Creative Solutions to Philippine Education Problems

Fashionable these days is thinking outside the box, which is another way of describing creative thinking. Many people are surprised when I say that there are always more than two ways to look at anything. Most people are conditioned to accept two-value logic or thinking only in terms of dualisms (such as black or white, right or wrong, male or female, true or false).

Take the classic illustration of the difference between pessimism and optimism: the pessimist sees a glass as half-empty, the optimist as half-full. A creative person, however, knows that there are more than two ways to describe such a glass of water.

I can say, for example, that the glass is in the process of being completely full, because I am pouring water into it. I can say that the glass is in the process of being completely empty, because the glass is tilted towards my thirsty mouth. I can say that the glass only appears to be half-filled because light hits the glass in such a way that I squint and make a mistake calculating the amount of liquid. I can say that the glass only appears to have water in it because the water is actually painted on the glass itself; in reality, there may not be water inside the glass. I can say that the glass is really completely full of liquid, except that half the liquid is invisible because the glass is painted in such a way that half of it matches the color of the liquid. And so on.

I can even start looking at the glass from the points of view of various specialists. A physicist or an engineer will not be satisfied with the adjectives “half-full” and “half-empty,” but will want to weigh the water and the glass, calculate the volumes involved, and formulate an equation that will make the relationship between liquid and glass applicable to similar situations. A chemist will want to see if that is really H2O in that glass. A medical doctor will check if the water is potable. A painter will tilt the glass this way and that way until the light hits it in an especially beautiful way. A poet will barely see the glass and will focus only on the symbolic aspects of the water. And a child will just simply drink the water.

The point is that creative thinking offers solutions even to problems that seem absolutely hopeless or insoluble.

Let us take a practical application of creative thinking.

The Philippine public educational system always baffles the minds of non-creative educators, legislators, and government officials. Creative people look at our education problems and realize that they can be solved.

The figures are well-known. (I take my data from the excellent state-of-the-art paper entitled “Beating the Odds: A Nation Responding to the Crisis in Education” prepared recently by the Department of Education.)

For the year 2006, we need 10,549 new classrooms, 1.22 million additional seats, 67.03 million new textbooks, and 12,131 more teachers. In terms of pesos, that means another P11.30 billion added to the education budget. Because the government does not have P11B to spare, the problem appears impossible to solve. That is the pessimistic view.

The optimistic way of looking at the problem makes us feel better, and this is how the DepEd paper puts it: things could have been worse had DepEd not done what it has done. Without the initiatives started by Brother Andrew Gonzalez, FSC, and continued by Raul Roco, Edilberto de Jesus, Florencio Abad, and OIC Fe Hidalgo, we would need even more money.

DepEd estimates that for 2006, without its creative intervention, we would have needed 45,775 classrooms, 3.17M seats, 67.03M textbooks, and 20,517 teachers, with a total cost of P28.74B. That means that government programs have saved the Filipino people P17.44B.

DepEd mentions such interventions as the new curriculum, education service contracting, multi-shift classroom policy, library hubs, early childhood education, madrasah education, inclusive education, alternative learning system, school feeding, Every Child a Reader Program (ECARP), competency-based teacher assessment standards, computerization, Schools First, Brigada Eskwela, Sagip Eskwela, Adopt-a-School, Oplan Balik Eskwela, and the Basic Education Sector Reform Agenda (BESRA).

The DepEd paper cannot, because of space limitations, mention all the programs undertaken by the government since Gonzalez’s time (actually, much earlier, at least as far back as Lourdes Quisumbing’s stint, from my own memory). A glance at the voluminous reports submitted every month by various regional directors during Management Committee meetings would show how innovative teachers and administrators have been in solving our educational problems.

One way of looking at the P11B, then, is to say that we should be thankful it is only P11B and not P28B. There are even other ways of looking at the P11B.

The national government need not shell out the entire P11B. If families and businesses help out, that amount can be considerably reduced. Examples come readily to mind. Private foundations put in more than P1B last year into the public school system, in cold cash, school buildings, and books. (My own foundation, Books for Philippine Schools Foundation, facilitated the donation of more than P10 million in new books and millions more in used books to DepEd in 2005.) Parent and community associations contributed millions in terms of school grounds improvement and volunteer teaching. Local governments poured in a huge, undetermined amount of money into the public school system for salaries of teachers, as well as for classrooms and textbooks. (The Philippine Star, 22 December 2005)

Creative thinking offers a way out of despair over the monstrous problems facing public education today.

Take the matter of classrooms. The government estimates that we need at least 10,549 new classrooms in 2006, mostly for public elementary schools.

Non-creative persons, who think only within two-value logic, say things like these: Either we get new classrooms or we don’t. Either the number needed is 10,549 or it is not. Either we build new classrooms or our schoolchildren will not have classrooms to use.

The trouble with such non-creative thinking is that it is futile. There is no way we can build that number of classrooms, even if we had the money (which we definitely don’t) nor the political will (which we probably don’t).

Do simple arithmetic. Divide the number by the number of days in the year. Assume, for the sake of argument, that people will work 24 hours every day, even Sundays and holidays. Assume that it takes only 10 days to construct one classroom (just to make the computations easy). How many classrooms should we finish per day? How many per hour? Add now factors found in the real world, such as the time it takes to find land, buy or beg for it, arrange for all sorts of permits, do all the paperwork in order to get the cash, take materials to the sites (remember that classrooms are needed not mainly in developed areas but precisely in hard-to-reach places), and hours when people do not work (nights, holidays, weekends, and so on). How many classrooms can we actually finish per day? For the whole year?

In short, there is no way we can build 10,549 classrooms. Non-creative persons will just give up when faced by such impossibility. But creative thinkers know better.

The first thing to be creative about is the nature of the classroom itself. Why, in this age of cellphones, computers, and television, do we need to have classrooms at all? Obviously, because being with a flesh-and-blood teacher and interacting with flesh-and-blood classmates is good for children. That is undeniable, but we can be creative about the length of time children have to be inside a classroom.

We are so used to the chalk-and-blackboard or speak-and-listen type of teaching, that we find it difficult to understand that students need not go to a school campus in order to learn. We have enough educational theories and even practical experience to know that it is entirely possible for children living in the 21^st century to learn without being always inside a school building.

Already, in higher education, we have numerous examples of learning outside classrooms. The entire distance learning phenomenon (pioneered locally by De La Salle University and the UP Open University), the numerous experiments run by individual teachers in several schools (I taught an entire graduate course last term, for example, without ever meeting the students in a classroom), and the innovations done by DepEd in many schools (such as a fisheries high school I once visited where the students attended classes around fishponds) all point to the real possibility of minimizing the time students have to be inside classrooms.

What I am saying is that we do not need new classrooms at all, but need only to maximize the use of the ones we already have.

Take a look at a typical class. A lesson usually involves working with a textbook of some kind. Why does the student have to be in a classroom to read a textbook? Why can’t a textbook be written in such a way that the exercises in them can be done at home?

How much of class time is actually spent learning? There are so many things done within the classroom that simply waste time. For example, teachers check attendance, return papers, erase the blackboard, form lines, read aloud or write on the board what is already in the textbook, rearrange chairs for group work, and (in rare rich places) fiddle around with electric cords. Let us not even mention the parades, holiday preparations, and other non-essential activities public school children cannot seem to avoid.

Why not restrict classroom time to real learning time? That will cut down the time needed to be in school.

Let us assume that half of our actual classroom time now is useful for real learning. (This is a very generous estimate.) That means that students can spend the same number of hours a day in school, but need to come only half the number of school days. We immediately double the number of students that can use our existing classrooms.

If we factor in policies that DepEd is already implementing, such as multiple shifts and longer campus hours, we can see that there is no need for additional classrooms.

The problem of classrooms has disappeared. More precisely, we have shifted the problem from the building of classrooms to the rebuilding of the curriculum.

