Don’t Believe Your Report Card

It’s that time of year again when stu­dents move on to “big­ger” (and hope­fully bet­ter) things. I am reprint­ing what I believe is the best ever speech deliv­ered to a grad­u­at­ing high school class. I sug­gest you read this to the end and think about your own high school life.

Really great stuff here. :-)

(Speech deliv­ered by Dr. Anto­nio Miguel Dans (GS 1971, HS 1975) to the grad­u­at­ing class of Ate­neo High School batch 2007 on April 1, 2007 at the AHS cov­ered courts.)

Fr. Hizon, revered fac­ulty, grad­u­ates of Class 2007, par­ents, rel­a­tives, and friends, good evening.

I would like to thank all of you for the rare priv­i­lege of speak­ing to the grad­u­at­ing HS class of Ateneo.

Let me start by ask­ing the grad­u­ates to stand up and take an oath with me. Please stand.

“I/ state your name/ hereby greet you all/ a Happy April Fool’s Day.” Thank you. You may now take your seats.

Pasen­sya na kayo kasi pang-anim na akong nagsalita at inaan­tok na kay­ong lahat. Konting pam­pag­is­ing lang. Where’s 4C? Ahhhh my favorite class. They’re the only ones who know me, so let me start by telling you about myself.
Class 4i

I grad­u­ated from Ate­neo HS in 1975. In my batch, the 6 sec­tions spelled out WISDOM, and I belonged to 4i. My class was really noto­ri­ous. I know now for exam­ple, that 7 years after we grad­u­ated, the pre­fect of dis­ci­pline was still talk­ing about us to stu­dents we never met.

As early as first year, our entire class was posted for a chalk war dur­ing recess. We had no com­puter games then, so we had to use our imag­i­na­tion to play. Chalk was amaz­ing. Cut to the right size, and hurled with suf­fi­cient force, it would explode and leave marks on your hap­less victims.

Unfor­tu­nately, one day, dur­ing a full scale gang war, the teacher next door walked by to see what the noise was all about. I can still remem­ber it in slow motion: a class­mate hurled, another ducked, and the piece of chalk hit him right in the mid­dle of the fore­head, and exploded. Sud­denly it was over and we were con­victed for war crimes. There was no trial. Our whole class was posted, and from then on, we became known as the dis­hon­ors class.

I had my share of prob­lems as an indi­vid­ual too. When I was 3^rd year high school, I was called to the principal’s office in the mid­dle of class. On the way to the office, I wasn’t wor­ried. Fr. Ray­mond Miller was the prin­ci­pal then, and he was one of the gen­tlest priests I knew.

I gin­gerly opened the door, then froze in my tracks. My par­ents were there! Between them was a huge pile of fake let­ters excus­ing me from going to school for health rea­sons. I con­fessed right there and then, and expected to be expelled. But for some rea­son, the school decided to be lenient on me, and my sen­tence was com­muted to sev­eral hours post and 6 months pro­ba­tion with no allowance. (That’s the part that hurt.)

Now that I recall this, I real­ize that I was really lucky. I was never able to say this before, but I say it now, I would like to thank the school for its leniency in han­dling this case… and sev­eral oth­ers I had.

You know, what you do in high school will haunt you for­ever. I thought I had out­lived my high school mis­takes when I became a doc­tor, but sev­eral years ago, by the strangest coin­ci­dence, guess who became our hos­pi­tal priest? — Fr. Miller!

In his first few weeks there, he met Dr Rogie Tangco, walk­ing in the cor­ri­dor. Rogie is two years ahead of me. We’re about the same height but he is not as good-looking. When Fr. Miller saw him he said – Tony Dans right? Rogie raised both hands imme­di­ately and vehe­mently denied it “Father hindi ako yon! Si Rogie po ako!” Need­less to say, they had a good laugh at my expense. Rogie has been very kind to nee­dle me in pub­lic many times for this.

Now I under­stand why they invited me here today — maybe they thought I was Rogie! I’m sure that if my records still existed, the admin­is­tra­tion would have had sec­ond thoughts invit­ing me. But not to worry, they still have time to regret this.

Before I totally lose my cred­i­bil­ity, let me get on with my talk. For tonight, I was choos­ing between, one, say­ing some­thing so inspir­ing it would change your entire life; or two, telling you more point­less sto­ries of high school days. I decided to do the latter.

