Higher education

The state U (University of the Philippines) teaches many things.

After an intensive four (or more) years in this melting pot, the students graduate, armed with the best education money cannot buy (tuition is free for the fortunate), and smug in the propaganda that they are the best in the country.

Off they march to the halls of Congress, or the boardrooms of the top conglomerates, or to their home province where they become the local intelligentsia. They have been groomed. Subjected to many trials, their sheltered high school life suddenly ripped away from them, and exposed to influences from bad to good to cerebral to political. Yes, that recent NPA scare has reared its rebellious head again, reviving, to the horror of many anxious parents, rumors of recruitment drives by communists and terrorists. But that’s another column.

While soaking in the rich academic life, students receive varied intellectual stimuli, and encounter folks of all sorts. In fact, they receive life lessons so early, that they could graduate from its halls already embittered and cynical.

Take the College of Fine Arts, supposedly the finest academy in the appreciation of beauty and talent that our nation has to offer.

This is such a venerable and storied institution that in its campus, the ceilings have rotted, the walls are gaping, and there is a general air of decline. Holes abound, and going to class is like going to a fifth-class municipality public elementary school building. What’s a few spores and molds in the pursuit of higher learning, eh?

One lesson that the College of Fine Arts wants to impart, I suppose, is that the students, selected for their talent via a competitive entrance process, should be able to ignore the cesspit that surrounds them (and will continue to surround them for the next four years). Hold their collective breaths, soldier on, and blindly hope.

This is a challenge, then, that the students should learn to overcome. As they say in cheesy self-help motivational books, the students should power through it. Transcend. And not just that, but they should be able to dream, flourish and then create gorgeously cerebral works of art. In other words, triumph! Grit and spirit trump petty material concerns! Or some bull like that.

Who needs gleaming corridors or sleek, seamless ceilings. So pedestrian. Exposed wires and black gaping holes work just fine.

The physical conditions endured by the enrollees are so ludicrous that one enterprising student, Adrian Ramos, stitched up the gaps in faux surgical thread and applied bandaids on top of the holes to create a site-specific installation he named “Scars from Scarce.” Voila. It has become art.

There is a plea from Adrian that accompanied his artwork. It is a call for action, not just for temporary solutions, for the appropriate funding for his beloved campus.

Perhaps Adrian will learn the next valuable life lesson UP has in its curriculum. It’s called, “how the powerful can ignore the powerless.” The many ways that those in charge will proffer many excuses. There is a module on how to listen to platitudes and expressions of regret, and then a follow-up course on how to wait patiently until the students see nothing is done about their concerns.

Valuable lesson that, patience. Exercised liberally while watching administration officials busy clinking wine glasses in university events and parties. The wining, dining, and speechifying. The whirl of art exhibition openings and art fairs. The merry rubbing of elbows and the gleeful licking of boots, all for the chance to keep their glamorous posts and the chance, perhaps, of government awards and prizes.

Well, welcome to the real world, students. This is what ordinary Filipinos encounter when they try to get the simplest permit or request for the simplest services from the government officials tasked and paid to attend to their concerns.

This is a useful life lesson for you. Trust me.