In order to maximize classroom time with minimal classrooms while still achieving the minimum learning competencies expected of students, we need to rethink our entire way of teaching.

We need, first of all, to start looking at home and community experiences as part of formal (not informal nor alternative) schooling. We need to get parents and community leaders to start becoming, in effect, teachers. DepEd’s Schools First program should then not be merely a way to raise funds for public schools. It should be a way to decrease the dependence of children on the school itself.

How do we do this? How do we reengineer classroom teaching? If you cannot list at least a dozen ways to make students learn outside the classroom, you are clearly not a creative thinker. (The Philippine Star, 29 December 2005)

The Department of Education estimates that we need 67.03 million new textbooks for 2006. Creative thinking may bring that number down.

First, DepEd must finally implement an order it issued several years ago to remove the silly practice of having several different textbooks being used for the same subject in the same classroom.

If you visit a typical public elementary or high school, you will almost surely find that the students use not one, but several textbooks per subject. The teacher cannot say something as simple as “Open your textbooks to page 10,” because page 10 will not necessarily refer to the same page in textbooks held by students.

This anomaly arose because of bureaucratic shortsightedness that has lasted for decades. Every year or so, the government orders the cheapest textbook available for a particular subject, say, Grade 3 English. One year, the government orders copies of an English textbook. The next bidding time, the government orders copies of another English textbook, because the price of this second textbook turns out to be less than that of the first one. The next time, the government orders copies of yet another English textbook, because this third and cheapest textbook may just have come recently into the market.

The books are distributed more or less evenly among Grade 3 classrooms. Of course, there are never enough textbooks for all students in all schools, so a typical classroom gets, say, five textbooks of the first English textbook. The next year or so, the same classroom gets five textbooks of the second one, and so on. Eventually, there are enough textbooks (say, 50) for the whole class, but these are not the same textbook, but different ones.

DepEd, realizing that this was not an ideal situation for learning, ordered that textbooks should be the same for each classroom. This could have easily been done. A school would have simply gathered all its textbooks into one big pile and redistributed them to each classroom – one title per classroom. Then, each teacher would have the same textbook as each student in a classroom. In the next classroom, of course, the textbook would be different, but everyone in that classroom would have the same title.

Once this order is fully implemented, there will be less need for additional textbooks. Why? Because it is not necessary, nor even desirable, that each student should have his or her own textbook.

We can find many arguments in educational theories against what is known as one-to-one textbook per student ratio. DepEd now uses a revised Basic Education Curriculum that is based on an interactive theory of learning, precisely the theory that argues most loudly against one-to-one.

If students are to learn interactively or cooperatively, they should not be isolated within the classroom. They should not be sitting by themselves, reading their own textbooks, and working at their own pace. They should be working with others, reading at a pace dictated not just by themselves but by their peers.

The best proof of this type of collaborative learning is the Japanese system, where the whole class waits until every single student learns, for example, how to solve a mathematics problem. Japanese students tutor their slowest classmates, in order that the class can move faster through the lesson. The consistent high scores of Japanese students in international mathematics tests prove that this system is much better than the American or our old Philippine system of each student learning by himself or herself.

If we do away with the superstition that there should be a one-to-one ratio of textbook per student, we can see immediately that we will need less than 67 million new textbooks this year. (The Philippine Star, 5 January 2006)

In the last century (the 20th, of course), textbooks were indispensable in classrooms. Rare was the teacher that came into a classroom without a textbook in hand and rarer was the teacher that never consulted a textbook. This was not always the case.

In most other fields of human endeavor, experts look at what they call Best Practices to see how things can be improved. If we look at the Best Practices of teaching across nations and over the centuries, we will come up with some insights that should be obvious.

The best teachers of all time are Jesus, Muhammad, Confucius, Buddha, Socrates, and other such outstanding individuals. Although some of these teachers wrote something to remember them by, none of them used a textbook when they taught their students.

The question is simple: if the best teachers of all time did not need textbooks, why do we use textbooks? The answer seems equally simple: we are not as good as these Great Teachers.

True, most teachers in the 21st century are not going to be founders of belief systems that will influence millions of people. It is also true, however, that teachers today need not influence millions of people; they need to influence only the few students that are in their classes. To be any good, teachers must learn from the best teachers of all time.

Being Christian, I am more familiar with the teaching style of Jesus than with that of the other great teachers. What can we learn from the way Jesus taught?

First of all, Jesus never carried a textbook around. He did refer constantly to what we now call the Old Testament, but he could quote from it at length from memory. Immediately, we see what great teachers in our own century should do, no matter what they are teaching: they should know their subject matter by heart.

I cannot stand literature teachers, for instance, that cannot recite poems from memory. I cannot imagine a doctor having to read a medical textbook every time some patient comes into the emergency room. I cannot trust a plumber that comes into our house, holding a wrench in one hand and a manual in the other. Although cooks do consult cookbooks, I do not think we will patronize a restaurant where we can see the chef constantly referring to a recipe book. We certainly will never ride a bus where the driver reads any kind of book while driving.

Experts are experts because they know what they know by heart. A teacher, even an elementary school teacher, is an expert. No teacher that is really good needs a textbook.

Secondly, Jesus always taught with the materials at hand. He would point at a fig tree, look up at sparrows, walk on water to prove a point, force his listeners to think by using parables rather than spoonfeeding them, focus on a few well-chosen lessons. He never pretended to know everything (even if, as most Christians believe, he knew everything because he was divine). He never lectured on blood chemistry, on computers, or even on the scientific names of the fishes in the market. He restricted himself to things his listeners knew.

There are so many things within and just outside any school in the country that can be used to teach students. Take a very simple exercise recommended for elementary school students – constructing a genealogy. Everybody has parents or at least guardians, whether they are dead or alive, living at home or elsewhere. Instead of looking up the words father, mother, aunt, uncle, and so on in a textbook, all a teacher has to do is to ask students the words they use to refer to the people in their homes or communities. Vocabulary enhancement need not involve dictionaries or textbooks; all a teacher needs is imagination. (Okay, not every teacher has imagination, but that is another issue involving training.)

When teachers teach elementary science, they need not write on the blackboard some equation that only graduate students can understand anyway. Take the concept of being nonbiodegradable. If you were a teacher, ask elementary school students outside urban centers whether they should plant plastic and they will laugh at you; they know what nonbiodegradability means. In an urban center, make them throw a piece of plastic on the floor, then ask them to imagine where that piece of plastic will eventually end up. If the principal permits, walk with the students to the place where the janitor (or more likely, you yourself) will take the piece of plastic for disposal. Let them follow the piece as far as they can, and they can imagine the rest of the journey of that little weapon of mass destruction. We do not need a textbook to teach what is crucial to the survival of the human race.

I have watched an elementary school teacher use a glass of water to teach the water cycle (“where does the water go if we pour it on the floor?”). I have watched a kindergarten teacher read a storybook (not a textbook) in class with such dramatic effect that her pupils jumped up at the end of the reading to ask questions that would floor a literary critic.

Once we start thinking of creative ways to teach without using textbooks, we can see that the lack of textbooks in our public elementary schools is exaggerated. We do not need textbooks for every subject, and in those learning areas where we need them, we do not need them every day. That means fewer, thinner, and cheaper textbooks. (The Philippine Star, 12 January 2006)

Biography sections of libraries and bookstores are full of stories about successful individuals who never owned books when they were children. Instead, they walked to public libraries and learned the wisdom of the ages through borrowed books. F. Sionil Jose and Bienvenido N. Santos – my two literary fathers – come immediately to mind.

I myself never had the money to buy books until I went to graduate school in the United States. Even in Maryland, however, I only got my own copies of books by pretending to examine them for my classes. Those were the days when publishers had not yet figured out that most examination copies never actually resulted in classroom adoptions and sales.

I built my own library of American books by going to every garage sale in the neighborhood, combing through the used books section of the university bookstore, and patronizing second-hand book stores every time I traveled out of Maryland. Those were the days when I could get a first edition of William Faulkner (the Modern Library one!) for a mere 25 cents in a flea market.

