Current location:	pshs
Current mood:	apathetic
Current music:	"hey, hey, I saved the world today" - annie lennox
Entry tags:	academe, africa, controversy, pisay, pshs, this is africa

THIS IS AFRICA, TOO
Europe is the past, Asia is the future, America is in the heart, but Africa is everywhere.

In films and novels set in the “Dark Continent”, when a character tries to make sense of the absurdities that occur around him, another character simply says, “This is Africa”. No further explanation is given. It may be an unfair statement, but even Nobel Prize winner Albert Camus’ novels and short stories suggest the same thing. Set mostly in the former French colony of Algeria, Camus’ stories suggest that his characters, mostly decent men or men who simply want to be left alone, are often victims of the continent’s long shadow. They try to run away from such situations or simply try to make things better but they end up in Catch 22s. No matter how idealistic, or simple, or cynical they may be, they are still astounded by the senselessness that touches their lives. They try to find logical explanations, but logic cannot be applied to a continent where rules are rewritten the moment they are made. Only one rule in Africa applies: those who can, can.

Whether the stories are set in the deserts of the north, the forests in the center, the diamond mines of the south, and the slums everywhere, the absurdities of Africa are far-reaching. No amount of international aid seems to have helped it. The newly-open category of the 4th World seems to accept only African countries. At the end, all you can do is shrug, walk away (if you still can), and sigh. Nothing is ever permanent. This, after all, is not Sparta. It is Africa.

Two weeks ago, I found myself in the midst of a war in my school. Oh it has been there all along. Only it tends to erupt the moment the year comes to a close. The details of this war, I can’t really divulge, due to rules concerning confidentiality (strange that I still stick to rules when the world around me seems to collapse), but I am certain that those reading this post will know what I am talking about – the issues, the people, the interests involved. All I can say is that a miscarriage of justice occurred, and in a singular moment of clarity, in a moment of righteous indignation, I rediscovered my idealism – a thing I last felt in January 20, 2001 – when I joined several hundred thousand more citizens in ousting a president who lost his mandate to rule.

Idealism is a tricky thing. It seems it was invented to make us realists. Yet realists are routinely bashed for not being idealistic enough. Idealism is like the ocean. It is vast, two-thirds of the earth’s surface and yet like the crashing of the waves against the beach, it doesn’t have a clear form – and anything formless immediately strikes fear into our hearts. We try to contain it; we try to limit its influence. Then, we ignore it until it simply becomes part of the scenery – nice to look at, but not really what we want for ourselves.

I’ve been in a school set-up since I was five years old. I will not be a hypocrite and claim that I have followed rules all my life. I have bended them mostly. I have broken a few minor ones. But everytime I did, I truly felt sorry and tried my best to compensate for my wrongdoings. It helped a lot that my alma mater, Ateneo de Zamboanga, was obsessed about rules. Believe it or not, I appreciated having rules around, because by knowing them, I knew what I can do, I knew what I cannot do. In short, reading the student handbook allowed me a lot more freedom than those who simply ignore the thing. Ignorance after all is not only blissful, it’s also not an excuse when you get caught doing something illegal.

Rules are an extension of ideals. They manage to put into practice something so abstract. Let’s say, for example, Integrity. Integrity is a large word, and cuts through many aspects of our lives. But when one enters the school set-up, we see the dos and don’ts that make up integrity. Don’t cheat, always tell the truth, you know the drill. The system in my school worked because the administration applied the rules and meted out appropriate punishment for offenders. Even first-time offenders.

In my school, you knew exactly what was coming to you. You could bring your lawyers, your priest, your congressman and none of them can do squat. You disrespected a teacher, you were sent to the quadrangle to stand there in the warm sun for an hour while everyone coming down for lunch or dismissal could see you. When you cheated, you got suspended, or if was grave enough, suspended some more. You destroyed the birthday chart of another section, you got suspended. You recruited members for your fraternity, you got expelled. You sing “hu-hu-hu” during the chorus of “Give Love on Christmas Day” during mass and you also got suspended for disrupting the peace. You drank alcohol in school, why you get suspended too. And say goodbye to your ambitions of graduating with honors. And when you complain, the administrators simply put the student handbook in front of you and made you read. Yes, everything was there, if you could find it.

Did I hate my alma mater? No, in fact, except for the lousy science curriculum we had, I loved my school. But its most important parting gift was a healthy respect for rules. Sure, they make our lives inconvenient, but they are also there to protect the rights of everyone else, including mine. And most of all, they protected the integrity of the school.

