Brighter days

I was looking forward to the end of the last academic year, which had been a particularly difficult one for me, with a heavier teaching load than usual. Add on hosting all kinds of events, including, just last month, some 1,000 visitors from Southeast Asia attending the inauguration of new school buildings in Guang Ming College, a school I direct.

It was also a year with deaths in the family and personal illnesses. For the last few weeks, I was walking around feeling what Germans call Weltschmerz, the world’s pains, what with wars and civil unrest and environmental destruction.

Last Sunday, I woke up feeling light for the first time in months. Maybe because teaching duties were gone for now, I felt more cheerful, with a song playing in my head, Emeli Sandé’s “Brighter Days,” which I first heard in May during King Charles III’s coronation concert. It was sung by several chorale groups, from all over the United Kingdom, that only had one formal dress rehearsal before their performance.

It was a fairly simple song, catchy tune, starting out on a sad note, “We’ve seen it all … a night without end” but quickly moving into a reassurance of friendship and assurance: “If you need a friend, I’ll be holding you steady, my love won’t end …”

It wasn’t a personal love song but a “love you all” one, which seemed so appropriate for our times, marked by growing hatred and bigotry of people different from ourselves.

There’s more to this story. The first time I watched the YouTube recording, I noticed right away, standing in front, behind the lead singer, women wearing the kimona, a loose-fitting blouse first popularized in the Visayas but now considered informal national attire. I had a hunch right away that they were from the UK government’s National Health Service because we have so many Filipinos working there.

The performance at the coronation concert was meant to emphasize diversity, the organizers choosing from chorale groups—none of them professional—to perform together. They were, as our Filipinos showed, of diverse ethnicities. There were groups representing refugees, the National Health Service, firefighters, LGBTQ+.

And the deaf sang … that could have been a description of some biblical miracle. People born deaf actually can’t sing, even if their vocal apparatus is intact, because they have never heard the tones, but they can learn to use sign language to sing, and this they did at the concert with the passion and zest of the other choirs.

Then, almost as if on cue, last week, one of the faculty asked me how we should handle a spectrum student applying for admission. He was using the American Psychiatric Association’s term—autistic spectrum, which includes people with varying expressions of autism.

We encourage our applicants to tell us if they have particular mental health issues, and are “neurodivergent,” which includes the autistic spectrum, with assurances of confidentiality and that their disclosure was meant to alert the school to special needs, and would not affect their chances of admission.

This particular student did very well in his admission test and in auditions for artistic skill and his autism was very clear with his physical movements.

Replying to my faculty’s question, I pointed out how the college had been established to provide scholarships for talented low-income students and we had seen what those scholarships could do to bring out their potential. We could do no less for people who were “different” in other ways, including neurologically, and the college would be the poorer if we limited our diversity.

I later talked with another faculty member involved in the screening of applicants. The consensus was clear: The student would flourish and do us proud.

On Monday, our Guang Ming College executive committee approved admitting this student, and a general policy to increase our diversity admissions.

Brighter days are indeed coming.

Watch the coronation choir’s performance: https://bitly.ws/KUrk. It includes an introductory clip on how the 300 members were put together, including the Basingstoke Filipino Choir.

[email protected]