Before I went to America, I simply borrowed books from school libraries. My parents could afford only to pay my daily meals at U.P.; at that time, believe it or not, you could get a good meal for less than 30 centavos. (Well, it was some time ago!) I had to walk one kilometer to catch the bus (no point paying a jeepney driver for a walk that I needed for my health anyway). I even remember walking several times from Avenida Rizal to my home then near Santo Domingo Church in Quezon City, because I did not have enough money for the jeepney fare, Avenida being out of my parent-approved house-to-school route.

Avenida Rizal was crucial to my education. It was in the original National Book Store there that I read one or two books a day, standing up! This was long before Powerbooks and other bookstores realized that book lovers want to sit down while “browsing,” actually reading, their books. I would pretend to put back the book I was reading on the shelves when a sales attendant would come near, then pick up the book again to finish it.

Of course, when I grew up, just like Imelda Marcos who bought shoes galore to make up for her lack of shoes as a child, I bought books with a vengeance. I was able to collect several thousand volumes of books. I donated all the non-Philippine books to the De La Salle University Library. I can still say with pride, especially after the Thomas Jefferson Library American literature collection was dismantled, that my collection of American literature is the largest in the country.

I sold my Philippine books (more than six thousand volumes) for a token fee to the library of De La Salle University Dasmariñas. I originally wanted to sell the collection to a foreign buyer that would have paid me enough to last me my lifetime, but loyalty to the Brothers got the better of me.

The point of this autobiographical exercise is to point out that it is not necessary to own a book in order to learn from it. Why, then, I ask again, is it necessary for every single pupil in every single public elementary or high school to have his or her own textbook?

The arithmetic is simple: if the 50 pupils in a class (I take the number to make the arithmetic easy) each had a textbook, a school would spend 50 times the price of the textbook. If that same textbook had only, say, 10 copies in the school library, every student would have access to a copy at least once every 5 turns, a turn being defined as a chance for one student to take home one copy of the book.

If each student is given the chance to take home a copy once a week (which is 5 days or 5 turns), each student would be able to finish whatever exercises are in the textbook by the end of the week. All a teacher has to do is to schedule assignments properly, such that assignments are handed in only once a week, enough time for every student to have had a chance to take home a textbook.

In short, instead of buying 50 copies of a textbook, a school has to buy only 10. What a great way to save money for the government!

The key is to stop the practice of using a textbook inside the classroom. Textbooks should be sources of information or exercises for homework, not for seatwork. Once we realize that a teacher has a lot more to do inside a classroom than rehash information already printed in a textbook, we start looking at printed instructional materials as supplementary, rather than crucial aids to learning.

In this age of easy access to information through any corner internet café, there is no need for textbooks to include everything that is to know about any particular subject. All a textbook should really have are structured exercises aimed at helping a student learn more deeply what has already been taught inside the classroom.

There are two things I’m driving at, then: one is that teachers must start teaching without textbooks on hand inside the classroom, and the other is that schools must start having working libraries that efficiently allow students to take out textbooks (and other books, of course). (The Philippine Star, 19 January 2006)

Philippine PEN in Iloilo City

The Philippine Center of International PEN held its National Conference last Saturday at the University of San Agustin in Iloilo City on the theme, “Mapping Our Multilingual Literatures.” SM and the University of San Agustin were the major sponsors.

In his opening remarks, PEN Chair and National Artist Alejandro Roces stressed the need to remember our history, if we are going to move forward.

In his keynote speech, Carlos Palanca Hall of Famer and Metrobank Outstanding Educator Leoncio P. Deriada said it plainly and directly: “The greatest evil in the Philippine educational system is the use of English as the language of instruction in the classroom. The greatness of the Filipino is preserved in the various languages of the country.”

Calling the continued use of English as “cultural genocide,” he urged writers and teachers to master their own language before they master another’s. “We must teach in the language of the learner,” he urged. Incidentally, Deriada is the only writer in the Philippines (probably in the world) who has won major writing awards in four languages (one of which is English).

During the first literary session on “The S in Philippine Literatures: State of the Literary Art in the Center of the Philippines,” Erlinda Alburo of the University of San Carlos in Cebu City then reported on several projects (such as the compilation of a language corpus, writing workshops for farmers, and literary publications) done by various Cebuano writers’ organizations.

John Iremil Teodoro of the University of San Agustin deplored the continued dominance of judges illiterate in languages other than Tagalog or English choosing the National Artists. He cited the case of Magdalena Jalandoni, who was not declared a National Artist a few years ago only because the judges had not read her work. Teodoro pointed out that Jalandoni wrote 36 novels and Ramon Muzones wrote 61, while even National Artists in English have not written that many.

Regina Groyon of the University of Saint La Salle in Bacolod City acknowledged the influence on her life of Bienvenido Lumbera, who urged her to research on literature from her own region. She urged young writers to read the old writers in Hiligaynon, in order to heal the generational breach in our literary tradition.

A lively discussion followed, focusing on the role of writing workshops (virtual and real) in developing young writers in the various vernacular languages.

Summarizing the first session, Malou Leviste Jacob of De La Salle University Manila assured the audience that PEN would take steps to ensure that all literary languages will be given due recognition by national award-giving bodies.

In the second literary session on “Mainstreaming the Marginalized: Preserving, Promoting, and Developing Visayan Literatures,” Victor Sugbo of UP Tacloban urged DepEd and CHED to strengthen the study of local languages and literatures in the curriculum.

Melanie J. Padilla of UP Visayas reported on the extensive collections of the university of materials written in Hiligaynon, Kinaray-a, and Aklanon.

Isidoro Cruz of the University of San Agustin questioned the word literatures as perpetuating what it attempts to challenge. He instead proposed using the old term literature to refer to any and all works written in the country.

Merlie M. Alunan of UP Tacloban stressed the need to have more literary texts available to the general public, particularly to college students.

Joefe B. Santarita of UP Visayas pointed out that, even within Western Visayas, some literary texts are marginalized – thus forming a double bind. He found “Iloilo imperialism” as unacceptable as “Manila imperialism.” He mentioned various prolific writers (fisherfolk, farmers, or otherwise non-academic) not recognized by most scholars.

The lively discussion that followed focused on the need to decolonize our own minds.

Summing up the second literary session, Frank G. Rivera pointed out that, since West Visayan literary texts have many readers, the mainstream is really West Visayan and everybody else is “marginalized.”

In the third literary session on “Reaching In, Reaching Out: Translating Our Texts into the Languages of the Global Village,” Genevieve Asenjo of De La Salle University Manila related how, in the course of her traveling around the country, she discovered that Philippine languages are very similar to each other. She also recommended that foreign students be required to study at least one Philippine vernacular language.

Amorita C. Rabuco of the University of San Agustin related her difficulties and joys translating several poems, legends, and folktales from Hiligaynon into English.

Palanca Hall of Famer Elsa Martinez Coscolluela of the University of Saint La Salle pointed out that, based on her own experience, speaking a language is very different from writing in it. She herself, speaking in Spanish, Chinese, English, and Cebuano in her childhood, could only write in English and Filipino.

The discussion that followed was extremely lively, particularly because a student stood up to say that literature was boring.

Summing up the session, Marjorie Evasco quoted Jorge Luis Borges’ concept of a literary work as forever unfinished and described translation as a way a literary text moves from culture to culture.

In the year’s Jose Rizal Lecture, Agustin Misola (who writes in Hiligaynon, Spanish, and English) spoke of his encounters with Rizal, both the Rizal of matchboxes and the Rizal of the novels.

The conference was distinguished by its use of several languages. Speakers spoke in the language they knew best (Hiligaynon, Kinaray-a, Aklanon, Waray, Tagalog, Filipino, or English). Interestingly enough, everybody understood each other. That proves that differences in speaking disappear when confronted with commonalities in writing.