Sur­vey

To give you an idea about 4i, I did a sur­vey of my class­mates last week – by email or SMS. I had a good response rate. There were 37 of us when we grad­u­ated. Of the 35 still alive, 30 still keep in touch reg­u­larly. We used to see each other at wed­dings, where every­one became best man for some­one else. Then it became bap­tisms — ninong na naman lahat. But now, more and more, we see each other at funer­als. That’s the nat­ural his­tory of gath­er­ings we attend.

Other than these, we have so many reunions, you can’t really call them reunions any­more. Imag­ine I received 24 responses from 30 con­tacts — a whop­ping 80% after 32 years, con­sid­er­ing I just had a few days to do this.

Any­way, my ques­tion to them was this: What is the most impor­tant thing you learned in high school?

I thought this was a good ques­tion. I was sure the fac­ulty would be inter­ested in the answers… and the stu­dents too. You’re going home today with four years’ worth of knowl­edge, and you aren’t sure exactly which things to hang on to, that might help you through life. Well we have the per­spec­tive of 32 years to tell you what has helped us. So lis­ten well.

First let me share some responses with you at random.

Choy Cojuangco – buwisit ka ang hirap ng tanong mo at paiba-iba.

Jorge Yuzon – pare pasen­sya na, wala yata akong natutunan.

Hmm. Let’s look for bet­ter ones.

Jev Ramos – Kung maitim ka noon, hindi ka na puputi, kung kalbo ang tatay mo, makakalbo ka rin.

Claro Gomez (read) – this one I have to censor.

You know what, just let me go straight to the sum­mary, because you may mis­un­der­stand my class­mates. With these guys, you need to read between the lines.

My sum­mary is based not just on how my class­mates responded, but also on obser­va­tions about what they did and said in HS.

What’s the most impor­tant thing we learned in high school? The best sum­mary of our answers would be this — “I HAVE TO GET GOOD GRADES BY HOOK OR BY CROOK.”

Oops that was the Green­hills survey.

Wait…. Ah ok, here’s the Ate­neo sur­vey. “DON’T BELIEVE YOUR REPORT CARDS”.

Teach­ers please don’t walk out. Let me explain myself. Despite our noto­ri­ety, the remark­able thing about our class was our atti­tude towards learn­ing. As early as first year high school, we had this dis­dain for grades, and we con­stantly reminded each other of its inher­ent prob­lems. Did grades really mea­sure how good you were? Should we even bother about what we got? As a class, we didn’t believe so, and we tried our best to remind each other: focus on learn­ing and don’t get too con­cerned with grades. The phrase “grade-conscious” became a jeer for us. If you made the mis­take of pub­licly ask­ing what per­cent of the grade came from the final exam and small quizzes, or if you com­plained about the cut­off for pass­ing, you would regret it. You would be labeled grade con­scious and never hear the end of it for a week. Class­mates would walk by you and you would hear them say “grade con­scious”, soft enough to seem like a whis­per, but loud enough for you to hear. This ide­ol­ogy became incul­cated in us, so by our 2^nd year, some of us felt ashamed when our grades were too high.

Now I am sure that to a cer­tain extent, this was just ratio­nal­iza­tion for low grades, but in ret­ro­spect our dis­dain may have had some basis. There are three rea­sons I say this.

1. Knowl­edge vs. curiosity/creativity

Grades, by default, mea­sure mainly knowl­edge. Mul­ti­ple choice, true or false, enu­mer­a­tion, fill in the blanks – they’re designed to mea­sure how much knowl­edge is in your head. But in edu­ca­tion, knowl­edge is just a decoy. It is NOT the most impor­tant intel­lec­tual fac­ulty. My mother was an art teacher in grade school for many years, and she believed that cre­ativ­ity and curios­ity were more impor­tant. I laughed at that thought for a few years, until I learned that some­one else said exactly the same thing — Albert Ein­stein. My mom doesn’t know it, but she was a genius. With knowl­edge alone you become stag­nant like an old text­book. With curios­ity, and cre­ativ­ity you can actu­ally dis­cover new knowl­edge, and write the books your­self! Unfor­tu­nately, cre­ativ­ity is harder to grade, and curios­ity — almost impos­si­ble. They don’t give credit for ask­ing ques­tions right? If they did, I would have been valedictorian.

