With Honors

On April 25, the University of the Philippines at Los Banos honors the AB Communication Arts program’s first summa cum laude since its founding in 1974.

 

Aidel Paul Belamide, one of UP’s top honor graduates in 2009, was my student in SPCM 1 (Speech Communication) in 2004. I remember foisting on their class the same question that I had been foisting on my COMM III/SPCM 1 classes at the start of every semester: “Who would like to graduate with honors?” No, I usually start with, “Those who would like to graduate summa cum laude please raise your right hands.” Nobody usually raises his or her right hand. Freshmen, who comprised the majority of students in my basic speech communication classes, would usually shy away from proclaiming that they actually had such ambition. “How about magna cum laude?” I would make a follow up. Still nobody raises his or her hand. “Cum laude?” Then I would glean sparkles from the eyes of some eager beavers especially those still basking in their secondary school glory, but false modesty would rule so nobody would end up raising a hand. Then I would cap my series of questions with, “So the highest possible grade for this class would be 2.25 or if you’re really good, 2.0. Both are respectable grades. Qualitatively, they are described as ‘good’ in the UP grading system.” Suddenly, I would hear a drone of peevish whining. And a brave soul would ask, “Sir, what if a student deserves better than 2.0?” I would then ask, “So let me repeat, who among you would like to graduate with honors?” A considerable number – sometimes more than half of the class – would raise their hands.

 

That was not the case in Aidel Paul’s class. The moment I foisted the question “Who wants to graduate summa cum laude?” I got an unexpected reply. Aidel, a small, lanky freshman whose eyes communicated so much involvement in the classroom dynamics, raised his rather frail hand. “Oh, so you want to be summa cum laude. And you happen to be a ComArts major,” I had to verify. “Yes, Sir,” he replied. “Not only do you want to be summa cum laude,” I retorted. “You also want to be ComArts’s first summa cum laude.” The sparkle in his eyes shone even brighter.

 

Later I would learn that he was also an active board member of Silang, Cavite’s municipal government, having been elected President of the Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) in the entire municipality, and that he had ambitions of becoming a local government executive.

 

From what I know of him, Aidel was no ordinary student. While he was active in his extracurricular activities in Cavite, he made sure he had an “expanded value” added to his assignments and presentations. I mean he took studying – doing assignments, writing papers, and taking examinations – very seriously, as in very seriously. That was the first and the last time he became my student in the formal classroom. He earned 1.25 in SPCM 1 – the highest grade top performing students earned in the UP classes I handled. When he got his grade, Aidel showered me with his characteristic display of effusive gratefulness but I could sense that he was a tad disappointed. He went on to be an extremely hardworking and persevering college student. The rest is history.

 

So what does it take to be an honor student? There is actually no formula. From experience, I say it takes more than brilliance to earn more than good grades. Hard work coupled with a capacity to adjust competently in shifting environments (contrasting teaching and learning styles, changing living conditions, varying personalities in and out of the classrooms, pressures from institutional constraints, etc.) contribute to success in studentship. “Natural intelligence” (which in my book pertains to mental/intellectual preparedness – or the capacity to do formal thinking) is certainly important to be able to succeed in college, although that is usually taken for granted in UP where the majority of the students are high school academic achievers or are presumably college/university-ready after surviving the formidable UP College Admission Test.

 

As implied earlier, I also graduated with honors. With honors (cum laude) lang. Not with greatest (summa) or with greater (magna) honors (laude) although I really didn’t mind graduating with those heavy weight titles. Like Aidel, I saw graduating with honors as a goal (and I am not going to display false modesty by saying I did not dream of aiming for the higher titles!). But my reasons were rather pragmatic.

 

Considering that I came from a family of modest means, I thought graduating with honors would at least land me a respectable job with a respectable salary (I did land a respectable job but that I earned a respectable salary from such a respectable job remains contentious to this day.).

