150 Years. 150 Things About the Ateneo. (101−150)

116. If researchers were to poll Grupo58 on our hap­pi­est years, 1954 to 1958 will be it. Those were the years of firsts: our first visit to a girl’s house, our first dance with a girl who is not our sis­ter or cousin, our first kiss, our first Sat­ur­day night out­ing to Marina’s and Emong’s, our first beach night party at El Faro, our first weekly Sat­ur­day after­noon visit to our favorite ther­a­pists in Mis­eri­cor­dia and Tet­uan, our first cig­a­rette, our first bot­tle of beer. And yes, Rum-Coke.

Those were also the years of many lasts: the last grade school class in Padre Faura before the trans­fer to Loy­ola, the last grade school class with­out a grade seven, the last high school grad­u­at­ing class of Ateneo’s first 100 years, and the last golden jubilee class of the Ateneo’s first 150 years.

In those happy-go-lucky high school years, we were caught between the eter­nal strug­gle of the sixth com­mand­ment against our rag­ing hor­mones, between boy­hood and man­hood, between the sub­lime and the ridicu­lous, between Don Quixote’s mud below and the unreach­able star up above. We stood tall, between the earth and sky.

117. 1958–1962: The Age of Explo­ration: “…cast your shadow below, swoop down on the foe, and sweep up the field away…”

Our col­lege years sep­a­rated the men from the boys, the jok­ers from the schol­ars, the jocks from the geeks, the lover boys from the altar boys.

But all were one in this goal: fin­ish col­lege, please our par­ents and start our real lives. Patience was not a desir­able virtue. We were in a hurry to chal­lenge the world on its terms. We were get­ting ready for that bat­tle. Matira ang matibay.

Like busi­ness insti­tu­tions and icons, Grupo58 was always on the verge of many things. We were on the thresh­old of man­hood. Our voices were now deeper. We were get­ting more con­fi­dent. We were feel­ing wiser and smarter.

With a lot of phi­los­o­phy the­o­rems, knowl­edge of many stuff and plain inge­nu­ity, we were test­ing our pow­ers, with mixed results.

Our col­lege years were the best years for exper­i­men­ta­tion. And we had the cojones to just do it.

Thus the auda­cious final exam leak­age project in 1962 was con­ceived and imple­mented suc­cess­fully. The guys who got the leaked tests aced their writ­ten exams and had all the time to pre­pare for their more dif­fi­cult Phi­los­o­phy orals.

Thus our logic and elo­quence would almost seduce a hand­ful of the pretty but pleas­antly naive cole­gialas, but only for brag­ging rights.

Thus the 1961–62 Blue Eagles, led by our class­mates Dodo Martelino and Boo­gie Pam­intuan brought home the NCAA cham­pi­onship. We expected the cham­pi­onship that year. We clearly saw it in the stars. We never doubted that. We inspired the Blue Eagles to the heights of col­lege bas­ket­ball. We felt we were ready for the world. We were unafraid. We were invin­ci­ble. Yes?

118. 1962 Onwards: The Age of Con­tent­ment: “…our course is run, and the set­ting sun ends Ateneo’s day…”

“Down from the hill, down to the world go I…” And so in 1962 we bade each other adieu and went our sep­a­rate ways, fol­low­ing our own drum­mer and seek­ing our for­tune. We would be lawyers, doc­tors, actors, adver­tis­ing peo­ple, busi­ness exec­u­tives, gov­ern­ment offi­cials, soap and drug sales­men, teach­ers and pro­fes­sors, hacien­deros, politi­cians, bankers and for the most part, lovers, hus­bands and fathers.

Rais­ing a fam­ily and build­ing a career in those post-1962 years ate up a lot of our time and energy. Both demanded more from us. It was growth in a human sense. We jug­gled the demands of both, hop­ing we would achieve an opti­mal bal­ance between home and the office. Suc­cess or fail­ure would be felt later, in our twi­light years when we look back at years past, either fondly or sadly.

Many will rec­og­nize and accept their lev­els of con­tent­ment in their twi­light years. Some would still search for some­thing bet­ter, and sadly, would set­tle for less in the end. Such is life. Such is the world. Ayun yon e.

“…remem­ber­ing still how the bright blue eagles fly…” The val­ues and prin­ci­ples deeply breathed into our souls would be our con­stant guide as we went through life.