The next Philippine PEN conference (on Dec. 2, 2006) will be held in Vigan, Ilocos Sur. All writers are invited. It’s not too early to plan. (The Philippine Star, 8 December 2005)

Quality Assurance

The Randall Scandal (The Philippine Star, 3 March 2005)

Once upon a time, a false god rose in the British isles. His name was John Randall.

He started the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA), an accrediting body established in 1997 whose mission, according to its website, is “to safeguard the public interest in sound standards of higher education qualifications and to encourage continuous improvement in the management of the quality of higher education.” As the first teacher to raise the alarm against the Randall idolatry put it, however, “the QAA is part of the UK government’s bureaucracy for controlling education.”

Randall had a gospel that he tried to ram down the throats of all British academics. He had a very strange idea that he did not want to sell to the academics, probably because he knew deep inside him that intelligent people would never buy it. Instead, he wanted everyone merely to follow blindly what he said just because he said it. He did not want consultations. He did not want to listen to anyone; he wanted everyone to listen to him. To his disciples at QAA, he was an angel sent from above, a god walking among mere academic mortals.

He thought that government should control – not support nor encourage – higher education. He wanted government inspectors to enter university classrooms, to check on teachers and students, to look at textbooks. He wanted all universities to document every department meeting and every class session, to follow standardized curricula, to adopt only one method of teaching – that sort of thing. In a country that prides itself on its academic freedom, this was, of course, anathema. Randall knew that nobody would agree with him, but using his position to full advantage, he was able to fool some of the people some of the time, but not most.

Being bright, most of the British were not fooled by Randall’s bull-headedness. The Association of University Teachers (AUT), the academic trade union and professional association of almost fifty thousand British teachers, launched a revolt against the dictatorship of Randall. The revolt was led by the heads of Oxford and Cambridge, the top universities not just in the UK, but probably even in the world.

The revolt spread not just like wildfire, but like fish and chips (or in these days, like Big Macs). Before anyone knew it, Parliament got into the act. On Jan. 17, 2001, Randall was summoned by the Select Committee on Education and Employment of the House of Commons. At the investigation, he was confronted by comments such as this: “You are part of the problem. University teachers are so worried about the time and expense and disruption caused by the QAA that they have hardly got time to provide quality education for their first year students.” He was warned about the QAA becoming “the great prescriptor.” (You can read the minutes of the entire interrogation at parliament.co.uk.)

The problem was really quite simple. Randall was no god, and his ideas were far from divine. In fact, he was dead wrong on many, if not most, issues. When the teachers demanded that they be consulted on his ideas before he did anything, Randall decided to resign. Consultation was the last thing he wanted. He did not want anyone questioning his ideas, for the simple reason that he had no answers to any questions, except to say that he felt he was right.

Upon his resignation on Aug. 21, 2001, he said to the press: “The Agency is moving to a new phase of its development, with consultation on the way in which the framework we have built will be used in external reviews and by institutions themselves. It is an appropriate time for me to consider the future direction of my career. There are challenges and opportunities that I would like to pursue outside the Agency.”

Randall, nevertheless, was unrepentant to the end. His last public comment was to compare universities to meat factories (Daily Telegraph, Aug. 22, 2001). Clearly, his desire to control universities was based on a deep disrespect and even disdain for teachers and students.

The AUT immediately released a statement: “John Randall’s resignation marks the end of an era of overly-bureaucratic and prescriptive regulation in higher education. The last five years have seen a hugely unsuccessful and morale-sapping experiment in higher education. The QAA failed to deliver a sensible balance between bureaucracy and accountability. The development of overly-bureaucratic regulation has antagonised those who work in the sector but has plainly failed to deliver a quality assurance regime that has the confidence of staff, students and the wider public.”

For intelligent teachers, students, and parents in the UK, Randall was dead. The false god had been unmasked and ridiculed out of office.

What opportunities did Randall pursue after his disastrous career in the UK? Lo and behold, Randall resurrected in the Philippines and became, in the eyes of our own Commission on Higher Education (CHED), the white god of education. CHED recently ordered all Philippine schools to follow the gospel according to Randall. Heaven help us!

The Randall Proposal (The Philippine Star, 6 October 2005)

This is a long-delayed sequel to “The Randall Scandal.”

On June 18, 2004, John Randall submitted to the Commission on Higher Education a proposal entitled “Quality Assurance of Higher Education in the Philippines.” Although CHED’s Commissioners have assured me that they are not going to implement the proposal in full but will remove impractical and inapplicable components, Randall’s final report to CHED (and to ADB and the British Council, which brought him to the country) remains the key document being used today to compel universities to toe his line.

As in any other government or consultant’s report, there are good and bad points in Randall’s proposal.

The best point in the proposal is Randall’s insistence on an “outcomes-based” assessment of universities. The jargon may be confusing, but Randall’s point may be illustrated by an example he does not use. When teachers apply for employment in a university, they are usually asked what their degrees are, how many years they have been teaching, and what research they have undertaken. In Randall’s terms, these data would be “inputs.”

“There is an assumption,” says Randall, “that, if adequate resources are present, quality will be guaranteed. This, of course, is not true, as much will depend on the effectiveness with which resources are deployed.” In our example, degrees, years of teaching experience, and publications may be irrelevant to teachers that face, let us say, a class of basketball players accepted primarily on the basis of their height.

Randall points out that universities are also evaluated in terms of their “processes (particularly the processes of teaching and learning).” In our example, teachers are usually judged by what their syllabi contain, what teaching strategies they use, how they fare in student evaluations, how they look to other teachers that observe their classes. Randall argues that evaluating inputs and processes is an immature act.

“Mature evaluation systems,” he writes, “are based upon outcomes, and in particular the learning outcomes that it is intended that students should achieve.” In our example, teachers applying for employment should be asked what percentage of their former students passed board examinations or found jobs. I myself often provoke literature teachers by telling them that they are bad teachers if their students do not, after high school or college, go on their own to a bookstore or library to read a new novel. As that often-misquoted Biblical verse puts it, by their fruits you shall know them. (Of course, during the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was referring only to false prophets and not necessarily to everyone else; see Matthew 5:15-20.)

The problem occurs when Randall tries to apply the principle of outcomes-based assessment to the Philippine situation. Although he admits that “CHED, as the regulator of higher education, should be less prescriptive,” he actually ends up urging CHED to be more prescriptive. Randall submits, together with his general statements about the Philippine educational system, a very detailed “Operating Handbook” that is about as prescriptive as you can get. An example: “Formal meetings should always involve at least two members of the [visiting] team.”

In fact, it is not just the prescriptive portions, but the whole Randall proposal that is wrong, because it falls into the trap of self-contradiction. He starts off by saying, in effect, that Filipinos are doing the wrong thing when it comes to quality assessment. Then, when asked what we should be doing instead, he ends up saying that we should be doing exactly what we have been doing all along.

Since I belong to PAASCU, as well as to a CHED Technical Panel, I may be accused of bias when it comes to the Randall proposal. But I still have to find in his proposal anything that either PAASCU or CHED is not yet doing. In simpler terms, what Randall is saying is this: you are doing everything wrong, but everything you are doing is right.

In more intellectual terms, what Randall has done is to assume that he has a monopoly of wisdom. When asked what wisdom that is, he has done nothing else but to point to the wisdom that we already had decades before he arrived in the Philippines.

I am reminded of a similar argument I used to have with Americans not too long ago. They would tease me about always having a cellphone, saying that in the United States, since everybody had a landline at home and there was a pay phone everywhere you looked, Americans would never buy cellphones. Today, there are affluent homes in the United States without landlines and practically everybody there now has a cellphone. In short, we were (and still are) much more advanced than Americans when it comes to telecommunications. (If you don’t believe that we are more advanced than them, go to any cellphone shop in New York and see how primitive their units there are.) No American can teach us anything when it comes to cellphones.

