Much ajejeje about nothing
It was two years ago when I first received a message that went, “Eow powhz, muztah na kyo!?!” on my cell phone from a student who had gotten my number. Back then, I thought it was a sweet gesture ruined by unconventional spelling and punctuation that does nothing but irritate a teacher like me. Later on, the jargon that later became known as jejenese soon invaded my Facebook account through my students who live mostly in Pandacan. What was once an irritation became something very annoying and to this day, I am very grateful that Facebook has that option of hiding certain people from appearing in your live feed. I don’t think anybody has a right to defend the way jejemons communicate until they have experienced being flooded with a slew of incomprehensible computer-character nonsense in one’s Facebook walls after working so hard to make it socially pleasing and desirable.
But even a jejebuster like me found the DepEd’s declaration of war on jejemons an exaggeration and overreaction. Perhaps, irritated by the sudden media attention on the language fad, DepEd wants to appear as if they are on top of the situation. They are not. What they don’t know is that this fad has already been used and perfected by the youth belonging to the lower social class of society many years ago. It was only now that society has picked on these people, with Facebook replacing Friendster as the most used social networking site of the country. DepEd’s knee-jerk reaction simply proves that they are so detached from the environment of class C, D, and E students, the same students who study in DepEd-managed public schools.
Interestingly, a few days after DepEd’s declaration of war, Bishop Joel Baylon came out with a statement defending jejenese, stating that as a fad, it will simply go away. I don’t know though if we should dismiss the social craze so quickly. As the wise quote goes, “Truth must somewhere be in the middle.”
The jejemon phenomenon is something educators must be apprehensive about, but the style of writing, however bothersome, is the least thing to be worried about. Analyzing the roots of the jejemons reveals a subculture of the poor youth, that is almost a cry for help. At its most basic level, what is worrisome about jejenese is the level of literacy, or lack thereof, that the Filipino youth currently have. Jejenese is, after all, a reaction to the conventions of written language. A blog about guidelines of writing in jejenese states that the more deviant the spelling, the better. “Down with school!” the blog continues. Writing the jejemon way is all about young people resisting an educational system that tries to teach them correct spelling and grammar while being silent about their poverty and misery.
The second insight is perhaps something that DepEd should really declare war on. Jejemon was invented and developed in a place where our students spend most of their time these days — the computer rental shops. I do not know if the DepEd has noticed that the computer shops have sprouted beside schools where they easily prey on students who do not eat lunch or commute to school just so they could spend unlimited promo hours inside these dens. Our students suffer from an addiction to computers and, like any addiction, it stunts their development and leads them away from their goals and ambitions in life.
The third is that though jejemon is a trend adopted by many young people nowadays, it started out with gangs and fraternities that wanted to carve out a unique identity for their group. And indeed, the school has lost its influence on gangs and fraternities. One of the most difficult experiences of public school teachers is how to safeguard their students once they step outside the school for there have been many reports of them being attacked by unknown people. It is only later that teachers find out that these are actually friends of students who belong to fraternities. Most belong to a petty group named Temple Street Trese. Shockingly, a few are members of the Taugama fraternity, the latter being an infamous gang of prisoners. The Philippines is very fortunate that violence has not pervaded our local communities like what is happening in the ghettoes of the United States, but this would not be a far-fetched idea if we don’t address the problem of gangs and fraternities in the community.
Last and perhaps the saddest fact of all, one should note that this fad is a fad of poor people. If at all, this jargon has concretized once again the abstract delineation of rich and poor in our society. Examining the jejebuster pages on Facebook will lead you to discriminatory descriptions of jejemons as being “squatters,” “yagit” and “jologs.” With DepEd’s declaration of war, they have unintentionally sided with the elite and the middle class who are too quick to judge their underprivileged countrymen whose worlds are different from those of the educated and the conventional.
There are bigger and scarier monsters out there, bred by environments of poverty, violence, and discrimination that we educators and parents have to battle with. But the jejemon is not one of them.