 

During my first semester, while taking the required Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC), I had set my mind into becoming a college or university scholar (or being in the Dean’s or Chancellor’s List) because such would mean being exempted from the exhausting drills under the sweltering heat of the tropical sun. At that time, college and university scholars were asked to join the ROTC Pool of Instructors. During the 5-hour Saturday morning training, cadet instructors were tasked to read notes in the barracks or in shaded areas in preparation for lectures before throngs of cadets. The lectures – I even remember mouthing the concept of military reconnaissance! – were easy to handle.  We were allowed to read from the notes and with a little drama, I thought I actually made some cadets swoon! Well, I did that during my second, third and fourth semesters and that was how I survived ROTC. The first semester was “a debacle in the field” (I would see shades of aquamarine, tangerine, yellow, and other rainbow colors whenever I would faint!); the succeeding ones were a relative bliss.

 

Another reason for aiming for academic distinction had to do with my gender. Since I grew up being the “overt” kind – effeminate, campy, and perhaps, wimp-looking – I had to balance such physical conspicuousness with a perceived mental rigor or strength (with emphasis on the word “perceived”). Graduating with honors would at least give my prospective employer/s and future colleagues the impression that my wimp-like physicality can be counterbalanced by my intellectual gifts (or so I thought). Moreover, the academic distinction is always attached to the degree (which, for some time, gave me the delusion that I was actually brighter than ordinary minds.)

 

So how powerful is an academic distinction or graduating with honors? Does it really spell magic when one joins the labor force? It does spell magic but only for a brief period of time.

 

For somebody lacking experience and higher degrees, it was my passport for getting a teaching position in UPLB. My friend and colleague once told me that academic distinction is only good for two years. She was wrong. After less than a year, I already felt its magic wane. There were new graduates with the same or even higher academic distinctions joining the faculty. I wasn’t special anymore. Or I wasn’t special at all. I had to do more than bask in the glory of my academic distinction for my bachelor’s degree. In graduate school, I realized it is no big deal. Almost everybody graduated with honors so the distinction is taken for granted. What people are interested in in the postgraduate level is what kind of scholarship or research one is going to churn out – whether that is going to change the complexion of an academic field, make a significant impact in society or just end up as one of the many samples of thesis writing in the library shelves.

 

These days, it seems that academic distinction remains as the regular passport of the swarm of fresh graduates who join the university teaching force year in, year out.  It is, however, a sad commentary of our times when certain units in the UP are still forced to hire fresh bachelor’s degree graduates as members of the regular faculty when they should be attracting those with higher degrees and with immediate potential contributions to research and development. This is not to say that fresh graduates are incapable of teaching (I had been one of the many beneficiaries of that policy when I joined the teaching force as a fresh graduate in 1998 and I had been witness to peers who can really hold their own in the classroom. In hindsight though, I realize that, given my very limited background in research and scholarship, I was inadequate as a teacher. I was at the very least merely rehashing textbooks and mouthing authors I had read ahead of my students.), but just when you thought the UP has transformed itself to meet the challenges of the evolving knowledge economy and to be on par with its counterparts in the region and the world, it still appears to be stuck with recruiting babies to teach fellow babies.

 

That the UPLB ComArts program has produced its first summa cum laude in 35 years is a cause for celebration.  It may mean that despite having attracted very talented students through the years, the program through its faculty has really set exacting academic standards making it especially difficult for students to graduate with the greatest honors within the last three and a half decades. In fact, it took 25 years for the program to produce its first magna cum laude. That was in 1999. There were years before that when the program didn’t produce any honor graduates at all. It is, however, interesting to note that lately there has been an inflation of honor graduates in the program. This seems to be the trend as well in the System. While it may initially leave the impression that UP has been producing more and more intellectually competent students, it may be good to examine if that is really the case. Could this trend have been the consequence of recruiting fresh graduates who despite their academic distinctions aren’t really prepared to teach, evaluate, and provide students the level of difficulty they need to better develop intellectually? Could it be due to the fact that most teachers compensate their lack of intellectual preparedness by being generous in giving (very) high grades to their students? Could it be due to the fact that in making up for their inadequacy, some teachers would rather compromise quality for quantity (that is, giving high grades so they won’t feel so much indebted to their students)?

I wonder.