Randall came into our country thinking that he knew better than we did about higher education. When he realized that we knew a lot more than he did, he had no choice but to recommend back to us everything that we had already been doing. In effect, he was a false prophet, and the fruit of his labor – his proposal – proves that that both the ADB and the British Council wasted their money on him.

Hello Again, Randall (The Philippine Star, 6 October 2005)

Once again, the Randall Scandal rears its ugly head.

First, a flashback. Since it was established in 1994, the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) has been quietly and effectively fulfilling its mandate to promote quality assurance among the 1,605 (as of latest count) higher education institutions (HEIs) in the country.

Soon after its establishment, CHED created regional Quality Assurance Teams (RQATs, called NQAT in NCR), which included volunteer experts in every discipline. These experts usually belonged to the CHED Technical Panels, which were the private sector’s contribution to the governance of higher education in the country. Among the projects of the Technical Panels was the selection of Centers of Excellence (COEs) and Centers of Development (CODs), which were then given funds by CHED to help develop teaching and research in the Philippines.

On Sept. 25, 2001, CHED granted autonomy to 30 private colleges and universities and deregulated status to 22 others. The criteria for selecting these HEIs were explicit: They were “established as Centers of Excellence or Centers of Development and or private higher education institutions with FAAP Level III Accredited programs; [they showed] outstanding overall performance of graduates in the licensure examinations under the Professional Regulation Commission; [and they had a] long tradition of integrity and untarnished reputation” (CMO 32, s. 2001).

The reference to accredited programs is important. The Philippines has a long tradition of accreditation, which is another name for quality assurance. Accreditation was first proposed by Congress in 1949, first implemented in 1951, and repeatedly endorsed in laws and memos relating to education (such as the Educational Development Decree of 1972, the Education Act of 1982, and CMO 1, s. 2005).

This commendable tradition of quality assurance or accreditation was radically disturbed when a certain John Randall came into the country and claimed that the Philippines had never heard of the term “quality assurance.” For some strange reason, CHED forgot that it had been using the term for years and agreed with Randall!

When I first wrote about what I called the Randall Scandal, I was asked by then CHED Chair Rolando de la Rosa, O.P., and then CHED Commissioner Cristina Padolina to meet with them. They told me that they were not taking Randall hook, line, and sinker, and that they would definitely take a second look at the so-called Quality Assurance Program that he had proposed. I wrote a second column giving fair time to the two commissioners.

Strange as it may seem, although I head the CHED Technical Panel on Humanities, Social Sciences, and Communication and am an ex-officio member of the CHED University Status team, I was not told that Randall had been resurrected in a memo entitled “Institutional Monitoring and Evaluation for Quality Assurance of All Higher Education Institutions in the Philippines,” shortened to IQuAME (CMO 15, s. 2005) and in a subsequent memo entitled “Evaluation of Higher Education Institutions Granted Autonomous and Deregulated Status in 2001” (CMO 18, s. 2005). Since I do not regard myself as someone that important in CHED, I kept quiet when I found out that autonomous and deregulated universities were beside themselves trying to figure out how to prove that they had quality when they had already been pronounced to have quality.

Last Aug. 3, 26 of the 30 autonomous and 17 of the 22 deregulated HEIs wrote a strong letter to the CHED Commissioners questioning CMO 18. Here are excerpts from the long letter:

“We join the many who have expressed reservations about IQuAME as given in CMO No. 15, s. 2005, and the consultancy work on quality assurance done for CHED by Dr. John Randall. We feel that Dr. Randall’s experience and background in the British educational system are very different from our Philippine educational system and situation. As everyone knows, eighty percent of tertiary education in our country is provided by the private sector without any government assistance. We join many who have questioned Dr. Randall’s basic contention that private voluntary accreditation in the Philippines today which is ‘program-based’ does not cover ‘institutional’ concerns and looks mainly on ‘inputs’ rather than ‘outcomes.’

“We feel that more time and consultation should have been spent validating Dr. Randall’s recommendations and the instrument to be used for IQuAME visits.

“We strongly feel that making use of a new and untested IQuAME instrument is not the best way to monitor and evaluate the HEIs granted special status.

“We feel that for the review of HEIs with these special status, CHED should use the same criteria [as in CMO 32, s. 2001].”

Guess what CHED did to respond to the letter? On Sept. 28, CHED called the heads of all the autonomous and deregulated HEIs to a meeting at Richville Hotel in Mandaluyong and, wonder of wonders, distributed to all the participants a “Primer on the Quality Assurance, Monitoring, and Evaluation of Higher Education Institutions,” with this explicit note at the end of it: “This primer is based on materials prepared by Dr. John Randall, Quality Assurance Consultant, CHED Organizational Development, Asian Development Bank (ADB) Philippines 2004.”

Why CHED is allowing itself to look silly when it already looked good is something only we Filipinos living in our self-destabilizing world can understand.

Quality Assurance and CHED (The Philippine Star, 3 November 2005)

What is the difference between quality assurance and accreditation?

Nothing, if we are to listen to the vast majority of accrediting associations around the world. Here are three examples:

The Council for Higher Education Accreditation of the United States, with more than sixty American national, regional, and specialized accrediting organizations as members, uses the two terms interchangeably.

The German Akkreditierungs-, Certifizierungs- und Qualitätssicherungs-Instituts (Accreditation, Certification and Quality Assurance Institute) does the same thing.

So does the Swiss L’Organe d’accréditation et d’assurance qualité des hautes écoles suisses (Center of Accreditation and Quality Assurance of the Swiss Universities).

Of course, a few countries make a distinction between the two.

The Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA), for example, looks at accreditation as something universities do themselves and to themselves; quality assurance is what an outside agency does.

By and large, however, universities and governments around the world treat the two terms as synonyms, whether what they are talking about is program accreditation (meaning that only certain programs, and not whole institutions, are accredited) or institutional accreditation (which means that a whole institution is accredited, even if its programs are not all on the same level of quality).

There are only two groups that still are in the dark about the two terms – students in Europe and our CHED commissioners.

The National Unions of Students in Europe (ESIB) bewailed in 2000 that “at the moment there is no common frame in which actors of higher education can discuss quality assurance and accreditation. There are quality assurance systems actually doing accreditation and the other way around. Furthermore the aims and methods of quality assurance and accreditation differ from country to country and there are obscurities in the terms being used.”

Behaving more like students than the professionals they are supposed to be, our CHED commissioners are equally confused.

In 1995, CHED recognized that Philippine accrediting associations were already doing quality assurance or accreditation, both institutional and program. It did this through CMO 31, s. 1995 (“Policies on Voluntary Accreditation in Aid of Quality and Excellence in Higher Education”), which used the terms accreditation and quality in the same breath. CHED at that time also recognized that voluntary accreditation included both programs and institutions. CHED used the term Institutions/Programs even for Level I or the starting level of accreditation.

CHED actually had no choice in 1995 but to recognize voluntary accreditation, which was first proposed by a Joint Congressional Committee in 1949. The first Philippine accrediting association was formed in 1951, and the first actual accreditations were conducted in 1957.

By the way, the initial delay was due to something very similar to what is happening to CHED today.

Francisco Dalupan and several other educators formed the Philippine Accrediting Association of Universities and Colleges (PAAUC) in 1951, preparing for voluntary accreditation done by private schools themselves, based on the objectives of each institution to be accredited. Then Education Secretary Manuel Carreon, however, following advice from a consultant named Pius Barth, wanted compulsory accreditation done by the government, based on so-called objective standards. It was only in 1957, when the Philippine Accrediting Association of Schools, Colleges, and Universities (PAASCU) started actual accreditation, that the impasse was broken. PAASCU’s efforts were officially recognized and endorsed by then Education Secretary Carlos P. Romulo in 1967. Since then, accreditation in the country has been private and voluntary.

Early this year, CHED issued CMO 1, s. 2005 (“Revised Policies and Guidelines on Voluntary Accreditation in Aid of Quality and Excellence in Higher Education”), which removed the word institutional from the different levels, but still recognized that quality assurance or accreditation itself was being done and should be done by the already existing accrediting associations.