We would often reach a point when we had to choose between the hon­or­able and the gross. Some­times we chose right. Some­times we ratio­nal­ized. For sure, we know that the bright blue eagles of our val­ues and prin­ci­ples will always be up there some­where, remind­ing us, remind­ing us, remind­ing us.

“…win or lose, it’s the school we choose, this is the place where we belong.” No mat­ter what choices we made, how life turned out for us, we knew we would have no regrets. When fam­ily is gone, leav­ing an empty nest, and when the busi­ness is now in the hands of some­one else, we know we still have one place of refuge — our alma mater.

Our mem­o­ries of class­mates are embed­ded in our school’s walls and corridors.

Last Decem­ber 6, 2008, with the pleas­ant mem­ory of the Blue Eagles thrash­ing La Salle in the 2008 UAAP finals, we returned to the place where we belong and hun­grily sought the com­pany of school chums to laugh, chat and shame­lessly embell­ish sto­ries about those care­free days. Rem­i­nisc­ing is sim­ply price­less. Those moments will always be our golden mem­o­ries. And on that Jubilee Night, before the other alumni, Grupo58 lustily sang: “Those were the days, my friend, we thought would never end…”

119. Igna­t­ian Tra­di­tion. Since the time they launched their first school in 1548, the Jesuits have believed that a high qual­ity edu­ca­tion is the best path to mean­ing­ful lives of lead­er­ship and ser­vice. They have under­stood that the lib­eral arts, the nat­ural and social sci­ences, and the per­form­ing arts, joined with all the other branches of knowl­edge, were a pow­er­ful means to develop lead­ers with the poten­tial for influ­enc­ing and trans­form­ing soci­ety. Com­mit­ted from the very begin­ning to edu­cat­ing the whole per­son, the Jesuits adapted the best edu­ca­tional mod­els avail­able while devel­op­ing their own ped­a­gog­i­cal meth­ods to become the “school­mas­ters of Europe.”

Jesuit edu­ca­tion has been his­tor­i­cally suc­cess­ful in many cul­tures because it is emi­nently adapt­able to the envi­ron­ment of the learner. Jesuit edu­ca­tion is adapt­able to many diverse learners–traditional age and adult, full-time and part-time, on-campus and online. Present and future learn­ers can expect Jesuit edu­ca­tion to con­tinue to adapt in appro­pri­ate ways to meet their evolv­ing needs.

120. Igna­t­ian Ped­a­gogy: In order to trans­late the Jesuit edu­ca­tional char­ac­ter­is­tics into action, the Inter­na­tional Com­mis­sion on the Apos­to­late of Jesuit Edu­ca­tion (ICAJE) issued Igna­t­ian Ped­a­gogy: A Prac­ti­cal Approach in 1993 as a model that speaks to the Jesuit teaching-learning process, that addresses the teacher-learner rela­tion­ship, and that has prac­ti­cal mean­ing and appli­ca­tion for the classroom.

Con­text — What needs to be known about learn­ers (their envi­ron­ment, back­ground, com­mu­nity, and poten­tial) to teach them well? Cura personalis–personal care and con­cern for the individual–is a hall­mark of Jesuit edu­ca­tion, and requires that teach­ers become as con­ver­sant as pos­si­ble with the con­text or life expe­ri­ence of the learner. Since human expe­ri­ence, always the start­ing point in a Jesuit edu­ca­tion, never occurs in a vac­uum, edu­ca­tors must know as much as pos­si­ble about the actual con­text within which teach­ing and learn­ing take place. Teach­ers need to under­stand the world of the learner, includ­ing the ways in which fam­ily, friends, peers, and the larger soci­ety impact that world and effect the learner for bet­ter or worse.

Expe­ri­ence — What is the best way to engage learn­ers as whole per­sons in the teach­ing and learn­ing process?

Teach­ers must cre­ate the con­di­tions whereby learn­ers gather and rec­ol­lect the mate­r­ial of their own expe­ri­ence in order to dis­till what they under­stand already in terms of facts, feel­ings, val­ues, insights and intu­itions they bring to the sub­ject mat­ter at hand. Teach­ers later guide the learn­ers in assim­i­lat­ing new infor­ma­tion and fur­ther expe­ri­ence so that their knowl­edge will grow in com­plete­ness and truth.

