Category Archives: Education

Qwertyman No. 57: An Invitation to SERVE

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Qwertyman for Monday, September 4, 2023

AT 5 PM next Saturday, the 9th of September, a new book will be launched at Fully Booked in BGC. Published by the Ateneo de Manila University Press and simply titled SERVE, the book has 19 authors—yes, I’m one of them—and one editor, the much-respected Jo-Ann Maglipon. What connects all is that they were college editors during the first Quarter Storm of the early 1970s, and survived to go on to distinguished careers in media, education, business, and public service. The book dwells much less on martial law—a previous volume titled Not on Our Watch: Martial Law Really Happened, We Were There that came out in 2012 dealt with that—than with its aftermath, and the afterlife that the activists of our generation were fortunate to have, given how many of our comrades gave up their lives to the cause of justice and freedom.

What did these activists do after martial law? What are they thinking now? Some of the names in this book will be familiar to the contemporary reader, who may not even have known of their activist background (reg-taggers, pay close attention).

Some of us—like Jimi FlorCruz, Sol Juvida, and Thelma Sioson San Juan—remained journalists all their working lives, stationed in very different places and capacities but bound by a commonality of interest in the truth. Others like Sonny Coloma, Manolet Dayrit, Ed Gonzalez, Diwa Guinigundo, the late Chito Sta. Romana, and Judy Taguiwalo took the path of government service, finding themselves in a position to effect real change, although sometimes under very difficult if not adversarial circumstances. Yet others including Angie Castillo, the late Jones Campos, Mercy Corrales, and Senen Glorioso found fulfillment in entrepreneurial and corporate work, applying their progressive values to management. For Elso Cabangon, Bob Corrales, and Diwa Guinigundo, their circuitous journey led to a re-encounter with their spirituality, and to embracing their faith as their personal advocacy. Like many veterans of the First Quarter Storm, Alex and Edna Aquino were able to build new and productive lives overseas, without yielding their investment in Philippine concerns. Quite a few of us—Derly Fernandez, Ed Gonzalez, Judy Taguiwalo, Rey Vea, and myself—chose to pursue our activism in academia, if only to ensure the transmission of critical inquiry to another generation. 

The authors were under no compulsion to conform to an ideological standard, except to extol the spirit of service to the people, the overarching theme of their youth and now their continuing commitment, indeed their legacy. There’s pathos in these accounts, but also humor and, inevitably, irony, perhaps the defining tone of our postmodern age: Thelma Sioson San Juan finds herself seated across Deng Xiaoping’s granddaughter at a Ferragamo show in Beijing’s Forbidden City; Manolet Dayrit learns of his appointment as Secretary of Health on a visit to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in Malacañang; Ed Gonzalez becomes president of the Development Academy of the Philippines under President Joseph Estrada, but then joins EDSA 2; Sonny Coloma looks out the window of his Malacañang office to where students like him had demonstrated against Marcos.

With most of the writers here now in their seventies or inching close to it, we could have been chronicling the joys of grandparenting, journeys to far-off places, exotic menus, succulents and bromeliads, and homeopathic remedies for the aches of aging. Having retired from the formal workplace, we thought we had settled into a privileged and imperturbable kind of peace, earned over decades of political, economic, and spiritual struggle. 

We celebrated our seniorhood as the ultimate victory, for a generation that did not expect to live beyond thirty, and not because of some acquired disease but because of the throbbing cancer at the core of our society that claimed many of our peers in the prime of their youth. We may have thought for a while that we had defeated and expunged that cancer, only to realize that it had never left, was always there, lying cruelly in wait for a chance to ravage us again—and not only us this time, but our children and grandchildren as well.

And so—albeit no longer lean and shaggy-haired, perhaps benignly forgetful of car keys and personal anniversaries—we gather again at the barricades we put up against a fascist dictatorship fifty years ago, of which our memories remain surprisingly and painfully sharp. They say that the old remember distant things more clearly than what happened yesterday, and we offer proof of that. The experience of martial law coded itself into our DNA, and even the few among us who surrendered their souls to Mephistopheles cannot shake away that indelible past—one we bear with pride, and they with guilt and shame.

This time our barricades consist not of desks and chairs but of memory itself and, more formidably, of hope, courage, and a continuing faith in the good. Beyond memoirs, more than recollections of our youthful selves, we now present the stories of the lives we built and the paths we took after martial law, along with our reflections on how time and experience have reshaped us, clarified our values, and strengthened our resolve to serve our people in multifarious ways. 

Our view of politics inevitably evolved over time as the world itself changed over the past five decades. These essays and stories cover a wide range of themes and treatments, and demonstrate how “serve the people” has grown and evolved with its advocates, taking multifarious forms from working in civil society and practicing good governance to promoting artistic expression, academic freedom, and insightful journalism. We wish to prove that even the worst of times and the worst of leaders are not only survivable but can be changed, so that whatever lies ahead, the better Filipinos in us will prevail.

Given the number of authors and their families and friends, we expect a full house at the launch, so you might want to wait and get your copy of the book from Fully Booked or from AdMU Press’ online channels. However the book finds its way to you, it will be worth your while.