CHED then famously imposed the so-called IQuAME, based on an expensive, but silly study by its consultant John Randall, in two infamous memos, “Institutional Monitoring and Evaluation for Quality Assurance of All Higher Education Institutions in the Philippines” (CMO 15, s. 2005) and “Evaluation of Higher Education Institutions Granted Autonomous and Deregulated Status in 2001” (CMO 18, s. 2005). Suddenly, despite having said that quality assurance, in the worldwide sense of program and institutional accreditation, existed in the Philippines, CHED said that there was a need for quality assurance!

How can the present CHED claim that schools should undergo quality assurance when many of them (though admittedly not all of them) have already been accredited and, especially in the case of autonomous and deregulated institutions, been recognized as having quality?

I have only two foreign words: ignorantia, as in “Ignorantia judicis est calamitas innocentis” (The ignorance of a judge is the misfortune of the innocent), and hubris, as in Oedipus and Macbeth. I could say that what we now have in CHED is pure tragedy, but if you know your Aristotle, there are no tragic figures in that otherwise rational government agency, just comic ones.

Textbooks for Miseducation

The way we read literature, as manifested in classroom textbooks, misrepresents the state of literature today, primarily because of the four horsepersons of apocalyptic hegemony, namely (instead of pestilence, war, famine, and death), race, class, gender, and language. Let us glance at already one of the most liberal of all world literature anthologies, then contrast its contents with what is really happening in the world of literature. I will restrict myself only to the literature of the second half of the last century, because that is the period in which I grew up.

Let us begin with that ridiculous 1997 Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, edited by Maynard Mack, which patronizingly accommodated only four so-called “non-mainstream” writers – two writing in English and one a biological female. In contrast, the 2003 Bedford Anthology of World Literature, edited by Paul Davis, Gary Harrison, David M. Johnson, Patricia Clark Smith, and John F. Crawford of the University of New Mexico, claims that it “represents important historical and contemporary debates about science, human rights, women’s rights, colonialism, and imperialism by including texts and writers not frequently anthologized.”

The writers “not frequently anthologized” include the biologically male Achebe, Chinweizu, Mnthali, P’Bitek, and Walcott among those writing in English, and among those not writing in English, Abé, Al-Hakim, Amichai, Bei, Celan, Césaire, Darwish, Fanon, Fuentes, Gao, García, Kawabata, Kundera, Mahfouz, Neruda, Oe, Paz, Ryuichi, Sachs, and Voznesensky. The biologically female writers writing in English include Cisneros, Danticat, Desai, Harjo, Head, Jen, Mukherjee, and Nye; those writing in languages other than English are Akhmatova, Rifaat, Szymborska, Takenishi, and Tuqan.

We can classify the authors in various ways: non-Anglo-Americans (38 out of 55, or 69%), biological females (17 out of 55, or 31%), and writers writing in languages other than English (27 out of 55, or 49%). As for class, I am sorry I have not figured out who belongs to the working class and, therefore, cannot compute the percentage of such writers in the list; it may be safely presumed that not too many of them earn their living in sweatshops or as migrant workers in sugar fields. The language figures may be further broken down: of the 55 writers considered representative of the second half of the 20^th century, there are 28 authors writing in English, 5 in Arabic, 5 in Japanese, 4 in Spanish, 3 in French, 2 in Chinese, 2 in German, 2 in Russian, 1 in Czech, 1 in Hebrew, 1 in Ocoli, and 1 in Polish. If we classify these languages into Asian and European, that makes 13 (24%) in Asian languages, 41 (75%) in European, and 1 (1%) in African.

Let us now see what the real world looks like in terms of languages.

The Ethnologue of the Summer Institute of Linguistics reports that 61% of the world’s population speak an Asian language as a first language; only 26% speak a European language (http://www.ethnologue.com/home.asp). The 2005 Encarta Encyclopedia puts it this way: “The 10 most widely spoken languages, with approximate numbers of native speakers, are as follows: Chinese, 1.2 billion; Arabic, 422 million; Hindi, 366 million; English, 341 million; Spanish, 322 to 358 million [the last figure would put it above English]; Bengali, 207 million; Portuguese, 176 million; Russian, 167 million; Japanese, 125 million; German, 100 million. If second-language speakers are included in these figures, English is the second most widely spoken language, with 508 million speakers” (http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761570647_4/Language.html). Since we are speaking about literature rather than business, we should be able to agree that most, though not obviously all, writers would rather write in their first than in their second language. We should also be able to agree that a language with more speakers is more likely to have more literary works than a language with less.

We can see, therefore, the disparity between what anthologists – and therefore teachers, students, and readers of literature – choose and what the real world offers. There should be a lot more than 2 Chinese authors in the list; most of the authors in any reading list of world literature, in fact, should be writing in Chinese. Arabic is represented by 5 authors; that may seem like a lot, but English is represented by 28! Surely, even if we allow for brilliant second-language writers, it cannot be the case that there are more English-language writers than Arabic writers. And what about Hindi? There is no author at all in the anthology that writes in Hindi, yet Hindi has a lot more native speakers than English.

Why is the disparity between actual language use and classroom literary language preference important? One reason is literary language itself. We all know that something is always lost in translation, but few of us realize how much is lost. Here is the translation by Stanley Kunitz of the poem about Goya by Voznesensky: “I am Goya / of the bare field, by the enemy’s beak gouged / till the craters of my eyes gape / I am grief / I am the tongue / of war, the embers of cities / on the snows of the year 1941 / I am hunger.” Not bad, but listen to some of the words in the Russian itself of Voznesensky: “Ya Goya ... nagoye ... ya gore ... ya golos ... goda ... ya golod ... ya gorlo ... goloi” (http://www.penrussia.org/n-z/an_voz.htm). The poetry, which is in the alliteration, is completely lost.

We all know about Chinese being not only a language that we can hear, but a language that we can and need to see. How can we possibly translate the sight, not to mention the sound or tones, of a Chinese poem into a non-tonal, non-visual language? It is the literature that is lost.

I have taken only one anthology as a purposive sample. I have cited only certain authors, those that have – most of them – won Nobel prizes and, therefore, may be said to have been universally acclaimed. We can do only so much in such a short time. I hope that, with the provocation I definitely intended, you will start to think of certain very strange things, such as: why is there no Australian author in the list? Nor an Indonesian, a Malaysian, a Singaporean, or any other one from the countries we represent here? Even if we grant that it would be more convenient to pick writers in English, how about our English-speaking writers from Hong Kong?

We have overused the H-word – hegemony – but that is really what this is all about. The conference which will take place in the next three days should discuss practical and concrete means to counter the hegemony of – we cannot even say exactly what. It may be late capitalism or Hollywood or the English language that Australian postcolonial critics love to deconstruct by putting the letter E in lower case, or it may simply be our own minds and imaginations, for so long silenced by the silent enemy, which is our undecolonized selves. Whatever it is, it must be faced – and faced down.

(Delivered at the Public Program in Trades Hall Bar, Melbourne, Australia, as part of Beyond Borders: Creative Strategies for Global Harmony, an event of the Asia and Pacific Writers Network, 6 November 2005)

Best Philippine Books of 2004

Here are some of the citations read during the awarding ceremonies of the National Book Awards on Sept. 4, 2005, at the Manila International Book Fair for the best books published in the Philippines in 2004. The citations were written by various members of the Manila Critics Circle.

The Manila Critics Circle cited Christine S. Bellen for her series of children’s books “that have brought to life for today’s young generation the classic tales of Severino Reyes.” The Anvil series includes Ang Alamat ng Lamok, Mga Kuwento ni Lola Basyang, Ang Mahiwagang Biyulin, Ang Parusa ng Duwende, Ang Plautin ni Periking, and Rosamistica.

