Reflections on Herrera's article: 'The Value of the UP Experience'

The value of the UP Experience

First published 6 June 2008
The Manila Standard Today
by Maya Baltazar Herrera

There are no children here

This week, I went to a meeting at the UP School of Economics and I came away with renewed belief in the value of the UP experience.

If you speak to anyone from UP – student, professor, alumnus - you will get no Latin slogans or apologies about how the school teaches values in spite of its outward materialism. This is not a student population that thinks about basketball games or memorizes school songs. This is not a school that chooses one statement to drill into the minds of its students.

This is not, of course, to say that UP does not care about values. It is that UP, in its own inimitable way, believes that values cannot be force-fed. The statue of the naked man that guards the entrance to the campus in Diliman best represents UP's approach to all education and the respect for students that is the center of its educational philosophy. All who come to this university, regardless of origin, bring themselves naked, carrying nothing but their thirst; like the proverbial empty teacup, making an offering of self, waiting to be filled.

Adults

For many students from private schools, the first lesson that is learned here is that this is a school for adult education. There are no children here, and that is why no parents are allowed either at freshman orientation or during enlistment.

The spirit of the oblation lies not in a mother or a father offering up hischild to the world, it is that of the newly adult, freely offering of his self.

I remember quite vividly that moment that drove home how different the UP education continues to be. It was my daughter's first semester in university and she had invited a group of her high school friends to our house. One of them asked a classmate whether she had gotten her parents permission form approved for that weekend's outreach activity. From the UP population around the table came the mock horrified responses of: "Permission? " and "Outreach?"

I thought about it and realized that all of these students were, in fact, legally adults. I thought it interesting that only the UP students appeared to appreciate this fact.

Even more interesting was the "outreach" comment. I think back to my own university years and the last three years that my daughter has been in UP and am certain there is no lack of civic activity. There are medical missions, house building projects, tree planting, community work and barrio work and so on. I realize now that the reaction was not to the activity as much as it was to the use of the word.

One of the most important differences of the UP campus from all the other campuses my children considered going to is that this campus has no walls. Many parents fear this. They are afraid their precious children will not be protected from the ills of society in a campus that is so open to the rest of the world.

But UP is open to the world in more ways than just not having the physical walls.

Community

Being in UP means much more than being a student. This campus is enmeshed in a community. This community is made up not only of the transient population of students who go home each night. It includes the many, many students who lay their heads on dorm pillows each night, enduring time away from families in the firm belief that this campus will bring them closer to their dreams. This community includes the families of faculty and employees who live on campus. It also includes the many people who work not for the University, but nevertheless work on campus. This community includes the lady who remembers the brand of cigarette you smoke and automatically hands it to you in the morning. It includes the gentleman who remembers you like pepper on your egg sandwich or the one who knows you will dip your fish balls into two of his sauces, who patiently waits for you to eat your three sticks before being paid. It includes the woman who saw all her children through college by selling peanuts every day on campus.

To a UP student, the daily heartbeat of the school is never far away from the realities of the country. The word outreach suggests that civic activity is something outside of the normal, something you do once in a while. It must be immensely difficult to think of community as a thing apart when your campus experience brings you face to face with all of the world's realities every day.

Character

All of this probably explains that unmistakable sense of self that you will find from students who come from this campus.

Here is a campus where all have the same opportunities to learn. But also, here is a campus that will give all the same opportunities to fail. There are no guidance counsellors who will chase after you because you have been skipping classes. The attitude this university takes is that you must take the initiative – for learning, for seeking help, for realizing you need help.

That is not to say that no help exists. But it is help that is not forced upon you.

This is a university rich in both introspection and conversation. On this campus, the student is constantly exposed to people – faculty, administrators, community members, other students – who care deeply and passionately about the world. The conversations are almost never purely cerebral. A single graph can provoke comments about government policy and its effects on people.

As a result, UP is home to a student population that looks at the world and cares. It is easy to see pictures of protesting students and dismiss it as radicalism. But there are few campuses in this country where students go beyond a passing curiosity about what is happening in the world beyond their own lives. There are even fewer universities where students not only care but also actually believe they have a responsibility to make a difference – not in some hazy future – today.

And that, I believe, is what truly forges character. Character is not molded by speeches or long classes in ethics or theology. Character grows from within. It begins by being handed the keys to your own self and being told you are in charge; you now have power over yourself and your own actions – and with that power, you take on responsibilities.

Each student in this university goes through his own unique voyage of discovery. On his voyage, as he decides what he cares about, what he will fight for and what he will sacrifice, he crafts his own personal values. That is what education is truly about.

~ ~ ~ ~

But is the educational system doing its job? I know I sound old-fashioned and overly conservative, but I really fear for the innocent freshman who steps inside UP with his values and morals not yet formed. It is a very dangerous place for someone who has a very weak moral grounding. One can too easily lose one's way.

I am a product of the UP, and while a part of me takes pride in what the author mentioned, the teacher in me wishes that there was more guidance available for UP students. I think the fault lies not in UP, but in our country's educational system as a whole. There is too much focus on nurturing the intellect, and not enough focus on imparting values.

Too often have I come across this kind of student whom C.S. Lewis describes in detail in his The Abolition of Man... those who proudly call themselves "intellectuals":

..."It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks them out. Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so."

I agree with C.S. Lewis when he said that "for every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments..."

   I think that what is lacking in our educational system as a whole is what Lewis calls the doctrine of objective value, "the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false.."

   I expressed my thoughts on this in an earlier post. Now that I am a teacher, I believe in this all the more. The most important thing we teachers can pass on to our students are the values and morals upon which the basis of humanity are founded upon.

   C.S. Lewis contrasted the Old and New styles of teaching. "Where the old initiated, the new merely 'conditions.'" He meant that where the old style of teaching involved the teacher passing on to his students the values and sentiments that he, the teacher himself, holds dear, the new style of teaching involves training the intellect, and teaching the student that anything pertaining to sentiment and emotions are unreasonable and contemptible. That kind of training can have dangerous and far reaching consequences.

   From what I have personally experienced during my stay in U.P., most of the professors belong to the new school of teaching. They would have us do away with traditional values altogether, and build up a set of our own.

   May there never come the day that Values Ed. will be eradicated from the school curriculum.