An Open Letter to My Students

         As far as I am concerned, I know education is important to you, especially in investing in a good future. However, before even going further, let us clarify first what you mean by education and a good future. As a teacher, I too was once like you. I suffered under hectic schedules, deadlines, mind-twisting examinations and long hours of listening to lectures; typically, your academic life. Seeing you today made me think of the very problem in our nation nowadays, and that most of you are unaware of such a dilemma because society was clever enough to numb you.

     It is an undeniable fact how our educational institutions molded us to become the best memorizers and imitators of already existing things. Intelligence now has become a showcase of how fluent your English is, or how many terminologies you can sink into your head. Diction has become the standard of your being educated, and empty words have become the badge of your genius; hence, it deeply shows how problematic our education is.

      Obviously, there is a need to cater to the industry, but its mechanisms forced education to be a mere inputting of things and never been a drive into the novel. Technocrats are indeed the result of today’s diploma mills. There are so many proud parents and proud graduates who saw the final academic ceremony as their ticket to being educated. Much so, they receive the highest academic rewards as the best imitators and most obedient children in school.

        Education has become a mere phase of one’s youthful days before entering the world of work. Moreover, it is seen as a means to be elevated into a higher plane i.e. from being poor to become a middle class or the elite. I agree that this is the adverse effect of a system that now decays the noble cause of enlightenment in education itself. The times have made the lofty field of progressive critical thinking into a mere acquisition phase for the sole purpose of school survival. I cannot blame then why students are so stressed once being enmeshed into a field which demands them to analyze and ponder. On the contrary, they seem to be so challenged and motivated once there are so many things to memorize.  Furthermore, the temptation to cheat comes along with the very fact that they need to pass or else they will lose this important step of their future career-defining lives. I understand the situation, but will never tolerate such acts. I am not saying that I am adding a load to the oppressive situation that we both are in, but my mission is to make you all think so that we can altogether find solutions to liberate ourselves through collective actions from our present situation.

        Mine is just a minor subject (Philosophy and History). But come to think of it, this was not given importance because the curriculum makers themselves do not wish for the floodgates to be opened, especially when the outcomes of a radical and proper liberal arts tutelage will lead to critical people that will challenge systems; wherein, the current times do not wish to waste time and resources suppressing. Most of the time, you are so busy with your field of work and specialization, but you forgot that once you are outside the confines of the school, you will be colored indeed. The present system wishes you to be blind and neutral so that you cannot be open-minded to see what terrible things are happening in front of you. Not much of a Bonifacio nor a Marx will indeed be useful in fixing a computer, wipe the table, change a diaper, remove a tumor; however, much of them can be used once you are also being usurped by the system that governs your career. “But who cares anyway?” This question is always asked as a result of who you were back in your elementary days. The days when your teacher stands as an authority that turns you mindless over the things around you. They molded you to become mindless and apathetic. And once you imitated perfectly, thus badges of genius with a matching entourage celebrates your mimicry. Again, “why should I care?” It is already enough that I am surviving. I have tiled floorings and a steel roof over my head. And as long as I am okay, corruption in the government and in society is no big deal. Indeed, these could be soon the statements of my students. Especially, these students that I am seeing right now whose faces are telling me these privileged statements when my mind-boggling and not less than five-item examinations start.

           I am sure that the imagery of success in their heads is patterned of what the popular media already imparted into them which is enough to delude them into the culture of mindless consumerism, and all the more feeds the pockets of the strategists of mass production. I pity that kind of thought, for it is clear evidence of being totally swayed by popular shit ass media. Plus, it is a clear result of being under a school environment that strategically advertises the manipulative intent of the few big shots of the system. Almost a majority who enters the school has as a mindset that the school will be just a diploma mill, and not anymore a glorious place for intellectual ejaculations that can be a fulfillment to your being which the lessons will be used to restructure society. I believe that there are only a few who would enter the educational institution with a hungry soul for knowledge sake. I had to show my middle finger to the mechanistic world for making the beauty of thinking replaced by technocracy. Success now is geared to being a technocrat and a mindless consumer. A very well played result to keep the masses continually ignorant, and all the more apathetic to the reality of society.

                I am indeed sorry to pain you all with my tests, because it pains me to see the world all the more broken due to mechanization. Welcome to the machine! But, please, liberate yourselves. Be an organism, not a machine. It is indeed painful to move when you are habitually chained inside your caves.