A Tuesday class with Mr. Pagsi

Two weeks ago, I saw an online video from the Whynot? forum website that led to more questions than answers. It was the the highly edited talk of 82-year-old Dr. Onofre Pagsanjan on passion for teaching because he has been teaching Ateneo first year high school literature for 57 years and counting. The talk would have lasted for three hours but was reduced to one hour. This short stream video did not capture for me what drives a man, endearingly called Mr. Pagsi, to see the same mundane work anew for 57 years every single day. People like him are like puzzles for persons like me who can be dejected by reality from time to time. So, I sought to figure him out.

As I met the elderly but vibrantly upbeat Mr. Pagsi last Tuesday afternoon at the Ateneo high school lobby, I was astounded to converse with a wise man already thrice my age but still concerned with what he called the basic questions and whys of life. He added that this is why he has been invited to many speaking engagements — from teachers at Assumption and De La Salle to Jollibee franchisees in Macau. It is because “people have a hunger for meaning all over.” And before I knew it, I found myself a little bit out of the interview, brought into the class of Mr. Pagsi, and being taught by his words.

The chronicles of 1-A honor class

The key to understanding Mr. Pagsi’s soul is not in what he says, his experiences or thoughts. It is in the sincerity of how he tells it from the heart. When he tells me about his annual first-day ritual of bringing his honor class boys to the Ateneo shrine, he talks about how God is our alpha and omega because it is a duty for him to let his boys discover that they were created by God and should successfully return to his arms in the end. You hang on to every word he says because his exuberance grips you into thinking that this is what the parents of these boys are investing in, above and beyond literature.

Yet, the unsaid core of Mr. Pagsi’s passion and success that drive him till today is his deep respect for his students. As he speaks about his class lessons and his boys, every moment is described as an adventure like stepping into magic moments of C.S Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia as his voice cracks about the political depth of Julius Caesar. He gets excited simply by adorably singing the King and I’s Getting to Know You to introduce poetry and the students to each other. His expression blooms when his students discover “how words can be sharp” by reading The Most Dangerous Game’s “jagged crags appear to jut in the opaqueness” by Richard Connell. And when he says, “My students, these are the 44 brightest men in country” or “My students are smarter than me. I am just older but that doesn’t really count,” each gum and tooth in his jaw means it. There are no traces of insincerity on his lips as he tells me his kamiseta is soaked in sweat and needs to be changed after every morning class because he perspires from his overflow of energy. In his reality, it is only the sweet truth that he couldn’t give anything less than perfection because it is an honor rather than burden to be with his 1-A class every day for nine and a half months.

Of lives and literature

Mr. Pagsi was given this honor to teach as early as when he was a senior Ateneo high school scholar and to represent the school in English contests. His principal confidant Fr. Delaney, who he says he’d rather spit out blood for than let down, tangles up his life and asks him, “You have a gift to get things profound and bring them to the language man down here ... why don’t you teach?” “Innocent questions are not so innocent!” Mr. Pagsi tells me about that encounter and takes the offer after college. He wasn’t so keen on teaching but was more concerned about surviving because of his meager background. Yet, it was love that made him stay. First, he was the only one paid to take naps and have a lighter load in his first years because the Jesuit priests were concerned that his 80-pound body and 20-inch waist would wither from the work in 1951. Second, his students always gave the best for him. On his first Christmas as a teacher, he was amazed that his students saved up to give him a watch instead of having a holiday party because he couldn’t afford to buy one for himself.

And what Pagsi gives back to his students is his own time, and he has stopped writing plays because he says, “teaching requires one to listen, you can’t do that if you’re making scripts.” He chose literature as the subject to teach because unlike religion that focuses on precepts, literature charmingly asks the basic questions in life. Writing He says, “Good writing is good living, it is insightful living.” You can only achieve this, he says, by following author Nick Joaquin’s advice: “People who are afraid to be honest will never be good writers”.

Honor students

Among the over 2,000 students who have been with Pagsi, he is taught and moved by the ones who know how to let go because he says, “Letting go of cherished things is difficult at any age.” This is why he admires former students like Fr. Manoling Francisco, who composed Hindi Kita Malilimutan in his class and songs like Sayo Lamang and I Will Sing Forever. Another is the recently ordained Fr. Francisco Alvarez who gave Pagsi his Tag Heuer watch as a promise that he would finish his seminary studies. Today, Fr. Alvarez, who graduated valedictorian and was rich enough to buy cars on a whim, works at PGH and inspires Pagsi with his stories and reflections on the Holy Mass.

Caesar was ambitious

As we end our one-on-one class, I ask Pagsi how he wants to be remembered. He quips, “You’ll never be remembered if you want to be remembered.” He recounts though how he asked his class about their ambition. Then one boy asks back for him to write his ambition. Stumped but challenged that day, Pagsi answers his own quiz and writes, “My ambition is to live like a used toothpaste tube — all squeezed out, twisted every which way, folded many times over, scraped clean of all the beautiful things God has given me.” And as we walk down the wide halls of Ateneo, I learn the true lesson of Mr. Pagsi and how he should be remembered. His students from last year rush to him and he teases them about how they used to sleep in class while forgetting me like another brick in the wall. I forgive him though it is here I learn who Mr. Pagsi truly is. He is not just a teacher who can answer with lines from Shakespeare to Milton. He’s more than the teacher who fights consumerist billboards along Edsa with memorable passages written in Manila paper. He is a true follower of Christ. He is a true friend and the most grateful apostle you’ll ever meet.

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Happy Birthday, Mr. Pagsi! He turned 82 years old yesterday, June 12.

My other favorite book is C.S Lewis’ Final Battl.e

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Teach me at readnow@supreme.ph.