When you real­ize that knowl­edge is a decoy, some­times you notice funny things in the cur­ricu­lum. I cringe when I hear my chil­dren mem­o­riz­ing things like DOST or SEC or CSI. I have often told them, to their con­ster­na­tion, for­get mem­o­riz­ing. Just fail the darn sub­ject. Crit­i­cize what you’re being taught. But when I see them doing projects, orga­niz­ing affairs, and plan­ning for events, I heave a sigh of relief and say — their tuition is worth every cent.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not say­ing that Ate­neo hasn’t taught you cre­ativ­ity or intel­lec­tual curios­ity. In fact these are dis­tin­guish­ing traits of our edu­ca­tion. All I’m say­ing is that these are dif­fi­cult to mea­sure, and there­fore your report cards under­es­ti­mate your worth.

4i was a bun­dle of curios­ity and cre­ativ­ity. We looked at things under the micro­scope that would have shocked the teacher. We had long dis­tance spit­ting con­tests, and trash paper bas­ket­ball tour­na­ments, and other things I can­not men­tion. Juve­nile delin­quence, you might say. I pre­fer to view them as exer­cises in cre­ativ­ity, and I trea­sure them as much as lessons inside the classroom.

2. Effort vs. passion

The other thing mea­sured by your report card is effort – how hard you work. Now this looks inno­cent but there are sev­eral traps here.

First, it is very dif­fi­cult to grade effort. If you’re super smart and math is effort­less for you, shouldn’t you get a low mark in effort?

Sec­ond, assum­ing you could put a valid score on effort, do we really want to empha­size hard work? While it is often espoused as a virtue, it can also lead become a vice. We need bal­ance in our life. I have seen peo­ple work so hard, they neglect their fam­ily, their spir­i­tu­al­ity, and even their own phys­i­cal health.

Third, hard work makes life sound like a prison sen­tence. Con­grat­u­la­tions grad­u­ates, from now on, you are con­demned to a life of hard work! You see, dear grad­u­ates, the report card plays tricks on you! Hard work is OK, but Ate­neo has given you some­thing bet­ter – pas­sion. There’s a big dif­fer­ence. Hard work­ers do things because they have to. Peo­ple with pas­sion do things because they want to. Hard work con­sumes energy, but pas­sion builds it up. When you have pas­sion for your work, then it isn’t really work!

Fr. Hizon I have a sug­ges­tion. Next year, in the report cards, let’s remove the col­umn on effort. Instead, let’s put in a col­umn on passion.

3. Mis­be­hav­ing vs. rebelling

And then there’s this third thing mea­sured by your report card – con­duct. Con­duct is mea­sured by the degree to which we con­form to accept­able behav­ior. But there are 2 rea­sons why peo­ple don’t con­form. Either they’re rebelling or sim­ply mis­be­hav­ing. On the sur­face, they look the same. But when you rebel, you’re express­ing a belief or fight­ing for a cause. When you mis­be­have, you are sim­ply being obnox­ious. Is it impor­tant to dis­tin­guish the two? Of course. We dis­cour­age mis­be­hav­ior, but rebelling – that’s what you’re in Ate­neo for – to pre­pare you to rebel and change the world.

Some­times its not so easy to tell the dif­fer­ence. When a stu­dent asserts his right to hair­style – is that mis­be­hav­ing or rebelling? When he wears slip­pers to school because it is in fash­ion, is that mis­be­hav­ing or rebelling? Do we lis­ten to their views to dis­tin­guish the two? While we imple­ment rules of con­duct and grade how well stu­dents con­form, I agree that we are nur­tur­ing dis­ci­pline. But some­times this may be at the cost of sup­press­ing their other half – the one who wants to be dif­fer­ent. The one that wants to rebel against soci­ety, change the sta­tus quo, and fight for a bet­ter world. We honor con­formists in school because they have dis­ci­pline and they don’t rock the boat – but after school, it’s the rebel we honor – the peo­ple who saw what is, and tried to change it into what ought to be – peo­ple like Mahatma Gandhi, Mar­tin Luther King, Jose Rizal, and Ninoy Aquino.

I’m not say­ing we remove con­duct from the report card. I’m say­ing we need to be care­ful in deal­ing with appar­ent mis­con­duct. Some­times we may be sup­press­ing exactly the val­ues and char­ac­ter­is­tics that we espouse.

