Next school year, the high school department of Ateneo de Manila University at Loyola Heights, Quezon City, which has always been an all-boys’ school, will start accepting girls.
This brings me back many years ago, in the 50s when I taught at the ADMU High School. Many things come to my mind now. If we had girls in our class back then, how would I have treated female students if they misbehaved? Would I have had the guts to discipline them as I did my boys, like making them write “I will never misbehave again” or sending them out of the classroom?
On the other hand, being a co-ed high school would not be too bad after all. Teenage boys would be inclined to behave better in front of girls their age. I would have not minded at all.
Looking back, I wonder how former President Erap Estrada, now mayor of Manila, would have behaved in the presence of girls of his age when he was my student during his second year.
I guess it’s for the best that the Jesuits have made ADMU a co-educational university, both in college and high school. The Ateneo Grade School remains exclusive to boys. That way, teenage boys will learn how to live with opposite sex. I know since I am a product of public schools from grade school to high school until I went to college at the old Ateneo de Manila Padre Faura ruins in 1947.
I still recall that during my school elementary days, the worst punishment I got from my teacher whenever I misbehaved was to be seated together with a girl my age. Santa Banana, that was horrible since I would not even be able to talk to my seatmates.
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President Aquino was his usual self before the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines gathering. He lambasted some members of media who only want to sensationalize, highlight tragedy, point out supposed failures and make accusations. “Let me emphasize that I never asked that media refrain from reporting negative news. All I asked for was a reasonable balance,” the President added.
BS Aquino III recalled that one of the local media personalities replied: “We are in business. It’s not our job to trumpet the positive,” adding that he was truly taken aback by her response. The President continued and asked this question: “Are we not all Filipinos? Does this mean that you are not concerned about what happens to our country?” “Today, I also believe that there is enough reason to ask: Do we just take it as gospel truth that bad news sells?”
Clearly, BS Aquino III is still ignorant what media (print and broadcast) are all about. When media headline the negative, it is not only because the negative sells and the positive don’t. Media also want to jolt policymakers to address problems, which are more often than not the fault of the President and his administration.
Santa Banana, BS Aquino III forgets that the press is often called the “Fifth Column.” It is the one whose business is to raise concerns and jolt people in power to do what they are paid to do.
My gulay, when people in government are incompetent, apathetic and so insensitive to the aggrieved, to the poor and the jobless, at times lacking empathy for them in their miseries, and so inept, lacking in sense of justice, we in media say so.
The President forgets that everytime Malacañang and his administration are attacked for some shortcoming, he has enough spokesmen and apologists to balance the news. In fact, Malacañang has more than enough tools to counter negative news in print and broadcast—and this is all paid for by the people.
Santa Banana, BS Aquino III even has conscripted members of the press defending him and trumpeting positive things he has allegedly done.
I suggest the President should look at himself in front of the mirror. I would say that in my more than 65 years in media, having gone full circle in print, radio and television, the Aquino administration is the worst I have known.
I have never known a President so vindictive and so ruthless to his political enemies.
In my lifetime, I would like to see the next President healing political wounds and unifying the country to enable it to move forward.
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Obviously, BS Aquino III is worried sick that his candidate for vice president, Leni Robredo, will never make it. People outside of Naga City do not know her. This is probably why the President has started attacking Senator Bongbong Marcos’ candidacy for vice president.
The President wants the people not to forget the Marcos Martial Law days where there were many instances of disappearances of critics and its enemies, torture and killings. Bongbong Marcos should apologize for all of them, the President intones. He also laments the fact that the Marcoses are still in power.
My gulay, this is precisely what I mean by a President so vindictive and so obsessed against his political enemies that he would inflict the sins of the father against his children.
The fact is that BS Aquino III is realizing that there are many people out there who would want Bongbong Marcos to become vice president, and possibly become President in 2022. I see this coming with the sudden rise of the approval and trust ratings of Bongbong in poll surveys, not too far behind poll survey frontrunner Senator Chiz Escudero for vice president.
If the Marcoses and the Romualdezes are still in power, that’s up to the people as they do with the former First Lady Imelda Romualdez Marcos as Ilocos Norte representative, and Imee R. Marcos as Ilocos Norte governor.
The fact is that many people also are aware of the many good things that were done during the Marcos regime, like the North Luzon Expressway and the South Luzon Expressway, and the Marcos Highway to Baguio. Marcos also broke the backbone of the communist insurgency movement until they were amnestied by the late Cory and made the secessionist movement of the Moro National Liberation Front irrelevant with the exile of Nur Misuari to Egypt, until Cory brought him back.
I don’t know why BS Aquino III is so much against the Marcoses when it was Imelda that sent his late father, Ninoy, to the US for a heart bypass. Records also have shown that it was Imelda that supported the Aquinos then on exile at Boston, Massachusetts. How easily BS Aquino III forgets—or wants to forget!