Before reading this essay, I highly recommend that you read the other essays in this section, particularly, the ROTC essay and my study on the Ateneo core curriculum, both of which are referred to. Well, I don’t refer to what each essay talks about in particular, but then if you want me to expound on those particular topics, why I think of them in that particular manner for example, you can take a look at those works. Also, this essay was written after reading Max Rafferty, who was assigned reading. He has this short work called, “The Purpose of Education”. I thought that it was going to be one of those icky things like, learning and stuff, but it was really good. I think you don’t have to read that work to enjoy (!) this essay because I gave a short summary of his work here.
The only thing I can say as a follow up to this essay I wrote 2 years ago, is I think that I still believe in every single word I have said here.
A discussion on education will bring up questions for which nobody seems to have a real answer to. The question, “Why am I in school?”, for instance, cannot be simply answered by, “To be a lawyer.” But then I do remember a statement that one of my teachers made regarding education. In our discussion, she claimed that all of us entered the Ateneo for the power that goes with an Ateneo degree. “An Ateneo degree,” she said, “will make the Mediterranean part for you. You will be that powerful after obtaining your degree.” She cited the example of last year’s Valedictorian, who now studies in England with a full scholarship, his future, already stable and secured. I found what she said particularly disturbing. Certainly I am not against to a secure and stable future. But I am vehemently against this particular notion that people like me study only to secure our futures. Getting a good job will indeed help me to support my family after they have helped me and it will also enable me to raise my own family. But I think that there has to be something beyond this getting an education to go through life in the most stable manner possible. Whatever happened our childhood dream of becoming a superhero to destroy evil? And whatever happened to being the best one can be, instead of simply getting a good job?
The ordinary day wasn’t so ordinary anymore. I found myself thinking: Why am I in this institution obtaining an education? Surely, Ateneo will not imbue me with the power of flight and super strength to become a superhero. And I cannot claim to be so selfless that I did not come to Ateneo to get a good job in the future. So the question remains on what I really want to achieve by committing myself to four years of agonizing work. How exactly did I come to enter Ateneo?
I remembered that it was October of 1995 when I took the Ateneo College Entrance Test. I did not think much of it because I knew that if I failed to get into the Ateneo, I was sure to get into DLSU. But then five months later, my hands would be shaking as I opened my letter from the Ateneo. When I saw the word “congratulations” in the first line of the first paragraph, I did not bother to go through the letter anymore. I was accepted to the Ateneo! I was accepted into the premier educational institution of the Philippines! It was only much later when I saw my course, B. S. Management, Major in Legal Management, that I began to have second thoughts about my earlier bliss.
I asked myself, “Did I really want to go to college to take a pre-law course and then go to law school?” There were a lot of things that I wanted to do then. I love the rush of liquid electricity through my body whenever I perform for an audience. I love the increased levels of epinephrine that I get whenever I come up with a particularly brilliant idea when I write. But beyond these two pursuits, there were things that I knew I just had to do before I regret not doing them as an octogenarian. I want to strip the world of all its false pretensions and know if it is truly inherently good as Confucius says it is. I want to know how I was doing as a person so far compared to others of my age. And I want to know what I could do to help our nation. Like Tom Cruise in “A Few Good Men”, I wanted to scream to the world: “I want the truth!” even when it shouts back, saying : “You can’t handle the truth!” Yes, I want a job and I want stability and I want a family and I want to be able to take care of my parents. But beyond all of these, I wanted to make a difference. In getting a college education, I was hoping to fulfill all these aspirations of mine. If I was going to do it as a lawyer so be it.
Max Rafferty is even more ambitious than I am. He sets down his terms on what the purposes of education are, for him. Our opinions are similar in some aspects. I want to know the world, and not how other people say it is. He wants to pursue the truth. I want to measure up to the rest of humanity. But he does not only want each person to measure up. He wants to help each individual to realize his own potential. Lastly, I want to know how I could help our country. Rafferty aims not only to help the country, but he aims to ensure its survival. After this contrast, I can see that Rafferty’s views are not totally congruent with my own views. For all my lofty dreams, I am to find someone who dreams even more highly than me. As an educator, Rafferty would indeed aim for much more. Educators, teachers, and professors, have the daunting mission and task of shaping today’s youth into tomorrow’s leaders. And of course, they would want these leaders to possess the knowledge of the cultural heritage of the race. They would want to teach these leaders organized, disciplined, and systematic subject matter. And educators certainly won’t be content with each student measuring up with each other. They would want their students to be the ultimate best. Having realized this, I go on with my questioning, seeming to have failed to measure up to this man’s noble and altruistic ideals. So I looked within the Blue and to see if the Eagle, that is Ateneo, is in fact soaring, and not lying prostate on the ground, after having been shot down by the times.
