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On a brutal mid-October, with heat torturing most of
the Eastern Seaboard, Drew Faust Gilpin, a Civil War historian, took
over as president of Harvard, that country’s oldest and most
prestigious university. What the first woman president of Harvard
said in her inaugural address were things that were in direct
conflict to what we—and most developing countries—view as the
role of universities in this time and place.
She said it is
not for universities to focus on two things:
1. Make them
training grounds for a globally competitive work force, and
2. Quantify what
they teach to make sure that they turn out students that can in turn
burnish their own ROIs.
Utilitarian, they
should not be, said Gilpin, quoting W.E.B. DuBois, on carpenters and
men. And more.
“A university is
not about results in the next quarter. It is not even who a student
has become after graduation. It is about learning that holds a
lifetime, learning that transmits the heritage of a millennia,
learning that shapes the future.”
Gilpin’s
references are not definitely universal. They will strike an
obnoxious, irrelevant note in Philippine universities and higher
schools in most developing countries. What is she talking about?
That would be our dismissive response to such high-minded definition
of a university’s role in society.
As structured and
programmed, our universities and most tertiary schools in the
developing world are the antithesis of Gilpin’s views on what
universities should be and should do.
The “loftiest”
aims of our universities right now are the following:
1. Train nurses en
masse for the North American job market. The best go to North
America, the second and the third raters can go to Middle East
hospitals that can’t get enough of Filipino nurses.
2. Focus on language
skills and phonetics to serve the BPOs.
3. Train engineers
and scientists via a crash program. The best go to the North
American job market and Japan. The second and the third tiers go to
the UAE or the Singapore market.
4. Train top-notch
accountants and auditors who are being snapped up by a huge market
in the First World.
5. Train English and
SPED teachers. Again for a big market overseas.
Our Tesda-accredited
training centers train welders, refrigeration and air-con
technicians, baristas, waiters and workers for the service sector.
Our universities
simply cannot afford the folly of making students “human” and
“learned” which Gilpin defined as her mission at Harvard. They
cannot simply exist to impart learning that “ transmits the
heritage of a millennia.”
Is Gilpin joking?
Understanding the
aesthetical and political nuances of Juan Luna’s “Spolarium”
would not deliver food on the table. A correct dissection and
analysis of Elias and Crisostomo Ibara’s definition of love of
country would not even amount to generating fare for MRT and LRT
rides.
A scholarly paper on
the “damaged culture” left behind by 400 years of the Cross and
Sword and 50 years of Hollywood would not earn for the
writer-scholar point one per cent of the total grease money expected
under the botched ZTE.
Scholarship and
erudition would not endow a scholar with point 1 percent of what
Joey de Venecia has earned from operating companies not under his
name but are actually his.
Gilpin, when she
defined her goals for Harvard, entirely missed the point that there
are countries like the Philippines where universities are defined by
the post-graduation salaries of their students. The highly regarded
universities are those that turn out graduates with wealth and hefty
bank accounts, not the bull about “learning that shapes the
future.”
The pesos and cents
are what matters, not high ideals, and “learning that holds a
lifetime.”
In countries such as
the Philippines, Gilpin would not even qualify to teach at voc-tech
schools. She is a complete anachronism. If some school makes a
mistake of hiring her, she would be run out of the campus on the
first day of her tenure.
Who cares about
values and learning?
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