Like real angels

The other day, I bumped into a former student, now a high school Filipino teacher.

She liked the earnestness of her students, she said, but the curriculum upset her. The students no longer had to read the entire text of “Noli Me Tangere” and “El Filibusterismo,” Jose Rizal’s novels. They simply had to read and be tested on the summaries.

I was astonished, to say the least. While the books were difficult to get through, the class discussions we had in high school were helpful. We broke apart lines of dialogue to look at the symbols Rizal had deliberately (sneakily) placed. We analyzed scenes to uncover critiques of the government, the school system, the culture of Filipinos. We linked scenes to Rizal’s experiences as a dissident in exile, an intellectual at odds with the revolutionaries of that time.

“They said they didn’t want to make it hard for students,” my former student said, in the vernacular, rolling her eyes.

Her exact words sound more pathetic: “Ayaw kasi nila pahirapan ang mga bata.”

Indeed, ‘tis the season of bearing the repercussions of this mentality.

Though I’m shielded from the burden of teaching for a year, I still hear my colleagues talk about their travails with over-coddled, over-babied students who expect to be given a free pass for everything.

Just this week, a student, confronted with a possible failing grade, pleaded to be allowed to submit their long overdue class requirements—despite never having attended classes, worked with groupmates, or contributed to class discussions. Another student asked for makeup work to “pull up their grade” on the night that grades were due. Yet another student asked why they had gotten “only a B+” when they “deserved an A for effort.”

We’re lucky that we deal only with students in the department. Other departments have to deal with parents. Yes, we know the parents pay for tuition, but this does not give them the license to demand looser rules, a change in a professor’s class schedule, or even a change in the grades of their old-enough-to-vote children.

We would understand if parents explained their child’s condition (but diagnosed and with documentation), especially if the condition can get in the way of class performance and participation. But when parents arrive to complain and demand changes for irresponsible students, it feels as though they were putting the school in charge of what should have been laid in foundation years before.

Why is my child not praying? Are you sure you’re teaching them good theology? Sorry parents, but that’s catechism. Also: kids pray if they see you praying and living good, righteous lives at the same time.

Why aren’t my kids reading? Sorry parents, but they should have been trained better at home and in basic education. Also: kids read only if they see you reading. Reading is an acquired skill in childhood; reading regularly into adulthood is a learned behavior.

Are you going to make sure that my child gets a job? Sorry, parents, but that’s up to your child.

College is a place to sharpen skills—skills that should have been formed, nourished, and practiced both at home and in basic education. There is no single-day solution to problems that have been created for years. There is no single-session solution to problems that were created all because we shielded our students from making an effort on their own.

Keeping students free from difficulty is perpetuating mediocrity in the disguise of care.

Most students will groan, “Why do you want to give us the hard time that you went through?”

This response reduces our experience to a mere stepping stone, to which we pay neither attention nor reflection. Such a response also betrays a gross misunderstanding of the nature of reading, work, and effort. These are not mere tasks to tick off a list; they are experiences to learn from, where learning is neither immediate nor straightforward.

This, too, reminds me of the end of Fr. Adolfo Dacanay’s homily in Ateneo’s Immaculate Conception Mass. He talked about the Angel Gabriel, who respected Mary’s free will. After the Annunciation, the angel left her, allowing Mary to figure out her life on her own.

Father Dacanay continued with a call to all parents: be like the angel, he said, and leave your children. “Don’t abandon them, but trust that parenting, prayers, and good values are enough to raise children who will respond to the world with generosity.”

And, with a stress on every word: “Parents should not fight their children’s battles.”I offer an extension: Let the next generation fight its own battles so that it does not constantly need its elders to validate its efforts, output, and opinions.

To let an adult child go is painful, but to see a child fail at fighting battles on their own? That’s pitiful. The most Christmas-y thing to do? Do as the angel did.

Teachers in basic education, parents, guardians: Let your children fight battles. Let them lose and learn. Let them win and celebrate.

Let them be better than we ever were—without us having to be there to guide their every step.

iponcedeleon@ateneo.edu