The Circle cited the Philippine Deaf Resource Center and the Philippine Federation of the Deaf for their four-volume series Introduction to Filipino Sign Language that “offers the reading public an easy and systematic way into being literate in the language of the soundless but not voiceless, a language at once universal and Filipino, meaningful and empowering.”

The Circle cited Summit Books, for its books (such as Have Baby, Will Date; No Boyfriend since Birth; Tough Love; Wander Girl; and Mr. Write) which “promote the habit of reading among a previously unreached group of Filipino readers, in the process developing a kind of Philippine English that should be appreciated for its complexity, profundity, and truthfulness.”

The Circle cited Cantius J. Kobak, O.F.M., and Lucio Gutierrez, O.P., for their “masterful, meticulous, and almost miraculous edition, annotation, and translation” of Jesuit Ignacio Francisco Alcina’s Historia de las Islas e indios de Bisayas as History of the Bisayan People in the Philippine Islands: Evangelization and Culture at the Contact Period (two volumes published by UST Publishing House so far).

The Circle cited Rolando B. Tolentino for his series of cultural criticism (published by Anvil), Ang Bago, Bawal at Kasalukuyan; Si Darna, ang Mahal na Birhen ng Peñafrancia, at si Pepsi Paloma; Disaster, Droga at Skin Whitener; Kulturang Mall; Lalaking Pin-up, GRO, at Macho Dancer; and Paghahanap ng Virtual na Identidad, “which studies ordinary events and processes in our society from the point of view of extraordinary literary theory and social science.”

The Circle cited Centro Escolar University for its series of research-based coffee-table books (Filipino Cuisine, Beyond Rice, Bamboo, The Philippine Forest, and Philippine Markets), “well-conceived, well-written, and well-designed, offering readers unfamiliar views of familiar realities.”

The winner of the National Book Award for Best Book in Education – the two-volume Helping Our Children Do Well in School: 10 Successful Strategies from the Parents’ Best Practices Study of the Ateneo de Manila High School and A Companion Manual to Helping Our Children Do Well in School: 10 Successful Strategies from the Parents’ Best Practices Study of the Ateneo de Manila High School, by Queena N. Lee-Chua and Ma. Isabel Sison-Dionisio (Anvil Publishing) – was cited for “discovering, documenting, analyzing, and applying the strategies used by parents to ensure a bright future for their bright children and for making educational and psychological research accessible to parents not just inside Ateneo de Manila High School but in other schools as well.”

There were two winners for Best Book in Literary Criticism.

On the Subject of the Nation: Filipino Writings from the Margins, 1981 to 2004, by Caroline S. Hau (Ateneo de Manila University Press) was cited for “demonstrating dramatically how powerful literary criticism is in unlocking the mysteries not just of what can be read on paper but of what can be and is being lived in real life by the powerless, the ignored, and the othered.”

Cultural Fictions: Narratives on Philippine Popular Culture, Politics, and Literature, by Isidoro M. Cruz (University of San Agustin) was cited for “using the tools learned in literary theory classes to shed new light on real happenings in the real world outside campus, thus harnessing the powerful analytic tools of theory to help us make sense of the Philippine political, literary, and cultural landscape.”

There were two winners for Best Book of Short Fiction.

Cadena de Amor and Other Short Stories, by Wilfrido D. Nolledo (UST Publishing House) was cited for “collecting in one place the best short stories of a writer who did not so much defy fashion as define and fashion it, anticipating and transcending it, short stories as alive, even more alive now as when they were first fashioned.”

On Cursed Ground and Other Stories, by Vicente Garcia Groyon (UP Press) was cited as “a book for which the adjective overpowering is an understatement, because it is not just the protagonists that grow up in many of these stories, but also we readers, who participate in what is not so much lust as hunger, in what is not so much the search for soul mates as for the soul, in what is not so much a style of storytelling as a personal unravelling.”

The Juan C. Laya Prize for Best Novel in a Vernacular Language was won by Hunyango sa Bato, by Abdon M. Balde Jr. (UST Publishing House), cited as “a novel daring in style, topic, and characterization, a novel unafraid to challenge what were previously thought to be unbreakable rules of writing and language, a novel forcing the reader to remember past events that still mold the present, a chameleon-like novel showing only one true color.”

The Juan C. Laya Prize for Best Novel in a Foreign Language was shared by two novels.

People on Guerrero Street, by Leoncio P. Deriada (Seguiban Printers), was cited for “portraying life in a ‘small town’ transforming quietly into a big city, with every growing-up event magnified beyond reason and passion, where sex is mistaken for love and love for life, until death brings both protagonist and reader back to semi-urban life in an unreal city with real people in it.”

Women of Tammuz, by Azucena Grajo Uranza (Bookmark), was cited as a novel that “portrays in an extraordinary manner how ordinary people live normally during abnormal times and harnesses the resources of fiction to retrieve our past in order that we may live our present more fully, declared or undeclared war notwithstanding.”

The National Book Award for Best Book of Essays was shared by two books.

Looking for Jose Rizal in Madrid: Journeys, Latitudes, Perspectives, Destinations, by Gregorio C. Brillantes (UP Press), was cited “for giving us Escolastico, intrepid researcher and traveler writing across the continents, and for making nonfiction creative long before the term was invented; from Ateneo’s Heights to Philippines Free Press and Asia Philippines Leader, later to Midweek and Graphic, the world of Greg Brillantes is worlds of wry, journalistic fun.”

Between the Centuries, by Sylvia L. Mayuga (UP Press), was cited “for reinventing the essay as column piece and never giving up on Avenida, parlaying the favors of lovers and other strangers, from Banahaw to Sagada, deep in the heart of a visionary esoterica.”

The National Book Award for Best Book on Music was won by Pinoy Jazz Traditions, by Richie C. Quirino (Anvil Publishing), which was cited “for filling a dearth in local jazz journalism and research, and trading in the musician’s drumsticks for a writer’s instruments on the elusive downbeat, shuffling in a timeline of singers and musicians almost forgotten save for a stroll down this street called Pinoy Jazz Traditions.”

The National Book Award for Art Studies was won by Rice in the Seven Arts, edited by Paul Blanco Zafaralla (Asia Rice Foundation and Metrobank Foundation), which was cited this way: “For paying tribute to the national staple and its role in the national psyche, these studies of rice as artful manifestations warm the stomach and address different levels of hunger more than any rolling store could.”

The National Book Award for Best Book of Poetry was shared by two books.

Liyab sa Alaala, by Roberto T. Añonuevo (UST Publishing House) was cited for “collecting poems as blinding as dancing bamboo during a storm and as shiny as garden grass in sunlight, proving that the fire of poetry is alive, as the memory of his every line illuminates Philippine literature.”

A Feast of Origins, by Dinah Roma (UST Publishing House) was cited for being “a collection, by one of the brightest young poets gracing the literary scene today, of poems on love, the struggle with desolation and despondency, affinities and kinships familial and otherwise, beginnings, mortality, death – in varying shades, all finding their expression in images that swoop and soar in rhythms properly contained, such that reading her poetry makes one instantly connected and encountered.”

The National Book Award for Personal Anthology was won by In Ordinary Time: Poems, Parables, Poetics, 1973-2003, by Gemino H. Abad (UP Press), which was cited as “a selection of poems and parables all catering to the mind’s own ‘essential poetics of finding one’s path through language and making one’s own clearing there,’ grouped according to themes like Things, Words, Self, Love, Country, and God, all bearing that signature beyond forgery in a language bursting at the seams, explored along its infinite possibilities, writing about meaningfulness and not simply meaning, born of moments not only fully lived but also fully imagined – truly no ordinary book by no ordinary writer.”

The National Book Award for Best Book on Theology and Religion was won by Mga Aral sa Daan: Dulog at Paraang Kultural sa Kristolohiya, by Jose M. de Mesa (DLSU Press), cited this way: “The book globalizes the trend to translate the Bible into Filipino and to interpret it according to the needs of the Filipino nation by focusing on the cultural dimensions of Christology and Christianity, thus planting the seeds of reconciling the Bible with the Filipino values of grace, soul, and virtue.”