Reflec­tion — How may learn­ers become more reflec­tive so they more deeply under­stand what they have learned?

Teach­ers lay the foun­da­tions for learn­ing how to learn by engag­ing stu­dents in skills and tech­niques of reflec­tion. Here mem­ory, under­stand­ing, imag­i­na­tion, and feel­ings are used to grasp the essen­tial mean­ing and value of what is being stud­ied, to dis­cover its rela­tion­ship to other facets of human knowl­edge and activ­ity, and to appre­ci­ate its impli­ca­tions in the con­tin­u­ing search for truth.

Action — How do we com­pel learn­ers to move beyond knowl­edge to action? Teach­ers pro­vide oppor­tu­ni­ties that will chal­lenge the imag­i­na­tion and exer­cise the will of the learn­ers to choose the best pos­si­ble course of action from what they have learned. What they do as a result under the teacher’s direc­tion, while it may not imme­di­ately trans­form the world into a global com­mu­nity of jus­tice, peace and love, should at least be an edu­ca­tional step towards that goal even if it merely leads to new expe­ri­ences, fur­ther reflec­tions and con­se­quent actions within the sub­ject area under consideration.

Eval­u­a­tion –How do we assess learn­ers growth in mind, heart, and spirit? Daily quizzes, weekly or monthly tests and semes­ter exam­i­na­tions are famil­iar instru­ments to assess the degree of mas­tery of knowl­edge and skills achieved. Igna­t­ian ped­a­gogy, how­ever, aims at eval­u­a­tion which includes but goes beyond aca­d­e­mic mas­tery to the learn­ers well-rounded growth as per­sons for oth­ers. Obser­vant teach­ers will per­ceive indi­ca­tions of growth or lack of growth in class dis­cus­sions and stu­dents’ gen­eros­ity in response to com­mon needs much more frequently.

121. When the Ate­neo of Padre Faura was destroyed in World War II, only one struc­ture remained stand­ing – the statue of St. Joseph and the Child Jesus which now stands in front of the Jesuit Res­i­dence in the Loy­ola Heights cam­pus. Iron­work and stat­u­ary sal­vaged from the Ate­neo ruins have since been incor­po­rated into var­i­ous exist­ing Ate­neo build­ings: the Ate­neo mono­grams on the gates of the Loy­ola Heights cam­pus, the iron grill­work on the ground floor of Xavier Hall, and the statue of the Immac­u­late Con­cep­tion dis­played at the Uni­ver­sity archives.

122. The John Gokong­wei School of Man­age­ment was named by the Com­mis­sion on Higher Edu­ca­tion (CHED) Cen­ter of Excel­lence in Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion and in Entre­pre­neur­ship. The only cen­ters of excel­lence so far in Busi­ness and Man­age­ment Education.

123. Gawad Kalinga. In 2003, the Ate­neo entered into its part­ner­ship with Gawad Kalinga, its first for­mal, university-wide social action pro­gram. Gawad Kalinga (GK), offi­cially the Gawad Kalinga Com­mu­nity Devel­op­ment Foun­da­tion, is a Philippine-based poverty reduc­tion and nation-building move­ment launched by Cou­ples for Christ (CFC), a Catholic lay com­mu­nity, to care for worse-off Fil­ipinos and sur­vivors of nat­ural dis­as­ters. Among its GK ini­tia­tives are the fol­low­ing: Kalinga Leyte, a pro­gram for the long-term reha­bil­i­ta­tion of South­ern Leyte. The Ate­neo has also expanded the scope of its involve­ment with Gawad Kalinga and has begun to drive GK ini­tia­tives through­out Nueva Ecija, and in other provinces such as Coto­bato and Quezon.

124. Mid­way through 2006, the Manuel V Pangili­nan Cen­ter for Stu­dent Lead­er­ship was com­pleted. It replaced Colayco Hall as the house for Stu­dent Organizations.

