Field trips

GONE are the days when students had to sleep overnight on campus to get the best time slots and professors for courses they had to take in a given term. Today enrollment is done online and, from Kuala Lumpur, I can see how fast the seats in my future class in Manila are being filled up.

This reminded me of a time I felt so sorry for students who endured the long lines and days it took to enroll in Diliman compared to three hours in Loyola Heights. A friend shrugged it off by saying the UP experience builds character.

In the Ateneo a computer-generated random number determines who gets a slot in my class. This system may be fair, but it denies someone, who really wanted to be in my class, the opportunity to be there because of a bad number.

I wonder why students shy away from teachers who give higher grades than I do. Why avoid teachers who are sane, more organized and do not lay down eccentric class rules like my favorite: canceling a student’s highest test score. Before computing the final grades some teachers cancel the lowest grade to pull up the average—a concession to bad-hair days. In my case, I cancel the highest not to torment but to encourage students to maintain a decent average. For example, if a student has four Bs and one A, canceling the A won’t matter as much as when I do the same to a student who has four Fs and one A. The system cancels out luck or what we call “tsamba.”

Then there are the seemingly silly essay questions like: Describe the Battle of Mactan from the point of view of a fish. Naturally, this requires a lot of imagination, but more importantly reading the account of Antonio Pigafetta who was an eyewitness to Magellan’s last moments.

One of the urban legends associated with me is that I gave an A to a student who filled his exam booklet with “glub-glub-glub-glub”—neatly written on all four pages—concluded with one line saying, “I’m sorry, Sir, I don’t understand fish language.” It was a good try, so I wrote a note on the exam booklet: “I don’t understand fish language either. This looks very exciting and is worth a D. Come back with a translation and I will give you an A.”

Once on the first day of class, a student asked, “Is it true that you once came to class in a pirate costume complete with a parrot?” I replied, “Of course not. I didn’t come as a pirate, you silly girl, I came as the parrot!”

Such is the stuff that urban legends are made of, the stuff that has made “The Ambeth Ocampo Experience” part of an Ateneo education.

Summer vacation is over and students will have to learn on their own by visiting a number of museums around town. History can be a very boring, bookish subject if the student does not make an effort to make it relevant to life. I require my students to supplement their readings with these visits. When done in groups, such visits generate bonding because if they get bored, they can at least get bored together rather than individually.

First stop: Ayala Museum on Greenbelt. Many who know the mall like the back of their palms are surprised to find a museum right in the center of the commercial and business district. Go see the dioramas showcasing events in Philippine history, but save your energy for the top floor: oriental ceramics that show trading from the 9th to the 16th centuries, and pre-Spanish gold that makes us proud to know we literally had a “Golden Age.” You leave wondering why we are so poor today.

Second stop: National Museum on Burgos Drive. The old legislative building is the National Gallery of Art, and if there are only two things to see there it will be Juan Luna’s “Spoliarium” and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo’s “Murder of Bustamante.” The sheer size and the treatment of these bloody episodes are worth the price of admission. In the same building, too, are treasures of Philippine archeology: the Calatagan pot, the Manungul jar, the Gold Oton face mask, the Bolinai skull with gold pegs implanted on the teeth, the remains of a balanghai. All these we learn about in school, but this is the place to see the real thing.

Aside from the historic Legislative Building, the National Museum has nearby the Finance Building that houses archeology and anthropology exhibits. When the Department of Tourism finally moves out and turns the building over to the National Museum, we will have three buildings to visit.

Intramuros is a place where the teaching aids are larger than life. You can walk around the restored walls and ramparts before visiting four museums in the old Walled City. There is the San Agustin Museum that displays religion in the Spanish period. There is the Casa Manila complex that displays life in an upper-class home in the late 19th century, a house that often makes Kapitan Tiago’s house in “Noli me tangere” real for many students. Then there is the Kaisa Museum of Chinese and Chinese life in the Philippines. Finally there is the Rizal Shrine in Fort Santiago.

You don’t have to be a student to go on a field trip. You can join Carlos Celdran’s tours of Intramuros. There are tours given by the Mabuhay Guides or the docents at Heroes Square.

Philippine history has never been as accessible, but then we are back to the proverb about bringing the horse to the riverbank and wondering how to get it to drink.

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