Empowering teachers

I love teaching.

I have worked in a nongovernment organization, ad agencies and the print media, but it was in teaching at the university that I decided to stick around. I’ve had more tempting offers in companies here and abroad, but I refused them all for the love of teaching. For the love of my alma mater that is the University of San Carlos.

I knew at the start that an academic profession would not give me a bulky wallet. My wife complains that my salary barely pays the bills. Luckily, I am able to make ends meet with freelance projects, occasional sale of my work, art commissions and, of course, writing for this newspaper.

Still, I got stuck thinking that elsewhere, work could be much more stressful and office politics could be worse. A career in government or the corporate world may not guarantee the same opportunity for intellectual growth, ample time for reading or studio work and the joy of being able to be constantly in touch with young minds.

I’m also proud of being part of a community of minds that is the college faculty, some of whom I have long admired, like the eminent writer Resil Mojares who eventually became a colleague in the USC heritage studies program. As students, we emulated Dr. Mojares as a true “public intellectual” (I’m sure he would cringe at the term) and were inspired to pursue the academic life—one devoted to learning, teaching and writing—as the good life.

But it wasn’t always that easy. Conditions in the campus do not always cultivate a life of learning. Often protocols get in the way of creative pedagogy. About a century ago, John Henry Cardinal Newman argued for liberal education in the Catholic university, but today some people still think that such liberal education is just too liberal.

If they had been professors in USC, I doubt if Socrates and Rabindranath Tagore would be able to gather their students for a lazy round of dialectics under a tree or take them for a walk in the little forests in the campus.

The checker who found their assigned classroom empty would mark them absent, and they would not be paid for the day. The guards would find it strange that a teacher was bringing students to the forest, which is now officially “off limits” to students.

Subjected to a strict uniform and grooming policy, students are still treated like kids and teachers are expected to watch over them as “second parents.” Field classes and trips are now officially discouraged for security reasons. So gone are the days when biology professors would spend weeks camping in some forest in Palawan studying endangered species or art teachers taking their students to a hike for outdoor painting.

Even members of the USC Mountaineers, which used to train firefighters and rescue workers in rappelling, complain that they could not organize expeditions anymore as a registered student organization.

Of course, the teacher may insist if he is willing to do the all the paperwork and take responsibility for whatever untoward incident that may happen during the trip, even if it’s just a short visit to a gallery in the mall or a lecture in some place downtown.

But there are more serious problems that are causing some of the best minds in the faculty to leave USC for other schools or the corporate world here and abroad. Many of them are the young and still-idealistic teachers easily frustrated by the low salary (particularly the lack of summer pay), power play in their departments, the lack of meritocracy in the system of ranking, unreliable campus security (I myself had been a victim of theft) and how the university bureaucracy is increasingly becoming like that of government.

Frustrated by years of neglect and false hopes given by the administration to legitimate grievance on these issues, some members of the faculty have initiated the creation of the College Faculty Independent Union to exercise their right to demand a more binding collective bargaining agreement.

It was clear from the start that most members want the CFIU to remain independent so there is no basis to the fear that it might eventually be affiliated with the more radical national trade unions. During the first meeting, I  expressed the same fear and promised to withdraw membership upon first hint of infiltration.

Still, the goal of empowerment is much bigger than the sum of all these fears and is reason for teachers in USC to unite and celebrate more than sulk and whine. So I urge my fellow faculty members to go out and vote for the certification election for the union on the 16th of February.

Let’s cherish and protect the good life that is teaching.