PNoy – Page 4 – Katrina Stuart Santiago

the more i listen to PNoy, the more i realize that his communications team, all three heads of it, seems to be just clueless about how to handle his public speaking, how to strike a balance between being (pa-)cool and young, and creating an image of credibility and respect. case in point: at the investiture of Fr. Jett Villarin into the Ateneo Presidency, the premise of PNoy’s speech was his being Atenista, his personal relationship with Fr. Jett its context. this apparently meant going back to the time when they were members of/working with the Sanggunian ng Mag-aaral (the Sanggu) of Ateneo during Martial Law.

Hindi man po masyadong halata, talagang mas ahead po talaga si Father Jett sa akin nang nag-aaral pa kami (ganoon ho talaga ‘pag kayo ang may tangan ng mike, puwede kayong mag-author’s license), at ilang beses ko din siyang nakasabay tuwing may mga aktibidad ang atin pong sanggunian ng mga mag-aaral. Naalala ko nga po nang may nag-imbita sa amin na maging—at ito nga ho, lumalabas ang edad namin—maging founding member ng League of Filipino Students. Batch po namin sa sanggunian iyan.

Noong kami po ay nagtatalo kung sasama o hindi dito, ang aming faculty adviser, si Ginang Tina Montiel, lahat ho kami, may agam-agam. Tama ba na papasailalim tayo sa kanilang tinatawag na Executive Committee kung saan, may diktadura na nga sa labas ng ating pamantasan, sasama pa kami sa isang organisasyon na didiktahan rin kami? Naalala ko pa ang aming pangulo noon, si Budge Orara, na kung saan natapos ang botohan ay biglang humalakhak, pagkatapos ng pagkaseryo-seryosong boto—dahil unanimous po ang aming desisyon na hindi tama sumama sa League of Filipino Students noong mga panahong iyon.

Hindi namin ganoong kakilala ang isa’t isa pero talaga naman pong hinubog kami ng Ateneo na talagang, kung tutuusin, iisa ang pananaw at talagang tama ang depinisyon at nagkakasundo sa kung paano ipapaliwanag kung ano ang mabuti, ano ang tama para sa ating mga kapwa mag-aaral.

these statements, while couched in banter and familiarity, is replete with layers of carelessness, almost as if it’s a private exchange among friends and not a public statement being made by the president of this country. so on the one hand, he was paying tribute to his alma mater in this speech; yet in the process of doing this as casually as possible, he creates the impression that Ateneo molds <students> who have the same views about the world, hold the correct definitions, are one in explaining what is right and what is just. fine, he was talking about his time in the Sanggu, but really? he just put into question Ateneo’s credibility as a liberal university, as an academic institution that holds critical thinking and discourse in high regard. i’d like to think — in fact i know — that PNoy’s statement is a disservice to all those Ateneo teachers who engage students in the task of asking the right questions, instead of creating a generation who don’t know to be critical.

that PNoy was talking about the Sanggu of his time’s unanimous decision not to join the committee that would form the League of Filipino Students (LFS) during Martial Law was this speech’s bigger more glaring mistake. again, in a tone that might be used for a dinner with friends, PNoy ended up not just putting into question LFS as an organization, but in fact, Ateneo itself and its refusal to get involved in nation at a time when this was what was required of the youth. and they refused because they had apparently been molded into thinking that to be part of LFS would be to fall into the hands of another kind dictatorship which, in the context of the Marcos dictatorship, was apparently unacceptable.

the parallelism of course is downright offensive: to have made such a sweeping statement about LFS and made it seem like it was equal to the Marcos regime it fought against, proves not just PNoy’s lack of a sense of history, but really his (and his people’s) carelessness, where this President falsely accused an organization that continues to exist of being a dictatorship. and then to add insult to injury, or just add to the carelessness, Edwin Lacierda says about the demand for an apology:

“No, the President will not issue an apology over a factual matter and for an organization that criticizes this administration incessantly, it should shed its onion-skin features,” Lacierda said in a text message to Sun.Star. “If it can dish out criticisms, [there is] no reason why it should not be able to take criticisms.”

no, Mr. Lacierda, you are wrong. what PNoy said about LFS was farthest from being factual, in fact it was an opinion, turned false accusation, couched as it was in an unjust parallelism. and when you carelessly articulate that LFS just has “onion-skinned features” <sic> and should be able to take criticism since they dish it, you also inadvertently point out how this was PNoy — this was the president of this nation — power tripping and taking a jab at an activist student organization that’s critical of him.

so anyone who criticizes the government is now fair game in PNoy speeches? how is that just, or fair? how is that respectable or responsible? or is it that what matters to this government is for PNoy to comfortably deliver speeches, never mind that there’s a tendency for him to seem like a loose cannon making careless insinuations and tactless assertions?

how very Kris Aquino of him.

