[OPINION] What can we expect of our higher education graduates today?

Our graduates, representing what our educational system produces, would have to help guide our country in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world

Towards the end of the month of June college graduations crescendo. 

All over the country higher educational institutions (HEIs) celebrate the students who have successfully passed requirements to earn bachelor’s, master’s or doctoral degrees — complete with frameable parchments formally attesting higher learning. Throughout the arduous years of academic preparation, the dream of the HEI student is one day to march to the music of Edward Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance; pomp and circumstance indeed describe the ceremony which marches faculty members and graduating students in various shapes, colors and sizes of academic gowns, the stripes on one’s sleeve trumpeting the academic degree one already has or is about to receive. 

The university president and distinguished personalities deliver inspirational messages to the graduates; families and friends wait for the moment when their special someone walks onto the stage to receive his or her diploma.  Their academic degrees certify them ready to make a specialized contribution to society — even though some of them must further qualify themselves as professionals through such as national board or bar exams. 

Perhaps, with all the HEIs we should whisper in this graduation season a word of thanks for the many administrators, faculty, staff members, and support personnel who in public and private schools throughout the Philippines overcome countless obstacles to turn out each year’s batch of higher education graduates. With them, we must also thank those who are engaged in combatting malnourishment, in early childcare and development, in kindergartens, in elementary schools, and in junior and senior high schools for the roles they play in preparing learners to go to college, even though not all basic education graduates opt for college. 

Human power

We must especially thank the graduates — and their parents and benefactors — for having hurdled all the obstacles to graduation.  Nationwide, according to the report of the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM II), only 39% of approximately 32 million students go to college; of this group, less than two thirds make it to graduation. In them we may with Jose Rizal derive special consolation in our difficult times, “The youth are the hope of the Fatherland.” 

From the perspective of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the HEI graduations signal fresh human power to contribute competently to the national or the global economies. Similarly, for many parents, the graduation of their loved ones is a dream pathway to “success”— a handsomely-paying job locally or abroad, the competence to start a business, the ability of the graduates to lighten the financial burdens of parents, especially in helping younger siblings get a college education, or perhaps even a beginning to taking on the challenges of the family’s business.

From this perspective, despite all the pomp and circumstance, the actual expectations of the graduate in the Philippines are relatively modest. But the 1987 Constitution is much more demanding. And with it, today, the entire world. 

It mandates that all educational institutions, and a fortiori all higher education institutions, not content themselves with their graduates “getting a job” or “getting rich.” Beyond that, they must have inculcated the constitutionally mandated virtues articulated in Article XIV, Section 3(2): patriotism, nationalism, love of humanity, respect for human rights, appreciation for our national heroes, lived appreciation of the rights and duties of citizenship, ethical and spiritual values, moral character and personal discipline, critical and creative thinking, wisdom in scientific and technical knowledge, and vocational efficiency.”

Educators cannot teach such as patriotism or nationalism or moral character or critical thinking conceptually; instead, they must form these virtues in the hearts of their students less by what they say and more by who they are and how they live.  They must address the autonomy of the students and, ironically, shape freedom for life. In this manner, the technical and specialized knowledge that one earns in an academic concentration needs to be complemented by the life-long cultivation of these constitutionally mandated virtues. 

For we know, sadly, that having a job or a profession or a political position — like president of the Philippines — is not a guarantee that one has the required virtue. Without virtue, we suffer what we have surrendered to perpetually suffer — endless corruption, human exploitation, unspeakable violence, and environmental degradation.

Those who have religious convictions have more to answer for than the already challenging constitutionally mandated virtues. No matter how complex the world is, Jews are held to the Torah, Muslims to the Qur’an, and Christians to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Graduates of HEIs in the Philippines do not graduate from their religious imperatives: “Thou shalt not kill;” “Thou shalt not steal;” “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods.”  They graduate to live their religious convictions in enlightened freedom and maturity. And to combat — not engage in — the meanwhile endemic corruption of Philippine society.  And in the breathtaking amorality — if not moral depravity — of the world. 

Graduates in our troubled world

Our higher education graduates, representing what our educational system produces, would have to help guide our country in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world.

This is a world where the US in the last hundred days has lost its erstwhile global hegemony through self-inflicted wounds (e.g., on-off tariffs, bullying, imperialistic posturing, decline of the US dollar). It is a world in which the compromised global free-trade system is being reshaped, where 44 nations today —notably without the Philippines still tied to the US and its Typhon missiles ranged against China! — are applying for membership in the currently ten-nation BRICS free-trade alliance (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa + Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Republic). It is a world where China is challenging the economic leadership of the heavily indebted US. It is where Israel is currently dragging the US led by President Trump into an illegal and endless war of aggression against a sovereign Iran; backstopping Iran are the United Nations, the Arab Middle East nations, Yemen especially, and the BRICS nations. If President Trump decides to bomb Iran’s Furdow nuclear site, World War III may start. 

Hopefully, our graduates can show more sophistication, savvy, intelligence, ability to read, and wisdom than Mr. Trump in guiding our feet into the way of peace. – Rappler.com

Fr Tabora is a Jesuit educator and the former president of the Ateneo de Davao University. He is currently a research fellow at the John J Carroll Institute on Church and Social Issues (ICSI), a social apostolate of the Philippine Province of the Society of Jesus.