The National Book Award for Best Book of Plays was won by Oyayi: Sarswela ng Pamilyang Pinoy, by Frank G. Rivera, edited by Arthur P. Casanova, Felix P. Tapongot, and Louela B. Floresca (UST Publishing House), cited this way: “Only recently have the literary gems lying unremembered in the memory of Frank G. Rivera been published, the latest of which is this sarswela first presented in 1979 in Mindanao. Despite its age, the play still talks to the current contradictions in Philippine society and identity.”

The National Book Award for Best Book in the Social Sciences was won by Ginto: History Wrought in Gold, by Ramon N. Villegas (Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas), cited for being “a wonderful introduction to a great collection of the nation’s heritage in gold, representing diligent research that not only establishes a previously unknown history of the gold artifacts now housed in the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, but also introduces modern Filipinos to the ancient art of designing jewelry and other decorative articles in gold.”

The National Book Award for Cultural Criticism was won by Fantasy-Production: Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Consequences for the New World Order, by Neferti Xina M. Tadiar (Ateneo de Manila University Press), cited for “proceeding from a rather current concept that imagination is a culturally organized social practice, pursuing some areas of studies in the context of transformations in Philippine society in the twentieth century, using combined postcolonial and feminist perspectives in examining the products of dominant Philippine imaginations through contemporary Philippine phenomena, like overseas employment, prostitution, and people power, to underscore her reading of nationalist and capitalist undertakings that are shaping the Filipinos as a nation.”

Philippine National Book Awards

The Manila Critics Circle announced the winners of the 2004 National Book Awards at the Manila International Book Fair on Sept. 4, 2005.

The University of Santo Tomas Publishing House was named Publisher of the Year for the second year in a row.

Album: Islas Filipinas, 1663-1888, by Jose Maria A. Cariño and Sonia Pinto Ner, Ars Mundi, won the Alfonso T. Ongpin Prize for Best Book on Art or Architecture, with a cash prize of P10,000.

Hunyango sa Bato, by Abdon M. Balde Jr., UST Publishing House, won the Juan C. Laya Prize for Best Novel in a Vernacular Language, with a cash prize of P20,000.

People on Guerrero Street, by Leoncio P. Deriada, Seguiban Printers, and Women of Tammuz, by Azucena Grajo Uranza, Bookmark, shared the Juan C. Laya Prize for Best Novel in a Foreign Language, with a cash prize of P10,000 each.

Ginto: History Wrought in Gold, by Ramon N. Villegas, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, won in two categories: Best Book in Social Sciences and Best Book Design.

Citations for special achievement were given to Centro Escolar University, Christine S. Bellen, Lucio Gutierrez OP, Cantius J. Kobak OFM, the Philippine Deaf Resource Center, the Philippine Federation of the Deaf, Summit Books, and Rolando B. Tolentino.

The rest of the winners: What the Water Said: Alon Poems, University of San Agustin (Anthology); Rice in the Seven Arts, edited by Paul Blanco Zafaralla, Asia Rice Foundation and Metrobank Foundation (Art Studies); A Cofradia of Two: Oral History on the Family Life and Lay Religiosity of Juan D. Nepomuceno and Teresa G. Nepomuceno of Angeles, Pampanga, by Erlita P. Mendoza, Holy Angel University (Biography & Autobiography); Erick Slumbook: Paglalakbay Kasama Ang Anak Kong Autistic, by Fanny A. Garcia, Anvil (Biography & Autobiography); Driven: How to Make it in Philippine Business, by Class 1971, Asian Institute of Management (Business & Economics); Wealth Within Your Reach: Pera Mo, Palaguin Mo!, by Francisco J. Colayco, Colayco Foundation for Education (Business & Economics);

The Christmas Fireflies, by Girl Valencia, Papertree Publishing (Children’s Literature); The Greediest Rajahs and the Whitest Of Clouds, by Honoel Ibardolaza, Adarna Books (Children’s Literature); The Adobo Book: Traditional and Jazzed-Up Recipes, by Reynaldo Gamboa Alejandro and Nancy Reyes-Lumen, Anvil (Cookbooks & Food); Philippine Markets: Homage to the Hardworking Men and Women of the Market, by Karla P. Delgado, Centro Escolar University (Cookbooks & Food); Fantasy-Production: Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Consequences for the New World Order, by Neferti Xina M. Tadiar, Ateneo de Manila University Press (Cultural Criticism);

Pidgin Levitations, by Ricardo M. De Ungria, designed by Veni L. Ilowa and Ricardo M. de Ungria, UP Press (Design); Oyayi: Sarswela ng Pamilyang Pinoy, by Frank G. Rivera, UST Publishing House (Drama); Helping Our Children Do Well in School: 10 Successful Strategies from the Parents’ Best Practices Study of the Ateneo de Manila High School and A Companion Manual to Helping Our Children Do Well in School: 10 Successful Strategies from the Parents’ Best Practices Study of the Ateneo de Manila High School, by Queena N. Lee-Chua and Ma. Isabel Sison-Dionisio, Anvil (Education); Between the Centuries, by Sylvia L. Mayuga, UP Press (Essay); Looking for Jose Rizal in Madrid: Journeys, Latitudes, Perspectives, Destinations, by Gregorio C. Brillantes, UP Press (Essay); Japanese Pioneers in the Northern Philippine Highlands: A Centennial Tribute, 1903-2003, edited by Patricia Okuba Afable, Filipino-Japanese Foundation of Northern Luzon (History); The Law on Alternative Dispute Resolution: Private Justice in the Philippines, How to Resolve Legal Disputes Without a Courtroom Trial, by Jim V. Lopez, Rex Book Store (Law);

English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways To Learn Today’s Global Language, by Jose A. Carillo (Carlos O. Llorin Jr.), Manila Times Publishing (Linguistics); On the Subject of the Nation: Filipino Writings from the Margins, 1981 to 2004, by Caroline S. Hau, ADMU Press (Literary Criticism); Pinoy Jazz Traditions, by Richie C. Quirino, Anvil (Music); In Ordinary Time: Poems, Parables, Poetics, 1973-2003, by Gemino H. Abad, UP Press (Personal Anthology); Filipina: A Tribute to the Filipino Woman, Supply Oilfield Services (Photography); A Feast of Origins, by Dinah Roma, UST Publishing House (Poetry); Liyab sa Alaala, by Roberto T. Añonuevo, UST Publishing House (Poetry); Cultural Fictions: Narratives on Philippine Popular Culture, Politics, and Literature, by Isidoro M. Cruz, University of San Agustin (Literary Criticism);

Cadena de Amor and Other Short Stories, by Wilfrido D. Nolledo, UST Publishing House (Short Fiction); On Cursed Ground and Other Stories, by Vicente Garcia Groyon, UP Press (Short Fiction); Mga Aral sa Daan: Dulog at Paraang Kultural sa Kristolohiya, by Jose M. de Mesa, DLSU Press (Theology & Religion); Cuentos Filipinos, by Jose Montero y Vidal, translated by Renan S. Prado, Evelyn C. Soriano, Heide V. Aquino, and Shirley R. Torres, Ateneo de Manila University Press (Translation); Ilocos Norte: A Travel Guidebook, Gameng Foundation (Travel).

It was also announced that critic Soledad S. Reyes of Ateneo de Manila University will join the Manila Critics Circle next year.

The members of the Manila Critics Circle are National Artist Virgilio S. Almario, Juaniyo Arcellana, Cirilo F. Bautista, Miguel A. Bernad SJ, Isagani R. Cruz, Ruel de Vera, Ophelia Alcantara Dimalanta, Resil B. Mojares, Danton Remoto, and Alfred A. Yuson.

The awards were sponsored by the National Book Development Board, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, and Primetrade Asia.