there is no excuse — no excuse — for a President who not only presumes that 85% of this country are the same kind of Catholic; he also then thinks that this is a valid enough reason to gauge public anger. no excuse for a President who is as bad as Vic de Leon Lima. let me not begin with the fact that his own father died for democracy and freedom, the same things that this President has sacrificed here. and you are wrong, Ser Noy, this is not a question of whether or not freedom is absolute; it’s a question of you folding to the CBCP and Pinoy conservatives, who in this country have proven themselves as bad as the kukluxklan. this is about you — and everybody else who sacrificed critical thinking in this case — revealing whose got the balls. and it is apparently all them priests and conservatives who could only zero in on those penises, because that’s all that was in that exhibit as far as they were concerned.

except that there were these works:

Jose Tence Ruiz's CSI Chimoy Si Imbisibol

all of the exhibit Kulo is here.

early in the week, on one of those hectic mornings that I keep the TV on to Sapul sa 5 for company, I heard your plans for instituting public kindergarten as part of our educational system, and I could only tweet about it as violently as I could.

though of course in the midst of the violence in Egypt then (now turned into a version of people power eh?), and the fare hike, this was barely carried by the rest of the day’s news.

but I feel it needs to be said: it is stupid. and I say that with all due and possible respect to Bro. Armin Luistro. I imagine many others want to say it too, but will not for fear of the heavens. I have no such fear.

what I fear is that all the money that’s been allocated for education (wow, P207 BILLION PESOS!), something that the Dep Ed is so proud about, will go to nothing but a false sense of what ails the educational system. there are real problems of teaching teachers, changing the curriculum, improving learning attitudes in students, that the plan of the K-12 program fails to problematize.

given that, institutionalizing kindergarten is just unfair if not unjust, and ultimately heartless. just heartless.

it means a 13-year educational cycle yes? it means creating the need for extra classrooms, extra skills, extra money from teachers. and there is no point in saying that it will be free — because public education is free! — when anyone who’s talked to a parent who sends a child to public school will tell you that they spend, more than they can afford. and when that money runs out, when there’s no money other than for putting food on the table, education rightfully becomes a non-priority.

and here lies the problem with institutionalizing kindergarten for our poor: it begins the cycle of spending earlier, it creates a need that isn’t there at all.

because who truly goes to pre-school in this country other than the middle to upper classes? and they do because their families can afford it, because there is a pre-school industry that has burgeoned in the recent past. this is not to look down of pre-schools, but it is to say this: in many ways and many places (like Tiaong Quezon) it is nothing but a way of making money, preying on parents who are made to think their kids need it, that it is imperative to their growth and learning. these are the same spaces that have pre-school teachers with questionable capabilities, the ones who are un-learned in that particular area of expertise that is pre-school education.

In light of this, I want to know who Dep Ed imagines will be teaching public kindergarten. in the real and credible pre-schools, teachers studied to teach on this level, having gone through courses in child psychology and education, and are adept at handling children. what I can imagine is that Dep Ed’s getting existing teachers to teach additional classes for the younger students, forgetting that teaching pre-school is a very particular specialized skill. no one will get me to do it even with my years of teaching and my love for children.

it also seems like 10 steps back in pre-school education. instituting kindergarten in our public schools when it is being questioned, and when the notions of home schooling for the middle and upper classes is becoming more and more viable and logical: it keeps parents responsible for their children’s formative years, and if that means showing poor children how difficult life is in this third world context, then so be it.

meanwhile, Dep Ed’s overactive imagination allows them to piece two and two together –kindergarten and two more years to the education system — and see that it will fix our educational problems. that they even think this is the first step instead of curriculum revision, teacher seminars, wage hike for teachers, extra classrooms, better textbooks is beyond me. that they haven’t even called on volunteers from the industry to help out is proof of its refusal to change its policies, to revise it given other perspectives.

because really. tell me that i can teach in the public school closest to my house, and i will. tell me to teach teachers and i will come up with a plan. tell me to write a textbook and i will. on minimum pay, on practically volunteerism, and i will do it. as so many others will, i tell you. as so many others are willing to.

but you need to include us, you need to include the members of this nation, the ones who have taught for years, the ones who are willing to learn. Dep Ed has fantastic imagination as it is, but maybe what it lacks is creativity. along with some good sense about the educational system of decades past, what ails this, what will truly and really fix it.

creativity would also allow them to create a plan that isn’t about adding more years to the problematic 10 that’s already there, but about fundamentally changing from within, because they know what is wrong from within.

give us a plan Dep Ed, show us a plan that will allow us to help out, and feel like we’re part of the change this administration promises. additional years are stupid. even more so kindergarten. it’s a plan that’s doomed to fail. and one that no intelligent teacher will be for, will want to help out.

and pray tell, how will additional years mean fulfilling the goal of Education For All (EFA)? it will only mean more impoverished families giving up on education, because it takes longer to finish it now, which means it will cost more. and yes, this will only bring us to that vicious cycle of arguments about “but public education is free!” that only the naive would think to say.

