You Lose, You Learn

The Sunday edition of PDI had a short article about the ten teachers that were awarded the most outstanding in the country. Metrobank Foundation gave the chosen ones P250,000 and a trophy each. Congratulations to all of them; may more of their hardworking kind help educate and challenge youngsters to become better, more enlightened persons. It’s good to know that there are still those that possess, to quote the criteria, “personal integrity, character, instructional competence, and professional and community involvement.”

Looking back at my sixteen years of school, from kindergarten to college, there’d be very few of my teachers who’d pass such a tight list of requirements. But the few that do, they were very selfless and motherly (or fatherly, depending), and have given me fond memories of learning and the classroom. School is tough for students and teachers both, but those instructors that don’t crack under pressure really have to be commended.

Still, the bad ones really leave scars that aren’t necessarily physical. This brings me back to grade school. One time, if I remember correctly, I was approached by a school official, a kind woman who was Prefect of Students during the time, outside our classroom. She asked me why my pants’ left knee was torn. I told her it just got that way naturally; my pants were old and worn out, and the tiny rip grew in time. I told her that I didn’t tell my mother about the hole because she was busy taking care of my little siblings. I thought that it was clear that it wasn’t a big deal, that I didn’t get that way because of any accident, and she let me be. I thought that’d be the last time I heard of it.

Apparently, she told her friend, our section’s class adviser, who was also our Language teacher. In front of some classmates between subjects, she sternly reprimanded me that my fashion faux pas was, to paraphrase her idiotic monologue, a sign of “rebellion.” She muttered stuff to herself that was too fast to comprehend. I was dumbfounded. What a horrible bitch! She took another opportunity to embarrass me, like when I approached her to apologize for forgetting an authorization letter. She yelled, “It’s your responsibility,” saliva spewing out of her disgusting mouth. Failing to reason with her, I just went back to my chair, stunned.

Now that I think about it, I probably rubbed her the wrong way, maybe because I didn’t participate in her deathly boring lectures about language, unlike her favorite students. Maybe it was because I’d rather read comics after class with some of my classmates, and she didn’t believe that they’re reliable educational material. Well, news flash! I learned more about the English language through comic books, the radio, cartoons, and books in the library back then, than by attending her classes. She had god-awful pronunciation and diction; I’m sure the other students knew this but were too afraid (or too bored) to talk about it.

I didn’t feel like going back to school after those incidents; I felt that I had no energy for it even when that adviser left to take over a vacant position in the school administrators’ board or some such. I was absent for long periods at a time during that school year. My parents kept asking me if I had enemies, because they were on to me that I just wasn’t interested in going back. I tearfully said that I had none. I couldn’t really tell them that I found it boring, that I didn’t really feel like I belong there, that I felt like dying a slow death there because I don’t really talk to anyone.

I passed it anyway, pasang-awa in some subjects, but I didn’t care. The next year, I didn’t feel like a freak anymore, partly because of the fact that there were many new students, and new teachers that were surprisingly kind to me and everyone else. They were seeing potential in me, and encouraged me to write more, to draw more, to communicate more with others. There were those that were fascist, with thundering voices or a propensity for chalk-throwing. There was even one who carried a walking cane for furious chalkboard–slamming, whenever even just one person showed a sign of misbehavior. In college, there were those lazy professors that rarely appeared; they’re a different disappointment from the kind that only popped up to give assignments, and never taught. And there were some that, alas, lectured robotically without ever elucidating their points in any relatable way. Of course, I can only look at it clearly now, because we were too preoccupied back then to really care.

I heard, years later, that my ex-adviser remained unjustly accusatory until she terrorized the wrong student, whose father gave the aging woman an angry lecture about her own notorious temper. She was, I’m told, quiet and restrained while taking her own medicine. Owned!

Many years after finishing school, I still learn, because life really doesn’t let up, and it’ll bombard you with all the tests that those teachers, the good and dedicated ones, repeatedly hinted at. And now that I’m grown up, I’m learning that understanding new knowledge is never-ending, as long as you’re receptive to it. Real life demands, sometimes, that we become substitute teachers ourselves, and not necessarily in the confines of the classroom.

You Choke, You Learn

Also in the Sunday issue of the Inquirer is Isagani A. Cruz’s latest column, another one that defends his “right to criticize.” The retired judge laments that he’s been getting letters that resort to name-calling. I’m surprised that he’s surprised. He did write a column that, despite his claims that he apologized to the “decorous” members of the gay community beforehand, nevertheless scathingly generalized and warned the populace against those that don’t prescribe to his standards of “macho” behavior. He is now saying that his opinions, “while provocative, are never evil-minded or discourteous.”

Please. Mr. Cruz, you wrote about your homophobia! You openly ridiculed gay people as a whole, and you even opined, quite wryly, that a fey kid would’ve been beaten up at the school where your five, ahem, “macho” sons studied. You also called gayness a "condition." That was VERY discourteous and very irresponsible, not to mention ignorant. You know what you wrote. It went beyond free speech. Now you’re saying that you’re just voicing out what the “silent majority,” is too afraid to say. Come on!