Peter Answers
The other day, Isagani introduced his father to Peter Answers.com. The site seemed to be able to answer any question whatsoever the father thought to ask including the color of his shorts and whether or not he wore underwear under it. Of course, the father was astounded and deeply worried. How can a computer answer correctly any question he asked: the number of guitars in the room? Five. How many persons in the room? Five. Is there a God? We need to believe. etc.
Quite by coincidence Linya, Isagani’s younger sister, was using another computer all that same morning to learn magic tricks. She showed her father how to make a coin disappear from her elbow, how to levitate under a bed cover. She did well although clearly she required still a bit of practice, especially to realize: Magic tricks require a good grasp of the acting craft such as Gani demonstrated. It was only after being told that his father was set to write about it plus the request of a small bribe that Isagani decided to tell the secret behind Peter knowing all the answers the “mark” asked. The son explained it was not only the bribe. He was mostly afraid his father might publicly embarrass himself with his ignorance.
Indeed, the computer and the Web are putting a wide gap between the old and young, a gap probably wider than the “generation gap” we spoke of in the 60s and 70s. Today’s young occupy a world mostly inaccessible by their own parents. We would not understand everything even if we wanted to. And of course, this gap would have a great impact on how we all might view morality in this day and age.
The case of the senior high school “Theresian” students who were not allowed to join graduation ceremonies because of pictures they posted in Facebook is a case in point. Useful commentary over it will be difficult. For one, we would have to cross generations, practically worlds, to understand it to a meaningful extent. And we would have to keep away from condemnation from the very beginning. We are old people trying to understand how the young view good and evil. In the end, it might be enough if we can reassure ourselves they do see the world in a way that would equip them to make good moral judgements about it.
And we should not start by condemning the defiant, rebellious, texture of the photographs themselves. The rebellion of teeners is not an idea alien to us. Indeed, there would be some of us who would see it as a positive trait. In a peculiar way it is also an indicator of intelligence. And yet, the idea of posting one’s rebellion on the Web will always be tricky. And in this sense, society would have to put a ceiling for what expressions of rebellion are acceptable and what should deserve punishment. In the old days, the rule for personal rebellion was always: Rebel all you want but be ready to face the consequences with dignity. That is: Be ready to suffer for your rebellion. It is a rule that is still relevant even in this day and age.
But of course the other question is whether the school and the court who issued a Temprorary Restraining Order on the school behaved properly in the course of all these. Schools, most especially sectarian schools have a right to teach values in the way they see fit. This falls under the principle of academic freedom. Schools have to enjoy this within reasonable bounds if we expect them to do their job. The obligation to enforce rules is never an easy task. It is often a thankless one. But if schools are not allowed to teach values, what other human institution will do this for us? Certainly not the Philippine courts.
The court went beyond its moral domain when it issued the TRO. This is not to say that it does not have the right to do this. This is merely to say that it was not right to do this in this particular instance. The case did not call for it. And the best test for this assertion is a simple review of any court’s capacity to effectively teach values to the young. If the courts want to take this work away from schools, does it have the capacity to do this same work for us? And now that the school has defied its TRO will it now proceed with the sorry task of jailing the Theresian nuns?
And yet all these derive from the fact of a changing world. We cannot ever hope to see the world through the eyes of our young. But we do have the duty to express to them in no uncertain terms what this world looks like to us. We cannot really ever enforce our own morality on those younger than us but this does not mean we should not even try. We will have to. To teach this is the primordial work of schools. But it will ever be the nature of children to rebel. Between these two positions a viable compromise has always resulted in the course of history. What else can older people do but take all these in good humor the same way we might take any old computer magic trick. What answers might Peter Answers.com have given?