EFA is the goal? well, at this point, EFAk naman Dep Ed.

yes, it’s as absurd as it sounds.

i now have visions of Mar Roxas as The Troubleshooter, a new superhero, who’s urgently needed for any and every trouble that needs to be fixed in Malacañang. not that there’s trouble now, but Mar will be gifted with those troubles soon.

because this is a gift for Mar, PNoy has said. yet, i do wonder if being labelled The Troubleshooter is a gift, much less an honorable position at all. my personal experience with the idea of troubleshooting is technology. a Windows user for most of my adult life until recently, any Windows problem, i found, had the troubleshoot-this-problem option. this process of course asks the most basic questions, you almost want to get offended. as with a printer that won’t work, it will ask: are you sure the cable’s attached? are you sure your printer ink cartridge is installed correctly? click on this to test. are you sure you clicked at all?

ok, ok. that last bit’s an exaggeration, but you get my drift. troubleshooting as a verb is to do some problem solving that, given its roots in technology, means looking at all possible reasons for a problem and eliminating them one by one until you get to the real cause (definitions are here and here). now this of course seems like a valid need of any presidency, to have a troubleshooter, i mean. but to call it this, versus, oh i don’t know Chief of Staff? just seems … juvenile.

of course it’s possible that this is really just a problem with — a failure in — rhetoric, but goodness, if they still don’t know the right words to say, and if they’re still not creating proper categories and labels for the offices and people they include in their Malacañang plantilla, we can only wonder what’s being said behind closed doors. language and communication must be first in a list of presidential image priorities: because really, all we’ve got to hold onto as citizens are words. words! we wish for a government that chooses its words well, especially to go with what it actually does well.

ah, but the already insecure government might say we are picking on them by picking on the petty, which ain’t true. in fact, it is because we take nation and government seriously that we can’t let things as small as this or as huge as foreign policy pass, that we don’t want to. nothing is too petty, especially in the age of double-checking with Google. not tourism logos, not the spelling of scientific names, not claiming to fame wrong animals as indigenous.

but here, to humor government and support Mar in his new superhero role as The Troubleshooter! these are the first things that come up when you actually Google the concept of troubleshooting, the troubleshooter, the troubleshot.

1: Relax. When faced with a problem, don’t panic. — such sound advice really, except that this government has proven itself too relaxed, i.e., as with the way it handled the bus tragedy last year. too steady for comfort they are, eh? and in which case maybe The Troubleshooter! will give them a sense of urgency.

2: Choose which problem you’re having among a list. Remember that this is only some of the thousands of possible problems. For more specific issues, contact Mr. Hope. — yes, naman. there are a thousand possible problems and specific issues for this government, Mr. Troubleshooter, and these are piling up from the petty to the fundamental. this is a long list seven months hence, you do need to enter your troubleshooter role with a whole lot of hope.

3: Standard troubleshooting step: Restart. — yes, let’s. hopefully the kind of restart that means all bad memory and viruses — including Kris food and mouth disease — will be erased. PLEASE?

4: If trouble persists, restart on Safe Mode. — ah, this The Troubleshooter! doesn’t have to even tell this government, we’ve been in safe mode for the past seven months eh? no big change without big dangerous decisions.

5: If problems persist, Delete Program then Reinstall. — yes, please. and delete all instances when the President’s love life was mentioned especially by his four witch-sisters who insist we all stop talking about it, delete all of Mai Mislang’s tweets, delete all of the Pilipina Kay Ganda campaign materials from the face of the Earth especially the smiley PNoy suggested be drawn on the coconut tree. please keep all programs that force us to reckon with our international image such as the Manila Bus Tragedy. only so we can open that program and click on Help.

6: If it’s a virus or worm, take out your Motherboard Manual. — ah, yes, the specter of Cory does live in this Presidency every day. that’s not just a manual that PNoy uses, sometimes it’s also what goes wrong. what of the motherboard that’s also the virus and worm? what of the President who knows not to decide against his mother? yes, we’re getting bored.

7. You can leave it running all the time, but you must restart periodically to fix minor glitches that arise after using it for long periods of time. — oh yes, minor glitches might be solved by some amount of restarting, but what of a government that doesn’t want to be running all the time? dear Mr. Troubleshooter, there must be a way to keep this glitches from happening, which might mean just Googling it.

now i know i might be expecting too much from him, about as much as i do from this government, but there has got to be no problem too small or too large for The Troubleshooter! right? after all this government has got its hands full with problems. who knows, maybe The Troubleshooter! will actually save the day.

the more important question might be: what color costume will he be wearing?

Katrina Stuart Santiago

Katrina Stuart Santiago

Tag Archives: PNoy

careless banter: PNoy’s speech problem

boiling over: Kulo

dear Dep Ed, on EFA and another additional year

coming in 2011: The (presidential) Troubleshooter!