On the Importance of an Ateneo Education

This is from my email archives and was sent to me sev­eral months ago. With the Ate­neo win in the UAAP, I read this with new eyes and with a bet­ter and more pro­found appre­ci­a­tion of my alma mater. Other peo­ple will never fully under­stand, but it is bas­ket­ball that brings us all together. It is our bane and our boon. And while bas­ket­ball and the seem­ingly crazy hype of the Ateneo-La Salle games are what peo­ple see in the news, our two schools are so much more than that. I hope this arti­cle will make peo­ple see a deeper side of Ate­neo de Manila. This is what is behind the blue eagle, and the adi­das shirts, the bas­ket­ball super­stars, and the blue bab­ble battalion.

And while we kill our­selves on the bas­ket­ball court (espe­cially when we are fac­ing that school in Taft), there is so much more than what is shown in the sports pages. One big fight!

To my fel­low par­ents:
ON THE MEANING OF AN ATENEO EDUCATION
by Agustin Mar­tin G. Rodriguez, Ph.D.

When my daugh­ter had the chance to fin­ish high school in New York, we ago­nized about it: I more than her. Her agony cen­tered around the need to mod­er­ate her desire to embark on this adven­ture because she knew it would break my heart. My agony had two thorns. Firstly, I didn’t want her to go because in all our lives, we had never spent more than 2 days apart from each other. Sec­ondly, there was the irony of her study­ing in the United States. As a nation­al­ist aca­d­e­mic and devel­op­ment worker, I always believed that one’s spirit had to be formed with one’s people—among their myths and their sufferings—in order to under­stand who one is, what one’s respon­si­bil­i­ties are and to whom one’s heart belongs. I know to the sophis­ti­cated global cit­i­zen I would sound archaic and provin­cial, but I still believe that before our spirit can embrace the world it must be rooted in a home we love. But I knew that the idea of giv­ing up this oppor­tu­nity was break­ing her up inside because, as she said, she might spend the rest of her life won­der­ing what if, so I let her go. She left with the promise that she would come back for col­lege because I still believe that the uni­ver­sity years are for­ma­tive. But we all know how those promises go. Two years in the glit­ter of a new world could weaken the bind­ings of promises made in times of great emo­tions. It has been a year and we are now com­pletely at peace with her deci­sion to leave.

All that I have said is a pre­lude to why I am writ­ing this piece. I am writ­ing this to explain why I believe her for­ma­tion in the Ate­neo would still be the best for my daugh­ter. I want to clar­ify to every­one else who raise their eye­brows at me, what I mean when I say that I believe an edu­ca­tion here is supe­rior to any ivy league edu­ca­tion. Many of my col­leagues who know that my daugh­ter has a chance to study in an Amer­i­can uni­ver­sity can­not under­stand why I would pre­fer that she study here. One of them even exclaimed: “You would pre­fer that she study here even if she had a chance to study in Har­vard!” with a you-are-so ridicu­lous tone. And to me the answer was “Yes, of course, you’re so ridicu­lous.” And the rea­son is sim­ply this: she may get a supe­rior tech­ni­cal edu­ca­tion in some top rank­ing uni­ver­sity abroad but only in the Philip­pines will she have a supe­rior edu­ca­tion in being a Fil­ipino for Fil­ipinos.

My daugh­ter wants to be a writer and recently she has had a chance to attend a pres­ti­gious work­shop in an Amer­i­can uni­ver­sity best known as a cen­ter for writ­ing. And I was wit­ness to how because of that oppor­tu­nity, her writ­ing skills have advanced light years from when she left. I have no doubt that if she stud­ied cre­ative writ­ing in one of the US uni­ver­si­ties known for it, her skills would be strength­ened even more. But what would she write about? A great writer is as much about her skill as it is about her great insight. If you have the skill but not the immer­sion in the pro­found real­i­ties that have formed your soul, what is there to write about? And who would she write for? A truly great writer is one whose pas­sion is fueled by the need to speak for her peo­ple, espe­cially the mute. And to even begin to want to speak for them, you have to be grounded in their mis­ery. One’s peo­ple are never generic: they take con­crete form in the faces that res­onate in your heart. I think an edu­ca­tion in her own coun­try would pre­pare her to face the faces that res­onate in her heart and per­haps an Ate­neo edu­ca­tion could awaken the pas­sion to respond to those faces.

