It was already tried out during the first Macapagal administration, when then Education Secretary Alejandro R. Roces caused the monthly pushback of the traditional June class opening until our school calendar coincided with that in the West. But as expected, this gained no appreciation, and slowly our school calendar had to revert to tradition.
A year ago or so, Senate President Frank Drilon was reported to have proposed the same scheme, push back the school opening to September, so that our kids, he reasoned, won’t have to start school in the rainy season.
Only recently, Senator Aquilino Pimentel, another legislator for whom no topic lies safely beyond his intellectual and emotional span, also voiced out his preference for a September school start. Nothing to do with SARS, he said. The kids would be saved from a wet trek to and from school if it starts in September.
And now, if only in keeping with our greater tradition of not leaving well enough alone, here comes President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo with headline material for one paper last Friday, joining the chorus for the deferral. The reason advanced is exactly the only one that has been used by the scheme’s proponents, just so they’re not accused of suffering from colonial mentality in wanting to dovetail our school calendar with that of the U.S.
In June, they say, the rains start. By deferring the school opening to September, the kids will be spared of having to cope with that ignominious characteristic of local weather. Oh, and most of them are needed to help farm the countryside when the rains come. Presumably they are expected to help seed farm lots in the rain, when these very same thunderstorms and downpour of any form are to be avoided when kids make their way to and from school.
That’s not the only fallacy unknowingly espoused by the Septemberistas. If anyone cares to ask our Pagasa weather bureau, he or she will be told that while Philippine summer ends with the first June rains, our monsoon season really goes on a more intense curve from August onward, and that September to November actually delivers more rainfall than the period from June to August.
But that’s not the only reason why I say that a September school start is fraught with the perils of indolent thinking.
Essentially, how can we expect students to preserve their sanity when they’re made to sit in classrooms in the stultifying heat and humidity from end-March through April and May till mid-June? That’s a sweltering period that does not lend itself well to diligence and focus, let alone intellectual stimulation.
Sure, some private schools have air-conditioned classrooms. Now think of what regular summer schooling will do to their electric bills, ergo, tuition. And for the rest of the student population, part of which even has to hold classes under mango trees, we can expect the entire class, the teachers included, to turn soporific in the summer heat.
We do have a Philippine summer. Call it the dry season if you will, or the hot, humid season. This is from March to May, when those of us who are lucky to have domestic help sometimes allow them to go home for a vacation.
March-to-May in the Philippines is vacation time for everyone, because the heat and humidity force us to seek open spaces by a mountain, field or sea. It is also a slow, languorous time, when we spend much individual effort in fanning ourselves while lying in hammocks. It is an enervating rather than an energizing season. That is why we break out into fiesta fever by Maytime.
But now, if the President and a couple of senators – who don’t take the trouble of consulting weather and education experts before opening their traps – will have their way, students must review for final exams while all others engage in hometown fiestas strangely shorn of the presence of young people. It will be sheer torture for students to take their final exams by the end of May or early in June.
The worst cut of all is that inflicted on the Filipino family. No more togetherness in Baguio or Boracay, Puerto Galera or Palawan, Tagaytay or Anilao, Cebu or Bohol, Davao or Surigao in April and May. No more homecomings during our special summertime. Only breadwinners and their spouses and in-laws can take the SuperFerry and SuperCats along the nautical highway in those months when our seas are calm.
There goes domestic tourism. There goes Dick Gordon’s WOW campaign addressed to his own people. The foreign tourists can enjoy our beach resorts all to themselves during Philippine summer.
To repeat, there goes the family tradition of enjoying a holiday break together during summer vacation. And all because some officials pushed for a revamp of this season that is dictated by our archipelago’s placement in the tropics, consequently our given weather patterns. If at all, they tend to follow government tradition; remember how one legislator once sought to abolish typhoons?
All summer workshops will have to be re-billed as rainy season workshops, to be conducted in July and August. All students will be excluded from any enjoyment of Philippine summer.
Tradition will be turned on its head, until everyone realizes once again that our well-meaning leaders tried to fix something that wasn’t "broke" in the first place. Perhaps that’s because they can’t handle their own fields of expertise well enough; they always have to seek an extension of coverage for their quality of incompetence. And this is manifested in asinine talk and asinine plans, for which it always appears to be open season.
Now let me cool off by sharing some feedback on my piece last week on "Buzzwords."
Cebuano novelist Carlos Cortes clarifies that he may have been slightly incorrect in ascribing the phrase "pushing the envelope" to airline pilots. Now he says that "test pilots at Edwards Air Force Base in Chuck Yeager’s time used ‘pushing the corners of the envelope’ in referring to the flight performance envelope. He adds that Tom Wolfe has it all in his best-seller The Right Stuff, which was turned into an equally fine movie.
Well, we can presume, safely I’d say, that the original phrase only got contracted, so that what’s become popular, even in advertising jargon, is the more compact "pushing the envelope."
Another reader sent in a rejoinder, which also touches on the possible provenance of the phrase. E. Villegas of Libris Books apparently enjoyed our take on current, fading and faded catch-phrases. He wades in to offer several good points.
"How could you miss ‘embedded’ when referring to journalists??!! Think of the spins-offs, as in ‘embedded with your neighbor’s wife,’ etc. (Yes, "embedded" has become the word of the moment, indeed. And how could I have missed out on "coalition of the willing," which a witty Ping Lacson turned into "coalition of the winning"?)
"The business academe is next only to sports as the generator of buzzwords. Indeed, business mines metaphors used in sports and the military, e.g., ‘game plan, game theory, take no prisoners, close call, capture the (market) ground, hit a homer, cover all bases, strategic intent,’ to add to ‘master of the universe, customer intimacy, competitive advantage, core competencies, paradigm setting, career mapping, parameters, eyeballs, cannibalizing your channels, market positioning, strategic management, the Peter Principle, Hobson’s Choice,’ etc.
"And by the way, Harvey Mackay, who authored a business bestseller, Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive, entitled his succeeding 1999 book Pushing the Envelope (we, ahem, sold a good number of this), which is absolutely appropriate, he being the CEO of Mackay Envelope Company. I say this to dispute the provenance to aviation quarters. It means what you said: To push the envelope is to bring one thing to the next higher level, to go all the way to the top, as in pleasing the customer, or when one applies himself to the task at hand. But then to push the envelope in the Customs area (in relation to) aviation clearly has a different meaning."
Villegas goes on: "’Paradigm’ was equally abused by Miriam the mad maiden and by that trapo and opportunistic Ople.
"You’d think that after Nixon and his aides, you won’t have ‘at this point in time’ to kick around, but no, I caught the current White House spokesman, Ari the balding fellow, use that a couple of times.
"’Even as we speak’ is I think one of Teddy Boy’s contributions to current usage. I seem to have detected some of that in Cory’s speeches written by him, yes?
"’Tipping point’ I don’t recall reading, but I remember T.S. Eliot having a line about the ‘still point’ or is it ‘turning point’ of the universe.
"And lastly, hindi ba ‘madapa ka rin’ was Erap’s reply to a Yankee who called him a mother-f***er!?? But that was attributed to his jokesmith Reli, yes?
"’Words, words, words…’ Thus spake Shakespeare in Hamlet."
Thanks, Carlos. Thanks, Eric.
Now if we can only record similar cases of dubious provenance when it comes to fool ideas like reinventing the wheel, or our traditional school calendar.