College Uneducation by Jorge Bocobo
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I wish to speak on
"College Uneducation". Is it possible that our college education may " uneducated rather than educate? I answer
"yes". It is a paradox but nonetheless the
truth, the grim, unmerciful truth. We believe in higher education we should not be in the University. At the same time, college education -
like all other human devices for human betterment may
build or destroy, lead, or mislead.
My ten years of
humble service in the University of the Philippines has afforded me an opportunity to watch the current of ideals and practices of our
student body. In some aspects of higher education, most
of our students have measured up to their high responsibilities. But in other
features alas, vital ones! The thoughts and actions of many of them tend to
stunt the mind dry up the heart, and squelch the soul. These students are being uneducated in college I shall briefly discuss three ways in which
many of our students are getting a college uneducation,
for which they pay tuition fees and make unnumbered
sacrifices.
Book Worship
In the first place,
there is the all but delirious worship of the printed page. "What does the book say'1" is by all odds, the most important
question in the student's mind whenever he is faced with any problem calling for
his own reasoning By the takers, many
students feel a sort of frenzy for facts till these become as huge as the
mountains and the mind is crushed
under them. Those students think of nothing but how to accumulate data, hence, their capacity for clear
powerful thinking is paralyzed How pathetic
to hear them and discuss! Because they lack the native vitality of unhampered reason, their disclosure smacks of cant and
sophistry rather than of healthy reasoning and straight thinking.
It is then that many of our students surrender their
individuality to the textbooks and loss their birthright -
which is to think for themselves. And when they attempt to form their own judgment they became pedantic. Unless a student develop
the habit of independent and sound reasoning, his college
education is a solemn sham.
Compare these college
students with Juan de la Cruz in the barrios. His mind is free from the
overwhelming, justify weight of unassimilated book knowledge. How penetrating his perception how unnerving his judgment, how solid his
common sense!
Professional Philistinism
The second manner of
college education that I want to speak of
is this, most students make
professional efficiency the be all and end all of college education. They have set their hearts upon becoming highly trained
lawyer, doctors, engineers, teachers, and
agriculturist. I shall not stop to inquire into the question of how much blame
should be laid at the door of the
faculties of the University for this pernicious drift toward undue and
excessive specialization That such a tendency exist in undeniable, but we never
pursue to count the cost. We are all of one mind. I believe that college
education is nothing unless it widens a
man's vision, broadens his sympathies and leads him to higher thinking and deep feeling. Vet how can we expect
all this result from a state of affairs which reduces a law student to a code a prospective doctor to a
prescriptions and a would-be an engineer to a mathematical formulas? How many
students in our in our professional colleges
ate doing any systematic reading in literature. May we not, indeed serious whether this fetish of specialization does not
smother the inspiring sense of beauty and ennobling love of finer things that our
students have it in them to unfold into full blown-magnificence.
The
Jading Dullness of Modern Life
"A thing of beauty is a
joy forever", says Keats. But we know that beauty is a matter of taste, and unless we
develop in us a proper appreciation of what is beautiful and sublime, everything around us is tedious and common place. We rise early
and go out into the morning, but our spirit is
unresponsive to the hopeful quietude and the dew-chastened
sweetness of dawn. At night, we behold the myriad starts but they are just so many bright speaks, their soft fires do not soothe our troubled hearts
and we do not experience that awesome, soul-stirring,
fascination of the immense ties of God Universe. We
ate bathed in the silver sheen of the moon and yet feel not the beatitude of
the moment we gaze upon a vista of high
mountains, but their silent strength has no appeal for
us. We read some undying verses, still, their vibrant cadence does not thrill
us, and their transcendent thought is to us like a
vision that vanishes. We look at a masterpiece of the
chisel with its eternal gracefulness of lines and properties, yet to us is no
more than mere human likeness. Tell me, is such a life
worth coming to college for? Yet, my friends, the over
specialization which many students with zeal and devotion is bound to result in
such unfeeling, dry as dust-existence.
I may say in passing that the education of the
older generations is in this respect for superior to ours.
Our older countrymen any with reason that the new education does not lawfully
cultivate the heart as the old education did.
Misguided
Zeal
Lastly, this selfsame rage
for highly specialized training with a view to distinguished
professional success, be clouds our vision of the broader perspective of life. Our philosophy
of life is in danger of becoming narrow and mean because we are habituated to think almost wholly in terms of
material well being. Of course we must be practical? We cannot adequately
answer this tremendous question unless we thoughtfully develop a proper sense of values and thus learn to
separate the dross from the gold, the chaff
from the grain of life The time to do this task is not after but before college
graduation, for when all is said and done,
the sum and substance of higher education is the individual formulation of
what life is for, with special training in some advanced line of human learning
in order that such a life formula may be executed with the utmost effectiveness. But how can we lay down the terms of our
philosophy of life if even-one of our
thoughts is absorbed by the daily assignment, the outside reading, and the
laboratory experiment and when we continuously devour lectures and notes.
"Uneducated"
Juan dela Cruz as Teacher
Here, again, many of
our students should sit at the feet of
meagerly educated Juan de la Cruz and learn wisdom.
Ah! He is often called ignorant, but he is the wisest of the wise, for he
has unrelated the mysteries of life. He is the happiness of the man who known the why's of human existence. Unassuming,
Juan de la Cruz cherishes no "vaulting
ambition which overleap itself His simple arid hardly virtues put to shame the studied and complex rules of conduct of highly educated man and women. In adversity, his
stoicism is beyond encomium. His love of home, so quite faithful is the firm foundation of out social structure And his
patriotism has been tested and found true. Can our students learn from Juan de la Cruz or does their college education
unfit them to become his pupils?
In conclusion, I shall say I have observed among many of our students certain alarming signs of
college uneducation, and some of
these are (1) lack of independent judgment as well as love of pedantry, because
of the worship of the printed page and the feverish
accumulation of undigested data. (2) the deadening of the delicate sense of the
beautiful
and the sublime on account of over specialization and (3) neglect of the formulation of a sound philosophy of life as a
result of excessive emphasis on professional
training.
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