The Lesson Plan

Today marks our 108th Independence Day celebration and this reminds me how young our country really is. But a lot has happened over the past years and with how the world develops today, things will only go faster.

I could think of no further metaphor for our country than my students. I am older than most of them by a full decade, but they are learning faster thanks to the Internet. Recently, I have bloghopped to look up what Batch ‘09 is like, and I am delighted to discover what may be the most diverse group of individuals I will ever meet. Then I realize that despite all their commonalities, they are the same when it comes to being scholars of our country. I will be with them for ten months and I will have a hand in their formation. Two weeks ago, we’ve had talks from legal experts on vicarious liability and special parental authority. Gobbledygook aside, the point is simple: everything we do matters to our students.

Dr. Pagsangjan shattered the myth that the children are our nation’s hope for the future. “No. Teachers are.”

I see my country in the same way I see my students: that it is its own self-determining entity yet I have a hand in its formation. While it in part determines my life, I play a larger part in determining its destiny. I remember the poignant words of Fr. Luis David, my philosophy and political theory professor back in college. Of all the words he said, his summary of what we must do to save our country rings loudly until today: “We must recover our streets.”

There is a lot to do to get back our streets, and going out to rally in them is the last thing we should do. (Rallies, to me, are akin to road rage.) Will there be a time when we can walk our streets without fear of being hurt, without the threat of pollution, or with even just the ample space to simply walk on? “Recovering our streets” means that something has been taken away: perhaps our security, or our stake in society, or for most of our people, the opportunity to live a full and dignified life.

That last point I encountered when we, the Social Sciences unit, visited a community without streets, but with homes, apartelles, bakeries, barbershops and internet cafes. In 1984, they were 300 families strong. Today, they are at about 12,000. Children aren’t in school, and most kids up to the age 12 can’t read or write. Most teenagers have dropped out of school (the few who do go to school), and teenage pregnancy has spreaded like a disease. This isn’t the first urban poor community I have visited, but that doesn’t mean I cast this off as ordinary. Far from it! As depressing as this area is, there is hope. Right across this community after all, is the Philippine Science High School.

We engaged some of the elders in conversation and discovered how the councilors of Quezon City would overtly manipulate them during election time. Only then do roads, schools and basketball courts emerge, but any assistance ceases the moment they win the election… thanks to their votes. But interestingly enough, they wouldn’t rush to EDSA or Mendiola to rally against those in power.

“Pare-pareho lang yang mga yan! Kung gagamitin lang nila kami, masmainam nang iwanan na lang nila kami!” (“They’re all the same! If they will just use us, it would be better that they just leave us alone!”) True enough. Unfortunate as their situation is, what makes it infuriating is how they’re trapped in a vicious cycle by the same people who promise them emancipation. They’re merely vote generating machines in the eyes of politicos, and deny them the dignity due them as human beings.

Conrado de Quiros wrote once on the apathy of Filipinos, that economic development means nothing if we don’t recover our balls first. I think he missed a step. You can’t have courage to stand up for yourself if you don’t have dignity. If you are unable to eat, clothe and shelter yourself, going out to rally in EDSA won’t mean much to you. The short time you spend there would cost your breakfast, old underwear or plywood planks. Perhaps, we grant our people these necessities, allow them to feel human, then we talk about having them stand up for themselves.

Central to “recovering our streets” is to let people like these walk them as citizens, side by side with everybody else, and not as beggars, standing on the sidelines with palms half open. An impending reign of tyranny will be a small problem compared to what I believe has been our problem ever since: a deficit in dignity.

Soon we will be returning to Bgy. San Roque just across the street, and we teachers will be the first to immerse ourselves before we bring our students there either later this year or throughout the next school year. There is a lot of work to be done and there is no concern at all about doing too much for them. The least we can do is to walk the same alleyways they do. “Malaking bagay na nandito kayo.” (“It is already a bid deal that you are here.”)

This Independence Day, let’s talk about independence not merely in the political sense of being free from an external or internal tyrant. The greatest threat to mankind after all, lies in our hearts. It will be a far greater achievement to help our people off their crutches and help them stand on their own as people with dignity, courage and the opportunity to live the life we all deserve.