I’m just ending my fourth year in Pisay. And even during my first year, I knew that something was wrong with the best high school in the land. Actually, two things: TRANSPARENCY AND CONSISTENCY. Teachers are often asked to sit down in discipline and scholarship committees and they are supposed to implement the school’s rules in these discussions. But teachers only have recommendatory powers, what we suggest is not always final. But we do most of the legwork, we are with the students most of the time, and you think that our collective experiences would know how best to deal with situations. However, we often find our recommendations being overturned and we aren’t even told why. We simply have to accept these things. As some of the veteran teachers keep telling us, it has been this way ever since.

I really didn’t want to get myself involved. I guess that’s been my fault for the past three years I was here. As long as I wasn’t directly affected, I let it go. Very much like the persona in “I Sit and Look Out” and Mrs. Hutchinson in “The Lottery”, I would rather sit and look out. But two weeks ago, I think I reached my boiling point. When the school simply whimpered after it had been grievously wronged, after the school simply put a price tag on its integrity, I felt I could no longer stand by and watch. So I threw myself into the fray, appalled that such a miscarriage of justice could be allowed to pass. And I found out that I wasn’t alone. Many people felt the same way. I felt so alive then. I felt that together with my idealistic allies, we could finally put right many things which have been basically wrong.

I was wrong, of course.

Turns out, we were fighting a system which rewards both good work and bad behavior. Hell, it even rewards bad work, if you could believe that. And the bottom line? I really don’t know. Perhaps, in this empowered age, schools have become more timid regarding lawyers and their suits. Schools have made a devil’s bargain these days, not wanting to face the courts and instead taking the easy way out, even if they are right. Never mind if it means negating all the values that their teachers try to impart to the students. Never mind that by turning a blind eye, they are allowing “monsters” to graduate as the press declared during the height of the school’s poisoning case. Never mind that their teachers are being disrespected not only by their students but also by the parents of some students. Never mind if everyone in school loses his or her credibility. Never mind if the heart and soul and mind of a school are relegated to the sidelines and made to watch the body die of cancer. Those things are more convenient than facing a lawsuit.

That’s the defining thing in this age: Convenience.

Now, I am simply exhausted (with a toothache to boot). The idealism I rediscovered two weeks ago got clobbered by a system which traps even the smallest slivers of wisdom and turns cynics into nihilists. It got shackled by people who sit inside their own “terror” coffins at night, scare themselves silly, and then try to scare anyone else who would listen.

Some of my colleagues had already warned me of the outcome. Some simply sighed when the decisions were made known. (Take note, made known. They didn’t even hand the teachers who wrote two letters a written reply, as if we were beneath them.) Some teachers are dismayed and still want to protest. Others simply don’t care anymore. They seem to be sporting sad smiles which could be read as: “I told you so.”

Me? I was devastated, last Saturday. Now, I’m simply cold.

When a group of persons who meet only once a month gets to make decisions which have far-reaching consequences for many the rest of us and you don’t even get a reply from them why they decided that way, you would feel the same way too. Especially when those decisions were wrong.

In a blog entry, a colleague declared “Pisay, we need to talk.” I disagree. For how could you hold a dialogue when those in power do not listen to you? How could you call for change when parents have the nerve to tell you that you don’t have any power at all (and you actually don’t)? How could you face your students again knowing that the things that you tried so hard to inculcate in them, things like TRUTH, INTEGRITY, RESPECT, and DISCIPLINE are negotiable after all?

I need a long break from all of these issues. I need time away from Pisay. I need to assess my goals for the incoming school year. I need to sort out my feelings and see if I should still keep on fighting. I need to see if my idealism returns.

When idealism is that time between waking up and brushing your teeth, when teachers can get away with racist statements in the classroom simply because they’re permanent, when you get told that your opinions matter less just because you’re a member of the junior faculty, when you get bamboozled mainly because the number of years you have as a teacher is less than half of some of your colleagues, when students still graduate despite their grievous offenses and dismal academic records, when rules are simply guidelines one day and guidelines become rules the next day, when black and white are simply components of grey, when NORTURE rhymes with torture, when you’re more afraid of lawyers than producing “monsters”, when might becomes right, when injustice is synonymous with convenience, when rules are swept away like the Sahara redraws its territory at the end of the day, when the school you love and serve is simply a shadow of the country you live in when it could have been so much more, when nothing makes sense anymore but everything still makes sense, you can come up with one conclusion about your school: I’ve always thought I was in a different place, apparently, THIS IS AFRICA, TOO.