when UP Diliman held abbreviated commencement exercises despite the weather. No speeches were made to put safety over ceremony, but then perhaps none were needed, as the swell of “UP Naming Mahal” rose defiantly over the rain. You could not walk up to any one of those honor graduates and tell him or her “You don’t deserve your medal,” because you had no idea what he or she went through during the pandemic to earn it. If the system failed, then let it be faulted, and let the post-mortem happen, but don’t take it out on the students who only did what they were supposed to do. 

Even as professor emeritus, I’m still teaching after retirement, and last semester I chose to teach Fiction Writing to a class of undergraduates, wanting to see for myself what our young people were thinking and also to give them the unusual experience of being taught by a grizzled old fellow. I was generally pleased with the level of talent and enthusiasm I encountered. As expected, two or three students stood out above the rest, many sat in the middle, and a few lagged behind, not for incompetence but for such other factors as attendance and class participation, both important in a writing workshop. Most did well enough, in my estimation, to earn at least the 1.75 that would have qualified them for honors. Was I part of the grade inflation? But if they did much worse than that, then they had no business being in UP. I didn’t give out any “1.0”s, but I didn’t flunk anyone, either. If anything, my chief complaint would be how alienated our young people are from their social and cultural environment beyond their cohort and from their history. They can write well, but they still have to learn and understand what truly matters.

As far as Latin honors are concerned, it might help to see what the financial website Investopedia has to say on it, adjusting for the fact that it’s US-based:

“While Latin honors can look good on a diploma, college transcript, or résumé, do they make any difference in real life? Two researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Pauline Khoo and Ben Ost, attempted to answer that question in a 2018 paper titled ‘The Effects of Graduating With Honors on Earnings.’

“’We find that obtaining honors provides an economic return in the labor market, but this benefit only persists for two years,’ they wrote. ‘By the third year after college, we see no effect of having received honors on wages, suggesting that firms may use the signal for new graduates, but they do not rely on the signal for determining the pay of more experienced workers.’ They also found that the economic benefit applied only to students who had graduated from selective schools.

“Critics of Latin honors are less concerned with their potential post-graduation benefits than the unintended effect they may have on students while they’re still in school. A 2011 editorial in Harvard University’s student newspaper, the Crimson, called for their abolition at the school.

“By rewarding students who achieve a minimum GPA across classes, the Latin honors system does more to discourage academic achievement than to encourage it. It encourages students to view classes outside of their concentration as a means to an end, the end being the highest possible grade, rather than an opportunity for intellectual exploration.”

Given our Pinoy penchant for titles and distinctions, I don’t see us getting rid of laudes anytime soon, but it may be time to find another and better way to recognize and reward student achievement beyond book learning.

(Photo from upd.edu.ph)

Penman No. 453: The Distance to Brillantes

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Penman for Sunday, August 6, 2023

I’VE OFTEN written about how Gregorio C. Brillantes has been the bane of my writing life, a fellow short story writer and Palanca Hall of Famer whom I never had the pleasure of seeing in second place after me (the reverse has been the natural order of things). When the Ateneo Press recently launched his Collected Stories and asked me to speak at the event, I felt like a jealous juvenile again at 69, with the 90-year-old Greg in a wheelchair in front of me, and cheekily boasted that, at last, I had one over him: his collection had 39 stories while mine (Voyager and Other Fictions, 2019) had 44. 

Of course, it was a hollow boast, because any one of Greg’s stories is easily worth two or three of mine. That’s how highly I hold this man in my esteem, and why I wrote this blurb for him: “Few writers turn me into a blushing fan. Gregorio C. Brillantes is one of them. Like his papal namesake Gregory the Great, who wrote a massive 35-volume commentary on the Book of Job, Greg Brillantes has been an untiring and unsparing chronicler of his time and place…. His fiction is infused with power and luminosity; he surprises, but never screams.” 

