Category Archive for: edukasyon

komentaryo

Rage* (or what is wrong with the STFAP and STS)

When I entered the State University as a freshman in 1995, I was part of an English block that was diverse by virtue of class. It didn’t take long to find that while some of us were from well-off families (I had a Romualdez in my class for example, and there were children of lawyers), and there were some of us who were versions of middle class; many of my blockmates came from poorer families, many from the provinces. Many of them, I later found, were dependent on scholarships, mostly from elsewhere other than the State U.  (more…)

komentaryo

dear UP Manila,

one hopes for some kindness.

four UP Manila students will be appealing their case to the Board of Regents today, March 28. this past semester, all four went to all the classes they registered in, they were accepted by their teachers, and they fulfilled requirements. this past semester, they aimed for graduation and went through their thesis classes.

they did so despite the fact that they could not and did not pay their tuition fees on time. they went to school, did the work, no matter the financial problems that befell their families. they forged through and hoped that soon enough, there would be money to pay for tuition. they did the work, regardless. (more…)

kultura

space for troubled youth: on Toilet The Musical

It was funny that before I could find where exactly Toilet The Musical was being staged in the Ateneo campus, I first had to happen upon the Rizal Mini Theater where Antigone The Musical was being staged. It made me want to try and get into the latter — for how fun that sounded after all! — but then again, Toilet was making a promise difficult to refuse: it’s an all-original Filipino musical. That it had Ejay Yatco at the helm might be exactly what kept me walking towards Toilet even as Antigone was calling. Yatco after all was musical director of the underrated success that was Sa Wakas (2013).

In Toilet, Yatco does not disappoint. Neither do writers Bym Buhain and Miyo Sta. Maria. Neither does the rest of Blue Rep.

(more…)

komentaryo

on words

We are a nation careless with words.

It is what we are calling out Vice Ganda on, the fact that she even thought to use the rape of a woman as a joke, not a fictional but a real one: Jessica Soho.

Likewise, making fun of her weight is to fall into the concept of beauty according to mainstream capitalist discourse. A woman becomes pretty or ugly as she gains or loses weight.

It is ABS-CBN that put Vice Ganda on that stage and allowed her to get the crowd rolling in laughter at the expense of a woman who is a powerful icon in the rival network. Moreover, she is by all counts intelligent and credible, everything that is not Vice Ganda. That joke was about Jessica’s weight, and the TV network rivalry in this country. Just watch ABS-CBN’s Charo Santos-Concio laughing her head off at Vice Ganda’s jokes, right there on the front row. (more…)

komentaryo

Rage

What the UP Administration and the governments who have supported that 300% tuition fee increase have created here are the conditions for the poor’s discomfort and embarrassment, in a space that should be the bastion of equality and sameness.

In the 90’s, paying at most a P5,400 tuition fee, one of us was not better than another, and in fact, discomfiture was for the rich who were even there at all. In the 90’s, the best and the brightest from the public schools and provinces outdid all of us middle class and rich in the classroom: they were in the State U for reasons that had everything to do with their skills and intelligence. The rest of us were statistics, the smaller number of students who paid full tuition, because we could.

In 2013, you can only imagine the kind of stigma attached to a student being told by a teacher that she has to step out of the classroom because she has yet to pay her tuition fees or student loans.

Imagine what goes through a student’s head, faced with the fact of unpaid fees, but wanting to learn and thinking the world still of education, and of the State University in particular. Imagine what it is like to go to school for five months, with only the desire to learn fueling you, the empty stomach and pocket things you can ignore.

Imagine a context within which you are the strange one having a difficult time, if not the one who has nowhere to run. Imagine a University whose bureaucracy is most unkind, and which instead of being source of comfort and identity, becomes stark reminder of how hopeless one’s poverty is.

the rest is up at The Times column.