I know that many com­plain that Ate­neans lead a very shel­tered life in this cam­pus. In an infi­nite num­ber of ways that is ridicu­lously true. In the end, the Ate­neo is the Ate­neo: a sep­a­rate world from the world of the mar­gins. But what most peo­ple don’t under­stand about the Ate­neo, is that the Ate­neo is not just about the majors or the spe­cific pro­grams. It is about a spirit that per­vades among its best people.

When I was young, I was ready to quit the Church because I was con­vinced that there were no intel­li­gent and just Catholics. And then I came to the Ate­neo where I met Catholics who strove to serve the mar­gins because of their love of God. And because they loved God’s peo­ple, they strove for excel­lence. That real­iza­tion astounded me and kept me in the Church and in Ate­neo. If any­thing, Fil­ipino Jesuit edu­ca­tion just means to teach peo­ple that the love of God means noth­ing but to love the peo­ple who suf­fer for­got­ten in the mar­gins, and that we strive for excel­lence in what we do to serve them best: oth­er­wise excel­lence and the love of God is empty. What else does faith mean? What else grounds excel­lence? What else mea­sures the good of a life but that? And if you take Ate­neo edu­ca­tion seri­ously enough, and if you are open to its oppor­tu­ni­ties enough, it will lead you to that real­iza­tion and it will lead you to your first open­ing to the faces that you will have to serve. At its core, Ate­neo edu­ca­tion is an appren­tice­ship in the work of being a Fil­ipino for oth­ers. This is only a slo­gan so long as one misses out on the liv­ing exam­ples of alumni, schol­ars, admin­is­tra­tors, main­te­nance and staff who show us the way to real­iz­ing the truth of an Ate­neo edu­ca­tion. Open your eyes to those who serve rad­i­cally and they will rad­i­cally edu­cate your heart. And if one is open enough one can see that such peo­ple dwell in this school because there is a spirit in this school that cra­dles them and sup­ports their voca­tion. It is intan­gi­ble, but it is a spirit that guides the best of us.

Some peo­ple feel that we are an elite school that cul­ti­vates an elite ratio­nal­ity. Radioac­tive Sago’s bril­liant third album is enti­tled “… Ang Daming Nagugutom Sa Mundo Fash­ion­ista Ka Pa Rin.” In one gig, Lord de Vera was plug­ging their album and he said “Bil­hin ninyo ang aming album ‘… Ang Daming Nagugutom Sa Mundo Atenista Ka Pa Rin.’” I could under­stand his sen­ti­ments exactly. Just lis­ten to con­ver­sa­tions in the pocket gar­den where peo­ple com­plain about the heat, their slow lap­tops and their old school phones and any­one who knows any­thing about the hard­ships in our coun­try will eas­ily agree with Lord. But then, if you think about it, although some of our grad­u­ates are obliv­i­ous to the suf­fer­ing around them and even if some of them do rein­force struc­tures that exploit the suf­fer­ing, there is that core of Ate­neans touched by the spirit of this school who choose to gen­uinely build com­mu­ni­ties founded on jus­tice, to found enter­prises that serve true needs, to lawyer for the oppressed, and to doc­tor for the poor. Many inno­va­tions of jus­tice build­ing in our coun­try arise because of their appren­tice­ships in the magis of our ser­vice. We just don’t hear about these things because they don’t find their way into our tar­pau­lins. But the spirit is there and it is the spirit that defines us more than bas­ket­ball cham­pi­onships or the num­ber of CEOs we pro­duce. Some­how, because of our for­ma­tion, Ate­neans still tend to be ide­al­is­tic about ser­vice. And so I say “Dahil ang daming nagugutom sa mundo kailan­gan mong seryoso­hin ang pagka-Atenista.” This is why, my dear fel­low par­ents, I think an Ate­neo edu­ca­tion is more valu­able for my daugh­ter than a Cor­nell or Har­vard or Prince­ton edu­ca­tion: because here, we learn to be excel­lent for some­thing important—our peo­ple and our Fil­ipino humanity.

Dr. Rodriguez is cur­rently an Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of the Phi­los­o­phy Depart­ment of the Loy­ola Schools. His daugh­ter, Leal, is a fresh­man in the Ate­neo major­ing in AB Humanities.

Edited ver­sion of “To my col­leagues: On the mean­ing of an Ate­neo edu­ca­tion“
by Agustin Mar­tin G. Rodriguez, Ph.D.
Chalk Marks. The Guidon. Vol­ume LXXV. Num­ber 6.