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. 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)

Qwertyman No. 48: Beauty and Horror

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Qwertyman for July 3, 2023

I WAS surprised, a bit amused, but also deeply bothered by the reactions of Filipino netizens to an event that hogged the headlines two weeks ago—the special exhibit of Juan Luna’s painting “Hymen, O Hyménée.” 

The painting, said to have been lost for over 130 years, was put on display in all its solitary glory at the Ayala Museum, evidently a prize catch and worthy of public attention. The attention came—not all of it positive. Quickly a thread developed online scoring the artist, the painting, the museum, and the curious who trooped to Makati to see the painting. Why, posters asked, was praise being heaped on a deranged man who murdered his wife and mother-in-law? Where was our outrage? Speaking of the painting, why, technically it wasn’t even that good. 

They were, of course, all fair points to raise, designed to provoke some serious re-evaluation of why we like the things (and the people) we do. While there was some quibbling about the aesthetic merits and demerits of the painting, most of the negative reaction was clearly aimed at Juan Luna’s homicidal and presumably misogynistic streak. Just to be clear, he did admit to killing the two women (he suspected his wife of having an affair with a Mr. Dussaq), but was later acquitted on grounds that merely prove how partial to men the old judicial system was.

This brings up the inevitable question—not about Luna’s guilt, which seems to have been settled in the court of public opinion, but about that of those professing to admire Luna’s talent as a painter: knowing what we know now about an artist, should his or her work be judged by his or her character? Can or should we put our blinders on when gazing at a painting or reading a book, and savor the work in denial of its creator’s evil history? Should we resist Google, adopt or feign ignorance, and leave moral judgments to others?

I know that some esteemed writers and artists, like the late F. Sionil Jose who preceded me in this space, were severe and unforgiving in their application of a moral frame to creative work. To Manong Frankie, if you supported the Marcos dictatorship and profited from it, your credentials as an artist were forever compromised. Today we would call this “cancel culture,” which has been appropriated by right-wingers to complain about being punished for being, well, right-wingers.

It seems like a logical proposition: if you don’t like someone for good reason, then reject his or her work, which could be tainted by all manner of subliminal malice. You can stand proud in your clarity of mind and emotion, in your spirited defense of the good and just.

But this also raises a very practical problem: entering a museum or a library, how am I to know which artists or authors led upright lives, and which ones flourished in depravity? If I enjoy a work, only to discover later that its creator attempted to rape a teenage girl (as the Nobel prizewinner William Golding did, and even wrote about it privately) or tortured animals and adored Hitler (like Salvador Dali did), am I supposed to regurgitate my admiration and pronounce the work worthless?

The list of artists and writers who were less than paragons of moral virtue is a long and (dis)honorable one. For this we go to Google, which has been asked the question so often that so-called “listicles” exist of the answers, which inevitably throw up the same names. Paul Gauguin abandoned his family and fled to Tahiti where he took on three child brides, infecting them all with syphilis. TS Eliot and Ezra Pound were Jew haters, as were, for that matter, Richard Wagner, Edgar Degas, and Roald Dahl. Picasso abused his women and drove them mad, calling them “machines for suffering.” Beloved writer of children’s stories Enid Blyton was a terrible mother, neglectful and vindictive, described by her own daughter as “without a trace of maternal instinct.” What am I to tell our daughter Demi, now 49, who grew up on Enid Blyton and who carefully rounded up all her Blyton books and tied them up in a ribbon during her last visit, for passing on to another child?

I recall when, years ago, a renowned actress (whom I need not name, as you can surely guess who she is) was denied the National Artist Award by Malacañang because of her reported use of drugs at some point in her troubled life. (I know, because the Palace official who recommended the disapproval told me the story.) Thankfully this was later rectified.

And as soon as I say that, you can see where I incline in this debate. I hate evil as much as any sane person would, but also recognize and accept that some of that is always latent within me and within others, and that it is my awareness of it—or my guilt when I give in to it—that grounds and deepens my art. I’m not saying evil is a prerequisite for artmaking, as surely saintly folk have produced great art (although I still have to find that listicle); it’s just there, like a shadow in the forest, the Lucifer without which the aura of our angels would dim. 

And what about the deplorable if not detestable excess of it in these aforementioned geniuses? Do we excuse or absolve their failings by accepting their art? I think not. What we are accepting is not their wrongdoing, but rather the fact of how one of art’s and indeed of life’s great mysteries is how often beauty and horror cohabit. Thus we can come to an informed appreciation of a work and its maker, wonder at how so much darkness could produce so much light, and begin to understand our complexity as humans, which artists give form and voice to.

Myself, I like to think of art as a personal act of redemption, or at least of restitution. It will never excuse one’s bad behavior, or repair the damage done. But it will show how capable we are of refined and abstract expression, despite our brutish selves.

The greater problem for me is that, today, we inhabit a moral minefield where art itself has been conscripted to disguise falsehood and deception. Artificial intelligence has neither heart nor conscience, but its manipulators can produce breathtakingly attractive lies. Much more than a long-interred Juan Luna, this worries me.

