Graduation in November

Because of the changes brought about by the mandated K+12 program, our Grade 7 students now find themselves part of high school without graduating from grade school. And so, we have to have a graduation in November.

The parents would not allow their children to be high schoolers without formally shedding off their grade schooler status. And they find March of next year, the usual graduation month, too far. So I find myself presiding over a Baccalaureate Mass in somber November.

Graduation, of course, is a happy occasion. It marks a transition, the end of one phase and the beginning of another. It means some achievement, some attainment, and a looking forward to new challenges as the process of education and formation goes on.

I like to think that the students are slowly but steadily building up their foundation for the future. They are into a process at once tedious and exciting, as they learn new things and new lessons, while revisiting and re-appreciating old past lessons as they receive the tradition of the previous generations.

Students have to study. Teachers have to prepare their classes well and also act as parent surrogates as they provide whatever help and support students who are also children need in school. Parents, of course, do everything, even trying to grab heaven here on earth, to assure the proper development of their children.

I just hope that this triad of parents, teachers and students, and that of the home, the school and the individual manage to work in synergy, guided and propelled by God’s grace to which everyone has to correspond as best as he could.

Education and formation actually never ends for us. Even in our old age, we need it, and in fact, more so. That’s because we tend to resist new knowledge the more knowledge we accumulate. And we are actually poised, due to our spiritual faculties and supernatural destination, to know an infinity of things.

Education and formation goes in stages and in cycles, reflecting the rhythm of life itself. It can not help but set itself fully in the task of pursuing the ultimate purpose of our life. It cannot and it should not be arrested in some levels, saying enough to what may already be gained so far.

So it cannot be detained at the academic or scholastic level alone where the sciences, the arts, some skills and technologies are learned. It has to engage us in all our needs as persons and children of God. And that means everything, all our needs that simply grow and grow. It’s a dynamic set of needs, not static.

It has to carry out what St. Peter once said: “And you, employing all care, minister in your faith, virtue; and in virtue, knowledge; and in knowledge, abstinence; and in abstinence, patience; and in patience, godliness; and in godliness, love of brotherhood; and in love of brotherhood, charity.” (2 Pt 1,5-7)

We simply have to go on. And we have to realize that education and formation goes far beyond the school or academic setting. It involves the home, the church, the social and cultural environment, and even the economy and our legal and political systems.

In fact, every field of human endeavor should have a clear educational and formative animating spirit. Let’s hope that all of us realize this truth more deeply and act in accordance to it.

Insofar as the academic setting is concerned, it has to be pointed out that all the subjects taught there have to be properly grounded and oriented toward the original source and the ultimate goal of knowledge, who is God.

It would be a disaster if we just get entangled in the merely intellectual and technical aspects of the subjects. We would open ourselves to the possibility of misusing and even exploiting them. That’s because we would be pursuing and using them according to our purposes, and not the will of God who created them.

We need to realize that all these subjects—the sciences and arts, the skills and technologies—ultimately come from God and belong to God. Ours is simply to discover them and make use of them, including making some inventions, but always in accordance to God’s plan and providence.

The very nature of these subjects can only reflect the wisdom, the goodness and the love of God for us. If their nature is properly respected and used, these subjects can only lead us to God, and can involve us in the dynamics of love, the essence of God of whom we are the image and likeness.

***

Email: [email protected]