125. Dr. Ricardo and Rosita Leong Hall was blessed and inau­gu­rated last Oct 17, 2007. It is the new home of the School of Social Sci­ences. It houses the fol­low­ing offices:

1. Depart­ment of Soci­ol­ogy & Anthro­pol­ogy — G/F
2. Chi­nese Stud­ies Pro­gram — 2/F
3. Con­fu­cius Insti­tute — 2/F
4. Ricardo Leong Cen­ter for Chi­nese Stud­ies — 2/F
5. Ate­neo Cen­ter for Asian Stud­ies — 2/F
6. Depart­ment of His­tory — 2/F
7. Japan­ese Stud­ies Pro­gram — 2/F
8. Depart­ment of Polit­i­cal Sci­ence — 3/F
9. Euro­pean Stud­ies Pro­gram — 3/F
10. Depart­ment of Psy­chol­ogy — 3/F
11. Depart­ment of Eco­nom­ics — 4/F
12. Devel­op­ment Stud­ies Pro­gram — 4/F
13. Office of the Dean — 4/F

125. Doreen Fer­nan­dez. Was born on Octo­ber 28, 1934, in Manila and grew up in Silay, Negros Occi­den­tal. She died on June 24, 2002, 8:20 p.m., while vis­it­ing New York City. Doreen stud­ied Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture and his­tory at St. Scholastica’s Col­lege, Manila, earn­ing her b.a in 1954. She received the m.a. (1956) and Ph.D. (1977) in lit­er­a­ture from Ate­neo de Manila Uni­ver­sity, where she taught lit­er­a­ture, cre­ative writ­ing, com­po­si­tion, and jour­nal­ism for almost thirty years and chaired the depart­ments of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Eng­lish, and Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Stud­ies. She was my teacher dur­ing her last year of teach­ing and I found her to be a great per­son, gen­tle soul and great food lover.

126. Dr. Amando Kapauan (July 4, 1931 – Octo­ber 12, 1996) was a chemist and researcher. He grad­u­ated magna cum laude from Uni­ver­sity of the philip­pines, Dil­i­man in 1952, with a bachelor’s degree in chem­istry. He obtained his doc­tor­ate from the Uni­ver­sity of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia in 1959.

In the Ate­neo de Manila Uni­ver­sity Depart­ment of Chem­istry, he worked on inor­ganic and phys­i­cal chem­istry, par­tic­u­larly on radioac­tive bromine. With other col­leagues, he ini­ti­ated inves­ti­ga­tions in the 1970s on heavy met­als analy­sis in our envi­ron­ment. He was among the first to look into the prob­lem of mer­cury in the envi­ron­ment, and he designed the appro­pri­ate equip­ment for mer­cury analy­sis in water, fish and soil.

Kapauan linked with inter­na­tional groups, taught one of the first envi­ron­men­tal chem­istry courses in the coun­try, and involved him­self in poli­cies on urban-rural plan­ning. He later went into the field of elec­tron­ics, specif­i­cally chem­i­cal instru­men­ta­tion. Together with Fr. William Schmitt, S.J., they pio­neered the main­te­nance, design and mod­i­fi­ca­tion of instruments.

127. Fr. Pru­den­cio Macayan (1921−2005). From Punzi’s Blog: Known as a “ter­ror” and a strict dis­ci­pli­nar­ian dur­ing our time, he never for­got to address us as “men” back when we were in the throws of puberty. Dur­ing last night’s homily, his fel­low Jesuits called him “Fr. Mac.” We used to call him “Mad Mac,” allud­ing to some sort of a “Mad Max” dri­ving a “pimp’d out” Volk­wa­gen Beetle.

He taught us geom­e­try under a mango tree, back in 1986 dur­ing the time when the Philip­pines was about to throw out a dic­ta­tor. How we hated, despised and, at the same time, feared, respected and even loved this men­tor of ours. He brought order into our chaos, dis­ci­pline into our unruli­ness, direc­tion into our scat­tered­ness. Again look­ing back, he never failed to address us as “men,” and it was even the first word that we heard dur­ing third year. And he did trans­form us into men dur­ing our time.