The first sentence of the vision of the Ateneo encapsulates what the Ateneo hopes it will achieve through the four years of college. It says that, “The Ateneo de Manila envisions forming leaders in the areas of character, knowledge and skills...committed to the longer-term goals of community and sustainability for the country.” The mission of the Ateneo specifies just how the school aims to achieve this. The Ateneo, like Rafferty, also wants to pursue the truth and hand down the cultural heritage of the race. The Ateneo seeks to form persons who will devote their lives to the service of their fellowmen, in effect, capturing the essence of Rafferty’s purposes. What more, the Ateneo seeks to accomplish these in conjunction with Christian faith and Jesuit value formation. So with a Core Curriculum incorporating Theology and Philosophy together with the traditional Humanities and Sciences subjects, the Ateneo seeks to accomplish this mission.
To a freshman in the Ateneo, the thought of having theology and philosophy seems like a treasure box opening and revealing itself. To use more common terms, Theo and Philo courses sound cool! But when one is a sophomore struggling through theology and political science, while wondering how philosophy will be in junior year, all of them seem pointless. Yes, I will be able to put down on paper why the Bible is a faith account of God’s work and not a historical account. Yes, I will be able to detect the political and subversive undertones hidden in the nursery rhyme “Leron Leron Sinta”. And yes, I will be able to execute parade and review march to the beat of a drum. But then, Theology, Filipino and most importantly, Citizen’s Military Training, seem to have nothing to do with the "pursuit of the truth". Am I to find out once again that the reason why I am getting an education does not measure up?
A superficial understanding of the education that Ateneo provides will indeed bring about these conclusions. But thinking more critically, Ateneo’s curriculum is justifiable in its diversity and its high standard. Everyone simply has to have faith and to believe in a God, in whatever form that we perceive him to be. And everyone needs the same set of basic skills. Because we need to be able to able to express ourselves clearly (eloquentia), to think intellectually (sapientia), and to celebrate human achievement’s finest (humanita), before we can we aim for the "greater good". And only by figuratively breaking ourselves, can we make ourselves stronger. Ateneo does not break us. But it gives us the opportunity to do so. When we push ourselves beyond our limits, we break ourselves so that whatever is good inside us can be realized. So that when we leave our world, we would have left it a little better than when we first found it.
This school certainly has its faults. Its administrative board debates on the school’s cheering squad while it has more pressing matters to attend like the school’s drinking water which recently failed potability tests. It conducts its Citizen’s Army Training in a manner that I find totally reprehensible. But then the school’s own perfection is not the issue here at all. This school helps me obtain what I need to be a good citizen of the world. This institution will be the instrument through which I will know the world more clearly. It is also here that I will be able to measure up to others. And it is also here where I will learn about my country so that I will be able to help it. The school helps me do all of these by making me look at the world in aspects of faith, knowledge, culture, and common sense. So that when I become a leader, as the vision of the Ateneo states, I not be controlled by dictatorial tendencies. But I will be one who is leads with character, knowledge, and skill.
Seen in this light, even my goals are not dwarfed by Rafferty’s purposes. Because Rafferty does not require that those who pursue education have purposes similar to his. Instead, he states only those things that education wishes to instill upon each person. How each person uses his education is really their own decision. But how is he assured that all the educated men will pursue the good? He is assured of this because education, “...cannot but ennoble those who spend their lives in such a quest.”
My own purposes in education subsists within the purposes defined by Rafferty and the school. These people represent established thinkers who have partially if not entirely, achieved more than what I can hope of achieving. And yet in what they teach, they continually challenge me to go beyond what it is that they have achieved. Because education isn’t just about obtaining what is good in life. Education is about being able to give back to others after having obtained something for yourself. Only by seeing education in this manner can one truly claim to be getting an education. I guess my teacher was right after all. The Ateneo education, which reflects Rafferty’s purposes of education, will indeed make the Mediterranean part for me. Because a good education makes one so powerful that it does seem that the seas will part for him.
A man who has gone through education is no longer merely a man. He is a man who knows more so he can give more to his world. He has the power to make a difference in the lives of others. And such a man is indeed a great man.