I ALWAYS thought my childhood was typical for rural Filipino children in the 1970s.
Elementary school started at 7 a.m., and wasn’t over until about 5 p.m.
There was an hour and a half lunch break from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., and I go home to eat lunch (since we are a walking distance from the school).
I did house chores after school, then had dinner, and did home works before going to bed, to wake up at 6am.
When I got to high school, I stayed behind until about 6 or 7pm because of extra-curricular activities — dance practices, school publication work, army tactical inspection rehearsals, decorating the stage (and halls) for convocation and special programs.
Most children of my generation focused on school, so it was just home-school-home routine for most of us.
On the weekends though, many would go on beach excursions, farm visits, spider hunting, kite flying, or a few rounds of ball games.
I stayed mostly at home to read books.
I am still very proud to say I’ve pored through the 22-volume Book of Knowledge encyclopedia (1965 edition) before I finished high school.
And actually had a photographic memory that I could remember a poem to be on the right or left side of the book spread.
I may not remember the page number, but I could feel whether it’s near the center, or three-fourths way through the volume.
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My parents were both teachers.
I was (and still am, in principle) a teacher.
Of course, I believe teachers can change one’s life.
I’d be ungrateful if I’d say no teacher has changed my life.
In fact, many, if not all, of my teachers have changed me.
Each different teacher, with his/her crazy, weird quirk made me understand how to deal with the crazy real world.
Most of my teachers in the elementary grade, and high school, greatly helped me develop my self-confidence.
They made me believe I could amount to something great.
Of course, I have an inkling of what I am capable of.
But when your personal conviction is validated by people who have watched their wards succeed through the years, you just become solid and strong in your conviction and confidence.
But I also had teachers who competed with me in a sense.
In the elementary, one teacher really tried to put me down (because her son was my classmate, and she thinks her son could be better than me).
In high school, a newbie teacher couldn’t really deal with the fact that I got more talent, and maybe genius, than him.
That one was a notable dancer in his time, and he was still pretty young, and eager to prove that his time wasn’t over yet.
But I was being groomed as the dancer of my generation!
He made sure I suffered all sorts of things.
I made sure I survived.
But the teacher who really changed my life big time was one who competed with me professionally as a writer.
When you have outdone your teacher, that’s when you know that teachers are just human blocks to your real freedom.
In the Philippines, the teachers are still the vanguards who determine your limitations.
Who tell what’s possible, and what’s not.
I know one literature teacher who called a friend’s poetry “decadent” because it was all gay and sexually explicit.
Today, that friend’s body of work is the foundation of regional gay writing.
And the lit teacher is dead. (500tinaga@gmail.com/PN)