In sum­mary, we have given you three rea­sons why you shouldn’t believe your report card. It misses mea­sur­ing the impor­tant things:

- cre­ativ­ity and curios­ity, rather than knowl­edge per se,
– pas­sion for work, rather than effort, and
– the desire to be dif­fer­ent and change things, rather than just proper con­duct or good behavior.

In fact, these lessons, which aren’t in your report card – they are the ones that my class thought would help you in the future.

Hard work­ers will burn out, but you, because of your pas­sion, will run cir­cles around them.

Knowl­edge­able peo­ple will land decent jobs ear­lier, because this is what most employ­ers eval­u­ate, but because you are curi­ous and cre­ative, you will soon fly past them in the rank and file.

The con­formists will stag­nate in the past, while the rebels, like you, you will cre­ate the future.

Jesuit his­tory, after all, is a story of curios­ity and cre­ativ­ity and pas­sion. The early Jesuits were not book­ish schol­ars, they were explor­ers and philoso­phers. They debated sci­ence and reli­gion. And they charted the earth and the uni­verse. And they were rebels too. They were expelled from the Catholic Church by the Pope him­self, for many years. This is worse than any post any of you got while you were here. But the Jesuit order sur­vived the storm, and believe me, you will too.

The sim­ple fact of the mat­ter is that your edu­ca­tion has brought you where you are now and no report card has been invented, that can mea­sure the depth and breadth of what you have learned and what you have become. It doesn’t mat­ter if you received the high­est score, or if you barely made it. Don’t believe your report card! You are far bet­ter than what it says.
Fourth reason

To end, dear grad­u­ates, I would like to give you a fourth rea­son why grades under­es­ti­mate you. When I fielded my sur­vey to my class­mates last week, I received many dif­fer­ent themes on what was the most impor­tant les­son in high school. Can you guess what the most com­mon answer was?

I assure you, nobody said “Kreb’s cycle,” or “qua­dratic equa­tion.” By far the most com­mon answer was — the les­son of friend­ship. This is some­thing we didn’t get from books or lec­tures, this is some­thing we learned from each other. For sure, it can never be mea­sured by grades.

So savor this last moment of HS and look around you. Look at the won­der­ful friends you found. You don’t know this yet – your HS friends are unlike any. They will last for­ever. You may be part­ing ways now, but your paths will cross again like ours has, regard­less of the pro­fes­sion you have chosen.

How many of you plan to be doc­tors? Remem­ber them. They will take care of you when you’re sick, and they will not charge you.

And how many are leav­ing the coun­try? Remem­ber them as well. You are going to live in their homes when you travel. Free!

There might even be a priest in here some­where. He will pre­side at your wed­ding, bap­tize your child. I’m not sure you would want to con­fess to them. What a hor­ri­ble thought.

There will be politi­cians amongst you too – gov­er­nors, may­ors, cab­i­net mem­bers, maybe even a pres­i­dent? Even they will seek refuge in your reunions, because it is only there that they can be them­selves, with peo­ple they truly trust.

It doesn’t mat­ter what they do, when you are down and out, your class­mates will get together to pull you up. They will chip in for your hos­pi­tal expenses, or help send your kids abroad, even when they them­selves are in need.

I can spend the entire day with you talk­ing about high school friends. My main dif­fi­culty prepar­ing for this talk was choos­ing which anec­dotes to share just to show how close we were 32 years ago, and how much closer we’ve become since then.

The point is this — I, am immensely proud of the peo­ple I grew up with in high school.

When I hear sto­ries of prin­ci­ples they have had to stand up for in their life, I can see the same prin­ci­ples we nur­tured together as class­mates. Our futures have diver­si­fied us, but our val­ues remain one and the same.

Today, we remain com­rades in the same rebel­lion, fight­ing the bat­tle in dif­fer­ent zones.

Savor this moment. Say your good­byes for now… but know that your paths WILL cross again. With grad­u­a­tion, your friend­ship has become more bind­ing than mar­riage. Remem­ber, you can­not divorce a HS class­mate, even if it is ordered by the Vat­i­can. It’s illegal.

Savor this moment dear grad­u­ates, no mat­ter what your grades. You have Ate­neo behind you, and your friends beside you, so you have no choice. Like the blue eagle that has sym­bol­ized you, you WILL fly high.

Con­grat­u­la­tions to one and all!

1. A Throne of Bay­o­nets
2. Real Great­ness