The University: Promoting Equality Through The Classroom

Going Back To The University

After decades, I have gone back to the university to teach which is a kind of renaissance for me. Friends in the academe have warned me that there is a different crop of students now. Of course, what the academicians mean is that many students today do not regard themselves as serious scholars plotting to change society and the world. Then, I saw some young student activists exercising their freedom of speech on television and their core message was about the tuition hike and the processes that should be part it.

I am teaching the social sciences (Political Science & Sociology) and I am filled with much hope that I can contribute to the mentoring of the successor generation. Some of these students will be future leaders. On the first day of class, I was trying to introduce a quality of mind that allows a student to understand one’s personal circumstance in the context of society and various institutions or what C. Wright Mills calls as the interplay between history, society and biography. It is revealing that advancements in science and technology have not solved much of the problems of humanity. Much of our problems are called social and the solutions involve changing social structures. For example, scholars are asking why is it that even as the Philippines is the most "western" country in Asia, it is also one of the poorest? China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia are performing well economically. What is it in our culture that hinders economic growth? I told my students that to say that the Filipino is lazy is a misrepresentation of social reality. But, the answer to the study of why we are still poor is a very long overdue report. Perhaps, the more incisive question is why is it that majority of our people do not have access to the wealth of our country?

Or why is it that across time, women have become subordinate to men? Ah but looking at the classroom now, I am much pleased that there are more women. But, then again, one can also accurately say that a private elite university is one of the social institutions that are accessible to one strata or class of society. The poor have been pre-excluded by virtue of their belonging to a particular class. And for the poor, the economic system has failed not just female students but male students too, and who have been excluded from school due to poverty. Which is why, one of the ideal functions of a good government is to subsidize the education of its people.

I was once asked what it was in my well rounded education that socialized me to enter the world of social development. During the activism of the 70’s when we were debating whether we wanted to be doctors, we asked ourselves, “ so when we treat a patient for malnutrition, what will happen to him or her when s/he goes back to his or her poverty?” So we said,” Let us address the poverty first by contributing our bit.” At that time and even now, the disciplines that are inspiring us and allowing us to look forward to good social change are the social sciences.


Promoting Equality Through The Classroom

I am about to go to the classroom to teach and I have to churn out words for my Wednesday column. There is so much to say and I always start up with a framework for saying things. Today, my frame of mind is about poverty and all sorts of inequality in society.

I am thinking of my two types of students in the classroom : type one is the group mesmerized and fascinated by what I am saying and investing themselves in interaction. The trick for this is the skill to evoke their interest and drawing examples relevant to their worldview and experiences; and type two is what I call the deviant few who are displaying what we call the “shut out” syndrome. Teachers in the elementary grades have a term for this: physically present but mentally absent. It is a challenge always to bring these students back to the classroom.

My topic for later is social stratification and the task is to explain how society is divided according to rank or hierarchy using various indicators that they will understand. My challenge for this is how to promote an egalitarian society given that my students are blinded by their middle or high class socio - economic status and thus have either no empathy for the poor or have aversion for being poor. Then, I remind them that the mission of the university where they are enrolled in is not only for excellence but also to serve others.

The Muslim world will observe Ramadan soon and by practice I have sort of always observed this season for years. We call it Duyog Ramadan. Particularly, in this season for this year, my colleagues will be traveling to Muslim communities about a project in the Shari’a courts and in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao but observing the holiness of the season. Some of my Muslim women friends will be doing paper work during the night and going slow during the day. I share to my class what a Muslim friend once said that the Ramadan season is, among others, a time for solidarity with the poor who have to undergo forced fasting all year round due to poverty.


Then I go about the myriad things about how wealth should be shared by all and how we should just be custodians of the earth’s resources for the next generation; and that the climate changes that we are experiencing are the consequences of the way we have treated the environment.

I will say, for instance, that in gender stratification, women have for centuries been subordinate to men and that there are rich feminists who are advocating for gender equality because they have owned the suffering of their mothers and all women before them. I guess if we are able to promote this kind if social consciousness, somehow this new generation will not allow discrimination because it is wrong. I always tell my students that all of the existing inequalities are socially constructed and amenable to social change but that change will have to involve change in institutions and structures. Institutions and structures are big words but a faster way to really change and promote new behavior is through laws and standards. I guess given that so much inequality is so well entrenched, we will have to think of more creative ways to promote an egalitarian society to a student population whose goal is to graduate from school and join society whose processes generate more inequality. This is a mission of a lifetime. And the classroom is a good place to start.