Qwertyman No. 47: An Open Door

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Qwertyman for June 26, 2023

A FEW weekends ago, the traffic was tied up in knots around the University of the Philippines campus in Diliman, where we live, and we knew why. Many thousands of high school seniors hoping to enter UP were taking the university’s UPCAT or entrance exam, which had gone back to its old physical, face-to-face format after two years of being suspended in favor of a statistical formula because of the pandemic. This year, over 100,000 applicants took the UPCAT, out of whom about a tenth will be taken in, the actual number of admissions being determined by the capacity of UP’s eight “constituent universities” like UP Los Bañ0s and UP Mindanao, aside from Diliman, to absorb new freshmen.

As a campus resident and now a retired professor who still teaches a course every semester (an option I avail myself of, just to keep my foot in the classroom and know what the young people are thinking), I witness this ritual every year, and smile every time I see those bright and eager faces, squinting at the sun and looking a little lost; the first challenge every UP freshman faces is finding out where things are and the fastest way to get from Point A to Point B. 

That’s literally thinking on your feet, which is a survival skill we inculcate in our students. If there’s a smarter way to solve a problem than brute force, we’ll find it. (I recall how, in the middle of an exam for a Shakespeare class which I usually aced, I was stumped for the right answer, and in despair just responded with a quotation from A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “So quick bright things come to confusion!” My professor let me off with a 1.25.)

Frankly or perhaps unkindly, UP people are called pilosopo, magulang, or maangas by those unfamiliar or uncomfortable with the forthrightness and cleverness that our academic culture encourages. At worst, we’re called “godless communists” by those who don’t see how packed our chapels and parking lots are (although of course, today, the most successful communists are called oligarchs). On this point, I can guarantee you that no one can be more annoyed if not enraged by a UP person than another UP person; our faculty feuds are legendary. Indeed that has become a liability with some employers who prefer to hire graduates who will simply do as they’re told without asking “Why?”

“Why?” may indeed be the wrong entry-level thing to say, but it’s also what has moved science and society forward, quickly followed by “How?” If no one asked it, we’d still be chasing animals over clifftops for food and sacrificing our first-borns for bigger harvests. This urge to apply reason to the most basic of human and natural functions again can be occasionally irritating, especially when it is accompanied by the unflinching (or perhaps juvenile) certitude that one is absolutely right. 

As a teenage activist in Diliman, I was sure that the only way out of the mess we were (and continue to be) in was an armed revolution; Marxist logic said so. Approaching 70, I’m just glad that I lived long enough to reason my way out of it, but looking back at that pimply 17-year-old who carried Harry Shaw’s College English in one hand and Mao’s Little Red Book in the other, I can understand why I thought the way I did. And no, it wasn’t like my professors force-fed me with rebellious notions. I was a reasonably bright kid who read the news—murders and massacres here, extreme poverty and hunger there, corruption and scandal all around, with few of our leaders seeming to care—and I was looking for a comprehensive and compelling framework to explain all this and map out a route forward. The Left offered that.

It’s important to note that then, as now, most UP students and certainly most Filipino students didn’t feel the same way and do as I and my comrades did, which was to put activism over academics. Our protests may have hogged the headlines and typecast UP for good as a school for rebels (although it had been a hotbed of student protest since Quezon’s time), but the majority of UP students then continued attending their classes, turning in their assignments, and picking up their diplomas, as was their right. Like I often emphasize, as vocal dissidents, we were (and are) in a distinct minority. That comes with the territory of resistance—not just in a university but in society as a whole.

Given what’s happened since, were we wrong to protest and did we waste our youth (and, as some politicians and red-tag-happy trolls might say, our people’s money as well)? Some of us persisted and stayed on that path; many paid with their lives, or devoted the entirety of their lives to their cause. Some turned 180 degrees and now rabidly renounce their past, casting their lot with their former enemies. Some, like me, now see moderate liberalism as the only viable way forward—to endure and survive, gaining ground from one generation and one community to the next, instead of in one fell swoop. Somehow I understand all of these outcomes, which are all human, all fallible, and none of them assured of success. I can only be hopeful, and not certain, that my option is the best one.

As I looked at the UPCAT examinees posing for selfies in front of the Carillon and the Oblation in Diliman, I remembered that eight UP students are now facing charges for their recent attempt to storm past a closed door at Quezon Hall to protest an unpopular decision by the Board of Regents. Among the complainants’ grievances, ostensibly, was that the wooden door was part of UP’s heritage, and had to be protected at all costs.

That saddened me, because the last image that one could imagine to stand for a university like UP is that of a closed and impregnable door. UP’s true heritage doesn’t lie in its furniture but in its tradition of free speech, and even of protest, the occasional overflow of passion included. I can only pray that UP’s new and compassionate president, Jijil Jimenez, can draw on his own activist past to see that point, and to keep an open door for his constituents to his mind and heart.

