Education and poverty

Sometime during the Christmas holidays, 21-year-old Onak asked me if I needed someone to look after the little orchard I was starting at the foot of Mt. Malasimbo in Bataan.  I remembered him as a sprightly teenager who helped around in my brother’s garden.  Slightly deaf because of chronic ear infection, he had quit school … Read more

A Moro homeland

Finish them off, or give them back their land. Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile may have uttered this sentiment in exasperation over the Arroyo government’s lack of a clear policy on Mindanao.  But he should know Mindanao, having played a key role in the Marcos regime’s handling of its problems.  He also has business interests in … Read more

A sociology of love

It is perhaps symbolic of the perennial tension between the natural forces of life and the attempts to regulate life in the world that a day set aside for erotic love should be named after a Christian saint.  The coincidence is not exceptional.  Many holidays in the Christian calendar have pagan origins.  Sometimes the pagan … Read more

Repairing basic education

We all know there is something very wrong in the education of our children.  Where the trouble lies and how we should repair it have been the subject of recurrent debate.  Recently, a group of professors and researchers in education from the University of the Philippines offered their thoughts on this question in a position … Read more