School begins…
Posted by: Fats in: Fats, Vitamins & Minerals > Wika at Hirap > Media Watch
A few weeks ago, I attended the wake of the mother of an ex-colleague teaching at the University of Philippines, College of Fine Arts (UPCFA). It was, surprisingly, a rather jovial meeting especially while comparing with her some awful funeral encounters with often well-meaning relatives and friends. It was also a kind of warm melancholy experience being reminded of my own father.
Apart from its emotional aspects, the wake was also the venue to touch base again with the usual politics at the college. I learned that my friend was not given the official leave of absence she requested for purposes of spending more time with her mother who has been diagnosed with cancer.
Amazingly, one of the reasons given for the refusal to grant her a leave of absence was: “we (her superiors at the college) don’t want to happen to you what happened to Fatima Lasay.”
They were referring to the college’s decision not to extend my appointment as assistant professor because (as written in my 201 files) I have “a budding professional artistic career”, a decision spurred by my insistence to go on leave from teaching so that I can finish my research work.
Leaving the academic system, particularly the system currently in place at the UPCFA, has been one of the most liberating and empowering things ever to happen to me. Certainly I had a wonderful time at the college - I learned a lot and I have given so much of myself to the service of teaching, especially the period from 1998 to 2002 when I was tasked to develop the college’s first computer art elective courses and when I started organizing the Digital Media Festivals with my computer art classes. I also rendered service to all three departments of the college - the Visual Communication, the Studio Arts and the Theory Departments. (I started teaching in 1996, went on “non-formal” leave in March 2004 when I went to Switzerland, and then took the terminal official leave when I went to Denmark, Burma, Singapore and Taiwan from August to December 2004.
What made the UPCFA a prison, was that it somehow refused to accept that teaching - like learning - is a very fluid organic process, and not a rigid and static state of being. People talk about “prestige” at the university, but that prestige is drawn from a long history of dynamic learning and teaching, and especially from the university’s own living culture of radicalism, intellectualism and creativity. At the UPCFA, that prestige has been frozen into a stasis from which a rigid and static spate of teaching draws, while not much is ever really given back to that frozen piece of “prestige.”
I have buried the petty politics of UPCFA two years ago under the incredible experiences offered by my freedom and wonderfully expanded creative universe. So somehow, the funeral wake was a most apt venue to reminisce the petty politics of a college that has lost much of the intelligence and sensitivity that once gave substance to its “prestige.”
Going back to the myth of “what happened to Fatima Lasay” which seems to have been created and used by certain people at the college in order to control anyone who dared to challenge the system even in positive ways, it is obvious that the myth works only when people have no other alternative. However, if a UPCFA professor was supposed to have such great prestige (and substance to back up that prestige), how can there be such insecurity and lack of alternatives?
This phenomena is reflected also in our current society. Why is being a caregiver in Canada or a school teacher in the U.S. the only way out of poverty (real or perceived), a way out that has become imbued with national prestige (people being exported for the international labor market are now called “new heroes”)? In the meantime, the root causes of poverty in society is ignored (willingly or unwillingly) by the disempowered “new heroes”, much to the delight of those whose greed and politics are responsible.
I believe the universe is great to those who have the will to make it so. It is not easy, especially within tremendous economic and social constraints, which is why one needs the will. Also, the easiest and most obvious way out often becomes the most difficult and oppressive in the long run. So, if one can at least discern that to have intelligent will is different from being a pig-headed martyr, then the universe has started to grow.
Anyway, I have recently started to organize my work and thoughts on matters concerning “education.” Although I believe in “education for all”, I don’t quite like the idea (or possibility) of institutionalized education usurping the entire landscape, because of either force by mainstream and omission by the “avant-gardes.” It would be good if more minds (and “stomachs!”) contributed to the learning landscape.