Qwertyman No. 46: The Writer as Liberator

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Qwertyman for Monday, June 19, 2023

AS PART of its Independence Day celebration, the J. Amado Araneta Foundation asked me to give a talk on “The Writer as Liberator” last Saturday, and today being Jose Rizal’s birthday, I’m very happy to share that talk in full (a shorter version appeared as my Qwertyman column in the Star):

When I was first asked to talk about “The Writer as Liberator,” the first thought that went through my mind was probably the thought that’s now going through yours, which was that of the writer as political revolutionary or dissident, in the mold of Jose Rizal, Marcelo H. del Pilar, Lorraine Hansberry, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nadine Gordimer, Wole Soyinka, and so many others of their caliber and stature.

That presumption, of course, is certainly valid and reasonable. Indeed, human history is fraught with examples of writers who fought colonialism, slavery, racial prejudice, and feudal and capitalist oppression and exploitation in India, South Africa, and the United States, particularly the American South, among many if not most other countries in the world. Wherever evil has reared its head, writers have arisen to call it out by name in all its forms—overweening pride among the ancient Greeks, blind ambition in Shakespeare’s time, lust and greed everywhere down the ages. 

The Philippines has been no exception. Decades before Rizal, Francisco Baltazar or Balagtas employed allegory in Florante at Laura to depict suffering and denounce injustice. Rizal and the whole Propaganda Movement followed, in a story of resistance and revolution that many of us already know. It’s a high climactic point that we could talk about all day but I won’t, because I’d rather talk about other things that most of us don’t know about writers and liberation. 

Again, to deal with the obvious, writers of all kinds have been at the forefront of political and social change. They included poets, playwrights, novelists, journalists, screenwriters, and today we would have to count bloggers and comic book script writers.

Our heroes and champions of freedom were poets—Rizal’s Mi Ultimo Adios and Bonifacio’s Pag-Ibig sa Tinubuang Lupa spring to mind, but they were also followed by the likes of Claro M. Recto, Francisco “Soc” Rodrigo, Carlos P. Garcia, and Diosdado Macapagal. These men—sadly, our political and even our cultural life was dominated then by the patriarchy—came from a generation when there was a very thin line between journalism and creative writing, when an opinion column could appear in verse, and when senators were expected to be literate and eloquent.

As I mentioned earlier, this was true of many countries around the world where people were fighting for freedom and justice. In South America, Simon Bolivar—who was known as The Liberator or El Libertador—led the fight for independence from Spain of what are now his native Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Panama, but he was also a poet, alongside the Cuban Jose Marti, among others. The Chilean poet and Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda wrote a poem in tribute to Bolivar, titled “A Song for Bolivar,” which I will read to you:

Our Father thou art in Heaven,
in water, in air
in all our silent and broad latitude
everything bears your name, Father in our dwelling:
your name raises sweetness in sugar cane
Bolívar tin has a Bolívar gleam
the Bolívar bird flies over the Bolívar volcano
the potato, the saltpeter, the special shadows,
the brooks, the phosphorous stone veins
everything comes from your extinguished life
your legacy was rivers, plains, bell towers
your legacy is our daily bread, oh Father.

The line “everything comes from your extinguished life” might as well have applied go Neruda himself, who was murdered by the fascist Pinochet government he opposed. Many writers have died for what they have written—and again we go back to Rizal—but others fought, lived on, and even succeeded in their struggles for national liberation. Two of the most prominent were Ho Chi Minh and Mao Zedong, who led long and ferocious wars against both local and foreign oppressors.

Imprisoned in China during the war, Ho Chi Minh wrote this poem in 1943 upon reading a book called the Anthology of a Thousand Poets:

The ancients liked to sing about natural beauty:
Snow and flowers, moon and wind, mists, mountains and rivers.
Today we should make poems including iron and steel,
And the poet should also know how to lead an attack.

In 1950, shortly after the Communists took over in China, Mao wrote this poem in reply to another poet named Liu Yazi:

The night was long and dawn came slow to the Crimson Land.

For a century demons and monsters whirled in a wild dance,

And the five hundred million people were disunited.

Now the rooster has crowed and all under heaven is bright,

Here is music from all our peoples, even from Yutian,

And the poet is inspired as never before. 

Note how, in these two poems, Ho and Mao locate the poet at the center of a collective struggle. This idea is developed even more strongly by Jose Ma. Sison—who by the way was an English major in UP—in his poem from the 196os titled “The Guerilla is Like a Poet”:

The guerilla is like a poet 
Keen to the rustle of leaves 
The break of twigs 
The ripples of the river 
The smell of fire 
And the ashes of departure. 

The guerilla is like a poet. 
He has merged with the trees 
The bushes and the rocks 
Ambiguous but precise 
Well-versed on the law of motion 
And master of myriad images. 

The guerilla is like a poet. 
Enrhymed with nature 
The subtle rhythm of the greenery 
The inner silence, the outer innocence 
The steel tensile in-grace 
That ensnares the enemy. 

The guerilla is like a poet. 
He moves with the green brown multitude 
In bush burning with red flowers 
That crown and hearten all 
Swarming the terrain as a flood 
Marching at last against the stronghold. 

An endless movement of strength 
Behold the protracted theme: 
The people’s epic, the people’s war. 