From Fr. Joaquin Bernas: Among stu­dents in the High School, Fr. Mac was one kind of Jesuit. If you want to hear sto­ries about Jesuits, ask a grad­u­ate of a Jesuit High School. There, boys still in their very impres­sion­able years are exposed to a vari­ety of Jesuit blooms. Out of daily encoun­ters in and out of class, boys endow some Jesuits with an aura of mys­tique that is passed on from boy to boy in almost con­spir­a­to­r­ial tones and is spread on from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion. The sto­ries about Fr Mac live on and they are being recounted by for­mer stu­dents who have come in droves for his wake this week. They describe his Math classes as boot camp ordeals, where num­bers made a bloody entrance into resis­tant minds, but where boys learned not just Math but also lessons in dis­ci­pline and char­ac­ter which they car­ried on to col­lege and to man­hood and life. They remem­ber Fr Mac as a dis­ci­pli­nar­ian more strict than a Marine drill sergeant but never unjust or unfair. They recount sto­ries of Fr. Mac as envi­ron­men­tal watch­dog who would con­front a boy that stepped on the grass with the ques­tion, “How would you feel if the grass stepped on you?” Or the story of the boy who, caught in fla­grante delicto tear­ing a por­tion of a leaf, had to lis­ten to a lec­ture on respect for God’s cre­ation. Con­verted by the lec­ture, the boy sheep­ishly sta­pled the bro­ken leaf to its mother.

128. Bro. Jim Dunne (1935−2003). From Fr. Mano­ling Fran­cisco: Bro. Dunne enjoyed good com­pany, good food and San Miguel beer. He laughed a lot, often slapped peo­ple on their backs, and enjoyed play­ing pranks on oth­ers. Jun Bal­maceda, high school teacher, tells this story that when a grade seven boy vis­ited the high school, Bro. Jim took him around the cam­pus. The bespec­ta­cled Mario Katig­bak, then a first year stu­dent, but who looked way mature for his age, was seated on a bench, read­ing a book. Bro. Dunne intro­duced the vis­it­ing grade seven boy to Mario, “Meet the high school prin­ci­pal.” The kid self-consciously stood at atten­tion, say­ing “Good after­noon, sir.”

As coun­selor, Reli­gion teacher, mod­er­a­tor of the PRADA, the ACIL, the Days with the Lord, Bro. Dunne was a per­va­sive pres­ence in the high school. He knew most every­one by name. Although he dealt with the stu­dent lead­ers, the star ath­letes, the aca­d­e­mic achiev­ers, his heart went out to the mar­gin­al­ized stu­dents. He con­stantly attended to those who were made fun of, those who were ostracized.

Later on, when­ever we would go out to catch up with one another, we never con­versed about the suc­cess­ful lawyers, doc­tors and busi­ness­men among my con­tem­po­raries. He would update me about a class­mate whom we taunted through­out high school or about a con­tem­po­rary who never quite ‘made it’ and was still scrap­ing the bot­tom of barrels.

While many of my batch­mates set­tled down and climbed the cor­po­rate lad­der, Bro. Dunne kept in touch with those who fell through the cracks. He updated me about an effem­i­nate batch­mate who ended-up work­ing as a blue-collar worker in the Mid­dle East, who was even­tu­ally impris­oned and beaten-up because of his effem­i­nacy, and with whom Bro. Dunne con­stantly cor­re­sponded. Even­tu­ally my batch­mate was released from prison and found his way home. Bro. Dunne took him out every now and then to lis­ten, to com­fort and to give hope. Later on this batch­mate was able to put-up a small beauty par­lor, the inau­gu­ra­tion of which Bro. Jim attended. Among the young male Fil­ipino beau­ti­cians, the bulky and burly Bro. Dunne stood out, if I may say so, like a ‘papa.’

129. Fr. Joseph Gal­don. Pio­neer of the Eng­lish Depart­ment, Fr. Joseph Gal­don, SJ is a well-loved teacher, preacher, men­tor and spir­i­tual director.

From Toots Magsino: At the urg­ing of some of his women stu­dents, he took on the chal­lenge of lead­ing a week­end retreat that was meant to help in their spir­i­tual quest. It was called Prayer Days for Coeds (PDC) and was held at the Ate­neo de Manila Uni­ver­sity grounds. Since then, he has touched hun­dreds of coeds and gifted them with enough pre­cious lessons to last a lifetime.

130. Alfredo Rafael Anto­nio Beng­zon, also known as Alfredo R. A. Beng­zon, is a Fil­ipino doc­tor, edu­ca­tor, and for­mer pub­lic offi­cial. He is cur­rently Vice Pres­i­dent for the Pro­fes­sional Schools of the Ate­neo de Manila Uni­ver­sity, dean of the Ate­neo School of Med­i­cine and Pub­lic Health, dean emer­i­tus of the Ate­neo Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness, and Pres­i­dent and CEO of The Med­ical City.

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