In an art card that Ateneo Press used to promote the book, I said further: “More than a master of language, Gregorio Brillantes is a master of our Filipino sense and sensibility, particularly those parts we find hard to put into words or to recognize as our truest selves. We see life in his stories as through a gossamer screen that filters out  the harshest light; that screen is his own sensibility, suffused with a deep and tolerant understanding of pain as pleasure’s shadow.”

(The young Greg with John Updike.)

But really—putting all the fanboy talk aside—why Brillantes? What did I and my students—and what can every young writer of fiction—learn from him?

To get right down to brass tacks, I’ll take one of his best-known stories and dissect parts of it that should show what not only good but masterful writing is all about. 

“The Distance to Andromeda” has been mistakenly described by some as a science-fiction story, but it is not, although science fiction figures prominently in it. Without going into what the story means, what Brillantes demonstrates here, technically, is his acuity of observation and grasp of relevant detail, which is basic to any writer’s armamentarium. Too many young writers fuss over the elements of what their Ultrawave Galactic Terminator Machine should contain, glossing over the seemingly inconsequential gray matter of daily living that congeals into human drama. 

In “Andromeda,” the boy Ben’s post-apocalyptic fantasies are foregrounded by domestic business. See how Brillantes constructs a scene: “He dribbles an imaginary basketball toward the kitchen, skidding on the floor, feints and jackknifes a neat shot through the door. His sister-in-law Remy is giving her baby his supper of porridge from a cup. The child gurgles a vigorous greeting at the boy, and Remy laughs at the wonder of her son’s knowing the infant-accents of his language. The kitchen is bright and intimate with its rich cooking smells: Pining bustles about the old Mayon stove, and the girl with the pigtails smiles her crooked-toothed smile from the lithographed calendar on the wall.”

It doesn’t seem much and the young reader may feel bored by the lack of “action,” but note how, in fact, the scene is full of action—physical and emotional action, of the kind absent from too many stories being written today about morose characters sipping cappuccinos at Starbucks and ruminating over their wayward romances and work-life balance. “Get your characters off their butts,” I always tell my students, and Brillantes does.

A Brillantes story is an accretion of impressions, ideas, and emotions. It’s that kind of preparation that earns Brillantes the right to orchestrate this kind of paragraph later in the story: “He catches the streak of a shooting star from the corner of his eye. Instantly his waiting becomes a sharp alertness: he holds his breath and the strangeness comes into him once more, the echo of an endless vibration. But it is no longer an abstract aching for the relief of words: it speaks within him, in a language full of silence, becoming one with his breathing, his being, and the night, and the turning of the Earth: incomprehensible, a wordless thought, an unthought-of Word: like the unseen presence of One who loves him infinitely and tenderly. The fear has gone, the lonely helpless shrinking he felt on the bridge, walking home: love surrounds him, and no evil can touch him here, in his father’s house.”

For a story written in the author’s mid- to late twenties, “The Distance to Andromeda” already lays out, in full, Brillantes’ talent and vision, his familiar themes of family and love, of doubt and faith, of Rilke’s God “who holds this falling / Gently in his hands, with endless gentleness.”

It is a story that I myself could not have written, as I inhabit a more sordid and much sadder world in my fiction, with little to draw on but my characters’ residual sense of goodness for their salvation. Brillantes celebrates—consecrates—the mundane joys of the middle class, even as he underscores their fragility and transience. I write as well about these people—doctors, teachers, boys on the verge of manhood—but they tend to be more visceral in their responses. My other literary hero and model is Bienvenido Santos, who can make music of melancholy, and I try to straddle the breach between these two gentlemen, although again my characters prefer the low life.

But young writers: read Gregorio Brillantes. Understand what truly breathtaking means by reading two of my favorite stories of his: “The Cries of Children on an April Afternoon in the Year 1957” and “The Flood in Tarlac.” If you read them and still wonder what good fiction is, then you might as well be looking up at the sky to find Andromeda, because that’s how far you have to go.