Given the aesthetics of the Philippine Left at that time, you could actually reverse this proposition to read “The poet is like a guerilla,” which Emman Lacaba certainly was, as was Ma. Lorena Barros, whose poem “Sampaguita” follows:

This morning Little Comrade

gave me a flower’s bud

I look at it now

remembering you, Felix,

dear friend and comrade

and all the brave sons and daughters

of our suffering land

whose death

makes our blades sharper

gives our bullets

surer aim.

How like this pure white bud

are our martyrs

fiercely fragrant with love

for our country and people!

With what radiance they should still have unfolded!

But sadness should not be

their monument.  

Whipped and lashed desperately

by bombed-raised storms

has not our Asian land

continued to bloom?

Look how bravely our ranks

bloom into each gap.

With the same intense purity and fragrance

we are learning to overcome.

Decades later, her namesake Kerima Lorena Tariman would write “Pagkilos,” a poem that celebrates motion in both nature and society:

Ang lahat ng bagay ay tila kitikiti,
Palagiang kumikilos at hindi mapakali.
Ang paggalaw ay kakambal ng bawat bagay,
Likas na kaugnay at hindi maihihiwalay.

Ang mga bagay-bagay ay kay hirap isipin,
Kung walang paggalaw, kung kaya, gayundin,
Ang paggalaw mismo ay di natin matatanto,
Kung wala ang mga bagay dito sa mundo.

Sa daigdig, halimbawa, nagpapahinga man ang pagod,
Matikas man ang estatwa at patay-malisya ang tuod,
Sila’y hindi naliligtas sa paggalaw ng planeta,
Ang pag-ikid at pag-inog ang palagiang sistema.

Kung kaya ang masa na akala mo’y walang imik,
Kapag natutong lumaban ay nagiging matinik!
May mga kasama man na natitigil sa pagkilos,
Ang rebolusyon sa daigdig ay hindi natatapos!

A, lahat ng bagay ay saklaw ng ating kilusan,
Katotohanan ito na di maaaring iwasan.
Kung kaya’t habang tayo ay may lakas at talino,
Sa pagkilos natin ialay ang ating bawat segundo!

Tragically, both Lorenas—and Emman Lacaba before them—would be killed in the struggle that they took on, and be hallowed as revolutionary martyrs.

Now, all this may sound like an open invitation for our favorite red-taggers to call all poets rebels, and all rebels communists. That would be ridiculous. Most poets are still happy and perfectly within their rights to write about the moon and the stars and undying love. Some rebel-poets were proud and self-admitted communists, at a time when the word was invested with a sheen of holiness. But the abject failure of communism to set up a truly free and egalitarian society and its appropriation in both China and Russia by new and autocratic elites has shed much of that romantic mystique, and it is supremely ironic that those writers and artists now fighting for civil liberties in both countries are considered enemies of the state.

“The Writer as Liberator” was an easier concept to deal with when we had a foreign occupier like Spain, America, or Japan. Today, our oppressors are internal, lodged within our society, and within our hearts and minds. The liberation we need today is from our worst selves, which is often the hardest enemy to face. Bad leadership has enabled and encouraged that side of us that accepts extrajudicial killing and unjust imprisonment as normal. 

The minds of so many of our people remain shackled by ignorance, falsehood, prejudice, superstition, fear, and a crippling dependency on the old and familiar, however self-destructive they may be. In an increasingly polarized and intolerant world, people everywhere face racial violence and discrimination, gender inequality, economic exploitation, and political repression.

The writers who will battle this chimera have many weapons at their disposal—not just books and the traditional press but social media, a universe of communication unto itself that Rizal and his contemporaries never dreamed of. Journalists fight with the truth, creative writers fight with the truth dressed up as artistic lies. 

I have often said that the best antidote to fake news is true fiction. By this I mean that it often takes artistry and good storytelling, more than a mere recitation of facts, to show people what is true.

Long before there were newspapers, writers gave voice to their people’s hopes and fears through what today would be called fiction: through myths, legends, tales, epics. These stories transported people from the crushing routine of their everyday lives to the realm of the gods, to a romantic past cloaked in the mists of fable and fancy. Indeed, these stories came even earlier than literacy itself, transmitted orally from one generation to the next. Creation myths validated and gave meaning to a tribe’s or a people’s existence; tragic drama reminded them of the consequences of our moral choices. 

When I started my Qwertyman column in the Philippine Star and began writing what I called “editorial fiction,” a columnist in another newspaper immediately cried “Foul!”, claiming that fiction cannot possibly be taken as opinion. I responded that all fiction is opinion, if you know how to read it closely enough. Like the mirror Perseus used to kill Medusa, we employ fiction to deal with truths we cannot bear to face.


I am under no illusion that the next revolution, whatever it may be against or when, will be sparked by a novel or a poem. Very likely, it will be a viral video that will ignite that flame. I pray it will not be violent, but rather a comprehensive conversion of our people’s minds and spirits for the good. But there will always be a place for the writer in the offices, kitchens, and workshops of democracy, on the bunkbeds where we lie dreaming of justice and prosperity for all. 

Let me close with a short poem that I wrote last year, titled “Freedom Is When”:

Freedom is when 

We don’t think about it

But it’s there like air

We seek only in its absence

When we’re gasping for breath.

