by Fr. Ranhilio Callangan Aquino

Unlike my previous columns that dealt with a single topic, I shall deal with two today, under the unifying theme of education. The first has to do with something that I am truly concerned with—the education of the electorate. The second has to do with something I busy myself with each day: educating students.

It looks like it’s all systems go for automated elections in 2010. I am for it. We complained, and rightly so, about overdue returns. Delays bred suspicion of vote-rigging even if credible evidence was hard to come by. There is, however, an important concern that must be addressed. In fact, it should have concerned us long before the eve of the elections: the enlightenment of the electorate. I know this will not sit well with those for whom it is presumptuous to “enlighten” those whose voice is supposed to be the voice of God. I do not, however, pander to this fiction, neither to claims of infallibility or omniscience of the masses. The masses can be—as they have been—used and manipulated. This is sad and unflattering, but it is a fact.

The way many aspirants—“presidentiables”, “vice-presidentiables”, “senatoriables”, and other –ables—appeal for support contributes in no small measure to the malformation of the voter. One shamelessly promises to return power to the masses. What the candidate is obviously alluding to were the motley crowds, paid (or at least promised payment) and fed to assemble, hold placards, bear streamers and hurl obscenities at whomsoever they were directed to do so. An overwhelming majority is not by itself commendation because that would be the same thing as making the terribly perverse assumption that the majority (especially in overwhelming numbers) is always right. To campaign on this promise is to commend the anarchy that characterized those gatherings that threw all respect for the law and basic human decency to the winds in frenzied obeisance to handlers and obviously moneyed “godfathers”. That contributes to the mis-education of the electorate.

Crossing political fences and changing party affiliations for no reason other than the promise of tapping on the machinery of a political candidate also sends the electorate the message that principles do not really matter. In fact, it makes principles and positions non-issues. One such balimbing, who has unabashedly sought the limelight at every opportunity, was recently asked on national television why she decided to ally herself with one she had so recently indicted of cheating the nation. She had no intelligent response of course, because there is none. She nevertheless managed a straight-faced and arrant volte face: “I now believe he is innocent.” If she is as convinced now of his innocence as she was only till recently of his guilt, one wonders if she has any convictions at all!

It is at election time that the media moguls mobilize the tremendous power of broadsheet and national radio and television to protect their business concerns. Even now, we are regaled with accounts of candidates jumping ship—crossing over from the administration side to the other sides (because there are many other sides!) But I am sure that there are as many defections to the administration’s party that never get attention because it is popular to demonize the administration and to cast in unfavorable light those who seek public office under its aegis. One candidate won my respect (and probably my trust, as well) when he declined the insinuation that he should distance himself from the present administration. He would not allow himself to be bamboozled into an answer that would have undoubtedly won him the applause of the administration’s critics, the innuendoes of the television anchor person notwithstanding. It might be good for this particular TV analyst-poseur to go back to law school, this time pass, and learn that a good lawyer smells a leading question several kilometers away.

Let us have debates—and no, not along the riles. That’s where Dolphy and his fellows shoot their entertaining comedies, not where national issues are debated! Will they be intellectual parleys and above the cut of the common tao? Of course they will be, because national issues have to do with macro and micro economics, international relations and international law, national security and kindred themes that are not the fare along the riles. But I share the demand that what is debated should impact on the lives of those who live along the riles and along the esteros as well. Let us have panelists who know their stuff and do their homework, not the usual persons we have asking questions on national television who, are either downright rude, acerbic and abrasive or just plain dumb!

I used to have so much faith in the youth —and in the promise of their votes to change the face of Philippine politics. I have since been chastened in this confidence, because I have been witness to youth selling their votes, offering their services (for a fee, of course) to brazenly corrupt candidates and aping the practices and vices of a generation for whom civic virtue is a devalued commodity! I am sure our schools can do much to foster within their campuses that appreciation for the electoral process that will allow us all to dare to hope that our youth can still make the difference.

My other concern with education has to do with a question I was recently asked by a local radio network. The topic surfaced once more of a supposed mismatch between courses taken by students and job demands and opportunities. This is mouthed by many who talk about economics and education (when it would become them better to be silent!). In the first place, I am not sure everyone has bothered to check the facts. What courses are really “in demand”? Was it not only until of late that we were all convinced that nursing was in demand? When I asked the radio announcer what course he was referring to, he mentioned teacher-education. Now, that is silly. The fact is that we lack teachers and at the beginning of each school year, as we see the horde of pupils making its way to public schools, we always wonder how we can cope with the recurrent inadequacies: lack of classrooms, lack of teachers, lack of books! True indeed it is that students sometimes make moronic choices about their courses. The Cagayan Valley is an agricultural region—it feeds a considerable part of the country. Cognizant of this, the Cagayan State University, for example, exacts no tuition fees for its agriculture and fisheries courses, in the hope of enticing students go into these courses so vital to food production. Our earnest efforts notwithstanding, there are no takers. But until we radically change our national ideology and grant the State the right to determine the careers of the youth, there is nothing much we can do in that respect, except make it more difficult through institutional means for the incompetent to matriculate in programs for which they are not qualified.

One thing is certain: universities and colleges, particularly state-run, must make quality education a passion, an obsession perhaps. We can start by accepting the bitter fact that what passes for university education in the Philippines will hardly be anything more than high school or middle school in other jurisdictions. And let it us not blame it all on our economic vicissitudes that I do not intend to deny. What we lack is a passion for excellence, even if we profess with solemn unction that we are consecrated to the cause of excellence in education. We are content with the pathetic excuses for term papers that we get from our students and, even more bothering, the incompetence of the teachers we sometimes employ. But this indifference to excellence manifests itself in so many other aspects of our national life—politics disturbingly among the most prominent of these manifestations!

rannie_aquino@rannieaquino.com