Today’s View: To the UP scholar who died in suicide

And the education we get is not even a suitable response to our dream.  Neither is it ideally relevant to our doggoned reality.  It is a goddamned colonial education rammed down into our throats by our erewhile colonial masters!

By DON J. PAGUSARA
Davao Today

My heart bleeds and I weep silently in behalf of all the youths who dream and strive in quest for knowledge in this our dear, dear land, but found themselves trapped in impossible circumstance.  All because of the “impossible” system of education we are in.

In my heart I cry out loud in angry protest against this oppressive order of things in our society.

Oh, everyone longs for education, for a college degree.

And the education we get is not even a suitable response to our dream.  Neither is it ideally relevant to our doggoned reality.  It is a goddamned colonial education rammed down into our throats by our erewhile colonial masters!

And so, to be educated in the Philippine educational system is to become an alienated Filipino — “a little brown American,” deft in the ways of the Americans, speaking the language of the Americans, advocating, adopting and advancing the interests of the Americans — the so-called American Dream.

And so, being educated Philippine-style is to despise our own culture, our own language, our brown skin, until we end up in hatred of our very own Filipinohood.

I found her

on an infant  morning

on the seashore

collecting droplets of

moments and dreams

under the sun

Her eyes mirrored

the laughters of pebbles

and seashells washed

by rains and seawaves

in the night

Sunbeams

collect on her face

as she danced on tiptoe

on the warm sand

And the emerald isle

on the other limit of the sea

kept on beckoning her

but there was no banca

to take her

To the emerald isle

shining like a jewel

in the sun

And she kept on dancing

on tiptoe, pirouetting

lifting her arms

opening her palms

to the clouds

As she moved towards the sea

and her toes were kissed by the  waves

and her tongue quivered

and her breasts thundered

and she walked past the shore

towards the beacon of her

Quest to eternity.

Don J. Pagusara is a native of Mindanao, a multi-awarded author and a Palanca-awardee.