Freedom is when

We can choose whom to love

Or whom or what to believe 

Without any fear

Of punishment or death.

Freedom is when

We can sleep without guilt

And dream without ghosts

Waking up to the aroma

Of steaming rice and stewed fish.

Ang kalayaan ay kung

Hindi natin ito iniisip

Tulad ng hangin

Hanggat ito’y mawala

At tayo’y maghingalo.

Ang kalayaan ay kung

Malaya tayong pumili

Ng iibigin, o paniniwalaan

Nang walang katatakutang

Parusa o kamatayan.

Ang kalayaan ay kung

Mahimbing tayong makakatulog

At managinip nang di minimulto

Hanggang tayo’y pukawin ng halimuyak

Ng bagong saing na kanin at pinangat.

Qwertyman No. 45: Onward to Frankfurt?

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Qwertyman for Monday, June 12, 2023

IF YOU were at the Philippine Book Festival (PBF) that took place at the World Trade Center earlier this month, you would have been surprised to find how many Filipinos were writing, publishing, selling, buying, and reading books. A project of the National Book Development Board (NBDB), the PBF was the first such event devoted solely to locally produced books—as opposed to, say, the Manila International Book Fair (MIBF) in September, which is open to books and publications from overseas. The NBDB wisely decided to showcase our homegrown literary talents—not only from Manila, and not only from my generation of old fogeys, but from all over the country, and writers of all persuasions and ages (as young as fourteen!).

We Pinoys have become so immersed in Netflix, YouTube, and social media that many of us have forgotten about reading, and what a good book can do for one’s mind and soul. We want everything delivered to us in short sentences—even in acronyms or, if possible, in memes—because long paragraphs (and, God forbid, pages) can only mean a waste of our precious time (which is, of course, best spent posting what we last ate on Instagram, and critiquing someone’s OOTD). Whether fiction or nonfiction, books challenge us to carry ideas through to the limits of our reason and imagination. The difference between a good meme and a good book can be that between wit and wisdom—between the bubbles that rise to the top of your champagne and the notes that linger on your tongue and senses long after you’ve put your drink down.

And despite the death knells that have been tolled for publishing and reading in this country, the droves of people who flocked to the PBF and the MIBF show otherwise; as I’ve noted elsewhere, more new authors and publishers are emerging across various genres and languages than ever before, spurred by writing programs and workshops, new technologies, and more exposure for Filipino writers in international markets.

That last note—the emergence of Philippine writing in the global consciousness—has been a long time coming. We’ve had, of course, writers who’ve been published abroad, most notably Jose Rizal and the late National Artist F. Sionil Jose. In America, both expatriate and US-born writers such as Gina Apostol, Ninotchka Rosca, Jessica Hagedorn, Eric Gamalinda, Zach Linmark, and Brian Ascalon Roley have made important inroads into publishing, some with mainstream publishers. Of course, they were preceded by the likes of Carlos Bulosan, Jose Garcia Villa, NVM Gonzalez, and Bienvenido Santos, in a time when getting published in America seemed to be the apex of a literary career. We’re way past that now, having found our own voice and our own readers right here at home. 

I’ve often remarked that I’d rather be read by 10,000 Filipinos than 100,000 Americans, but I may have spoken too soon, as even those 10,000 Pinoys willing to buy and read a serious novel can be hard to round up. Therein lies the irony: we’re happy to write and publishers seem happy to publish, and the high attendance at the PBF could be a sign that things are changing, but creating a critical mass of local readers for literature remains a struggle. 

Even in America, where we imagine that almost four million Filipinos should be able to clear out an edition of 5,000 books without any trouble, that simply doesn’t happen. I suspect that that’s because we’ve never really been a book-reading culture, unlike the Japanese and the Indians, and the easy availability of entertainment on Netflix and Tiktok just aggravates the situation. (A more disturbing possibility is that our writers still haven’t learned to write the kind of stories with the kind of treatment that Filipino readers—and there are also many kinds of them—expect, without sacrificing literary “quality,” whatever that means. In my old age, this is what I’m aiming for—to give my readers stories that they’d want to see turned into movies.) 

There’s no doubt that we’re producing materials of high literary value—in English, Filipino, and our regional languages; we saw that in the PBF and we see it in our classes and workshops all the time. These works deserve to be shared with a broad audience—not just here, but overseas, where the Chinese, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Indonesians, and the Vietnamese have already made a name for themselves in the publishing world. 

But that takes a network we still have to familiarize ourselves with and learn how to navigate—a network of translators, literary agents, editors, publishers, and booksellers largely unknown and therefore closed to us. We’re not totally clueless. Through the NBDB and local publishing stalwarts such as Karina Bolasco (just recently retired from the Ateneo Press and the founder of Anvil Publishing before that) and Andrea Pasion-Flores (our very first international literary agent, now owner of Milflores Publishing and president of the Book Development Association of the Philippines), the Philippines has been represented over the past few years in such major events as the annual Frankfurt Book Fair, the world’s largest such market of authors, publishers, and agents.

Not meaning to be immodest, thanks to my agents and publishers, I myself have benefited from this kind of exposure, having sold my second novel Soledad’s Sister in last year’s FBF into a German translation and edition, which just came out; before that, it had already been translated into and published in Italian and French, aside from an American edition. Imagine what that network could do for the rest of our writers.

This brings me to an idea whose time, I strongly believe, has come: focal representation in a forthcoming Frankfurt Book Fair as a “guest of honor,” a position reserved for a country wishing to showcase the best of its literary talent across all genres (two years ago it was Canada, followed by Slovenia). This has to be accompanied by a strong effort in translation—from the regional languages to English, and from English to other international languages like Spanish and French, perhaps even Chinese. It will take much planning and a sizeable budget, but as our recent forays into the Venice Biennale have shown on behalf of our leading artists, with the right cultural leadership and vision, it can be done.

Penman No. 451: A Harvest of Books

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Penman for Sunday, June 4, 2023

IF YOU’RE reading this on this Sunday morning, then it’s not yet too late for you to find a cab and get yourself over to the World Trade Center in Pasay City to catch the last day of the Philippine Book Festival, and have your favorite Filipino authors sign their books for you.

Organized by the National Book Development Board (NBDB) in partnership with the National Library and other agencies and organizations, the PBF will showcase the best of new Philippine writing and publishing, with the bonus of having most of the authors around for signings, chats, and the now-obligatory selfies.

Since the Internet took off thirty years ago, people have been declaring that “Books are dead!” (And even before that, “The Author is dead!”—although, of course, not quite in that almost literal sense). Well, guess what—both are very much alive, whole new generations of them, as if the Internet never happened. I don’t have the hard figures to show—I’m sure the NBDB has them—but just from what I’ve seen at the past Manila International Book Fairs (the next one of which will be held in September), there’s much more new writing and publishing happening now than there was before the Internet. 

There are many drivers for that, one of which has to be the proliferation of writing programs and workshops, whose graduates really succeed only when they come out with books. (Like I often remind Creative Writing grad students who take forever to “perfect” their thesis projects, “You’re writing for no more than five readers—your dissertation committee—and when you’re done, your thesis will be sitting on a solitary shelf. Just do what you need to pass the damned defense and focus on producing your first book out of that draft! Your real examiners will be your readers.”) 

Another factor is the growth of the publishing industry, which has become much more diversified in terms of ownership, material, and audience. The long years of martial law drove much creative output underground, so to speak, with few available venues for literary publishing and only competitions like the Palancas providing incentives for continued production. (On the other hand, the government presses kept churning out books on the First Couple’s abounding wisdom.) Post-EDSA, the pent-up dam broke, and literature flourished, but still hardly on the scale we’re seeing today.

I suspect that’s because many new players have gone into publishing, finding niche markets for everything from religious and self-help books to graphic novels and high-end coffee-table books. Among these, I’d count Milflores Publishing, founded by the late Tony Hidalgo and now in the hands of the very capable Andrea Pasion-Flores. Balangay Books, focused on local literature, has been opening doors for new young authors, and belongs to the Indie Pub Collab PH, a group of independent publishers. Down south, Savage Mind Bookshop and the Ateneo de Naga University Press have made great strides in literary publishing not just in the Bicol region but well beyond. Emerging in the wake of the Pink Revolution, San Anselmo Publications has made a name for itself as a purveyor of progressive thought. A recent visit to OMF Literature’s bookshop and office along Boni Avenue showed me how Christian literature is flourishing, attracting both new authors and readers. 

Let’s not forget self-publishing, which with such new technologies as print-on-demand and e-books has outgrown the stigma of “vanity” publishing and has produced both commercial and critical successes. While overall quality remains highly variable, the free Internet has empowered and enabled a new generation of young people to feel like they can become “writers” by posting on such sites as Wattpad—and some of them will be. (The irony here is that, as on Amazon, writers who succeed in their e-book debuts then get picked up by publishers of physical books.) Professional design and editorial outfits such as Studio 5 and Perez NuMedia also exist to help individuals and institutions turn their ideas into prizewinning books.

And then of course the long-established big-name publishers and academic publishers are still around: Anvil Publishing, UP Press, Ateneo de Manila University Press, UST Publishing House, and the University of San Carlos Press, among others. Vibal Publishing has produced impressive and sumptuously printed historical books—as has, let’s not forget, the National Historical Commission. They remain the publishers of choice for what might generally be considered prestigious but non-commercial projects, although their marketing savvy has vastly improved, from book design to distribution (much of the bookselling has moved online, to Shopee and Lazada). But since the wait at these publishing houses tends to be long, even established Filipino authors like novelist Charlson Ong (White Lady, Black Christ) have gone with such alternatives as Milflores (as did I, in its previous incarnation), which can often provide speedier results with no sacrifice of quality.

One more thing: more Filipino authors have begun to get published and noticed abroad, beyond America. Note the recent publication of Ulirát: The Best Contemporary Stories in Translation from the Philippines, edited by Tilde Acuña et al., and the South Africa-based Jim Pascual Agustin’s Waking Up to the Pattern Left by a Snail Overnight, both by Gaudy Boy in Singapore. Singapore is also where Penguin Random House SEA is based, and from where it published Danton Remoto’s novel Riverrun and his book of stories The Heart of Summer(aside from his translations of our classic works in Filipino), and Maryanne Moll’s novel The Maps of Camarines. I’m also happy to report that my novel Soledad’s Sister just came out in a German hardcover edition (as Last Call Manila) from Transit Buchverlag, following earlier editions in Italy, France, and the US. A 15th-anniversary edition of the novel, along with a new edition of my Voyager collected stories, are on sale at PFB—as are almost all of the books I mentioned here, with their authors on hand to sign them.

So wait no further and grab that ride to the WTC, for your share of this bountiful harvest of Filipino books. (Did I say that entrance is free?)

Qwertyman No. 42: Life Lessons for the College Student

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Qwertyman for May 22, 2023

TWO YEARS ago, well before I began writing this column, I was asked to share some thoughts with fellow teachers of General Education—that special recipe of college courses in various disciplines meant to give incoming students a basic but challenging introduction to the issues of life and society. Instead of giving a lecture, I decided to come up with a list of 12 “life lessons” that I thought every undergrad should learn, one way or another, over their four years in college. I’d like to share them here as well, with further notes from me in parentheses, to reach a larger audience—and yes, even well beyond college. Here goes:

1. You don’t have to understand everything right away. In any case, you can’t. Some things in life will forever remain mysteries—some of them wonderful, some of them perplexing. Staying curious is what matters to the lifelong learner. (Aside from being usually obnoxious and insufferably arrogant, know-it-alls never learn that they can’t possibly know everything.)

2. Engagement helps—and by engagement, I mean investing yourself, putting in your time, effort, and maybe even money behind some belief or idea or activity that means something to you. Sometimes engagement is the best way of knowing, learning, and finally understanding. (Talk is cheap; get off your butt and actually do something. Remember the “community pantry”? That was because somebody took charge of an idea and put it into action.)

3. Not everything has to have practical value—at least not yet, or maybe ever. Value can mean more than utility or money. Delight and discovery are their own rewards. (All art involves finding beauty in the abstract; even sport is the quest of abstract perfection. Of course both art and sport have ironically become big business, and their best practitioners deserve every reward, but just as ironically, their greatest feats are driven by love and passion, not money.)

4. You are not the center of the universe. Not everything has to do with you. However, every connection you can make to the world around you leaves a mark that you were here—and that, in your own way, you mattered. (Know the difference between history and Instagram.)

5. Learn to see time in years and centuries, not seconds or hours. If you want to foretell the future, look back to the past. We may seem to be headed for the future, but in fact we will all inevitably be part of the past. How will you want to be remembered? (Repeat: Know the difference between history and Instagram.)

6. Intelligence, cleverness, knowledge, and wisdom are very different things. Knowledge without values is worthless and even dangerous. The middling student who has a sense of good and bad and right and wrong is worthier than the summa cum laude who doesn’t. (The people who have methodically impoverished and destroyed this country are no idiots; they are experts at what they do, or can hire whatever expertise they need.)

7. The first thought that comes to your mind may not be the best one. Pause and think before you speak or write, especially in these days of Facebook and Twitter. Speech but also silence can require courage and good judgment. (Live and write as if there were no “delete” or “unsend” buttons at your fingertips.)

8. Learn to love something larger than yourself, your family, and your prized possessions. “Nation,” “freedom,” “justice,” and “equality” are very attractive ideas, but you have to learn to bring these big words down to earth, in concrete forms, actions, and decisions. Can you accept that you are your housekeeper’s equal as a human being? (Good citizenship is always personal. Bad leadership is no excuse; be the example to your family, friends, and community.)

9. Be prepared to take risks and to make mistakes—and even to fail. You can learn more from failure than from over-performance. Everybody—even the very best of us—will fail sometime, and it will be good to believe that we are all entitled to at least one big mistake in our lives. (Being humbled by failure is always a good starting point; as we like to say in Diliman, you have nowhere to go but up!)

10. Be prepared to change your mind. As you grow and learn, some things will become more simple, and others more complex. You are not a fixed entity; you are changing all the time, and you can change faster than the world around you. (In my twenties, I thought I had the world all figured out in black and white, and would have been prepared to die for my causes. I’m glad I didn’t—I needed more time to learn that the world is mostly shades of gray, and that “compromise” is not necessarily a bad word.)

11. Technology can be deceptive. It can lead us to believe that the world is changing very fast and for the better. That may be true for some of us and for the way we live. But for many others left behind, the world is no better than it was a hundred years ago. (Technology, even artificial intelligence, is amoral. It’s only as good as the person who uses it, and his or her intentions.)

12. Competition is good, but cooperation is often better—and necessary. Poems are written by solitary genius, but bridges, cathedrals, and nations are built by many minds and hands. The best way to deal with loneliness is to find meaning in the many—to learn from and to contribute to the experience of others. (And I’m not talking here just about networking online; indeed nothing has made us lonelier in this century than the Internet. Share a cup of coffee, and learn to listen—their causes could be more urgent than yours, and you might even have the answer.)