UP Los Banos: farming, food engineering, bees and bananas, community radio, and much more ...

We attended this year's homecoming and reunion organized by the University of the Philippines Alumni Association (UPAA), our first since forty years ago when we graduated with a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering.  Just about a dozen of us Ruby Jubilarians were able to get together, but we had fun remembering our then 'age of Aquarius' and musing if we could be still be around to be honored like the older Golden and Diamond Jubilarians, and there were plenty of them in attendance.

One of this year's recipients of the UPAA's distinguished alumni awards--Dr Rey A Elizondo (BSAE'68)-- happens to be a fraternity brother who we last saw forty-five years ago before he moved from Diliman to Los Banos to finish his agricultural engineering course.   He was given recognition for his achievements in food engineering, an area which he teaches at the California State University and the California State Polytechnic University.  His involvement in the cannery project for the Ukraine to meet international food safety standards earned him the US President's Volunteer Service Award in 2007.

There were three other distinguished alumni from UP Los Banos in the roster of  twenty awardees.  Dr Cleofas P Rodriguez-Cervancia (BSA'68, MS'72, PhD'82) was cited for her achievements in community development through research and extension services.  She's well known in the bee industry. Her name is associated with the UPLB Bee Program, and she has shown through her studies how bees contribute to increasing crop yield and biodiversity of wild plants.

Dr Agustin B Molina, Jr (BSA'73, MS'79), a senior scientist widely known in Asia and the Pacific, was cited for his focus on banana research. He has worked on the control of the most destructive diseases of banana, the conservation, characterization, evaluation and use of the Musa germplasm. and he contributed to the rehabilitation of the lakatan industry in Luzon.

Ruby jubilarian Mr Lucio N Tabing (BSA'70) was recognized for his work in rural community empowerment through broadcast communication.  As a communicator and broadcaster, he has helped and empowered poor Filipinos like the small fishermen of Laguna Lake, farmers and fishermen along the Pampanga River, the Ilongots, the Dumagats and the Aetas in Zambales and Pampanga.  His pioneering community radio 'has changed the lives of local communities, contributing extensively to many aspects of community life such as agriculture, environment, health, livelihood, cultural expression, public service and local governance.'

Their achievements and fields of specialization speak of the evolution of the college of agriculture established by the Americans in 1908, one of the original core of colleges of the University of the Philippines, "primarily for the purpose of furnishing proper higher education and training for farmers in the Philippine Islands (Copeland 1914)."

Back then, more than a century ago, three courses were offered:  "a course of six years to which graduates of the intermediate schools are admitted; a course of four years for high school graduates; and a special course, which does not lead to a degree, of a single year, for the training of teachers of agriculture in the public schools (Copeland)." Its department of forestry trained young men to become forest rangers for the Bureau of Forestry and the successful ones were given additional courses leading to a bachelor of science degree and trained for higher positions in the bureau.

Los Banos town had "one main street with a number of frame houses, besides the regulation nipa houses." There was a little hotel with hot springs, an old building used as a hospital during the Spanish regime that had been converted into a military hospital by the US Army,  and an American store patronized by soldiers. (Boyce 1914)

Copeland wrote that "nearly all of the students live in groups, each occupying a house ... most of these houses are on the campus, some owned by students, some by the Bureau of Forestry and occupied by its pensionados, and some built by a club organized for the purpose."

Around 1914, board was P10 a month, and cost of living was also around that much.  Many students were self-supporting, and "there [were] various opportunities for students to earn their way. The college employ[ed] all students who desire work, at field work at the rate of 10 centavos an hour, so long as the class work of the student [was] satisfactory."  Advance students could earn from P10 to P25 monthly as office, library, laboratory or field assistants; they could also be janitors.  "The most prosperous self-supporting student is probably the one who furnishes music for the Los Banos cinematograph,"Copeland wrote.
 
Through the years, the cool sprawling campus sprouted with academic buildings for specialized academic disciplines evolving from agriculture and forestry, and with housing units for faculty members and dormitories for students.  The one-main-street town itself has evolved into a commercial hub constantly in flux to meet the housing and supply needs of the continuing stream of UPLB students. 

Certainly, the 2010 distinguished alumni from UPLB had far more convenient and comfortable accommodations off or on campus. More so the students of today.

References.

Boyce, W.D. (1914). The Philippine Islands/Illustrated.  Chicago and New York: Rand McNally and Company.  Retrieved from http://name.umdl.umich.edu/baq2895.0001.001.

Copeland, E.B. (1914, Feb.). The College of Agriculture. The Philippine Craftsman.2(8):609-619. Manila: Bureau of Printing. Retrieved from http://name.umdl.umich.edu/acw9599.0002.008.

UP Alumni Association. (2010). UP 2010: Galingan Pa (Yearbook).

Your mom or grandma could have been a girl basket ball player!

Two sporting events were of world-wide interest lately:  the opening of the FIFA World Cup in South Africa, still ongoing with favorite football teams still being frenziedly cheered on by rabid fans with the noisy vuvuzelas, and the NBA championship confrontation between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics, which lasted up to Game 7 with the Celtics falling with a loud thud heard around the world while Kobe Bryant was hugging his MVP trophy.

Futbol is not in the popular vocabulary of the Pinoy world, and football fans in our country who are in frenzy monitoring the Mundial 2010 group rounds so that they can figure out for the betting who's going to run away with the copa  probably number less than those who voted for wannabepresident JC Reyes or Nicky Perlas.

But that's not the case with the NBA where almost everyone in 'Pinas including the primary school kids got glued in front of TV sets cheering on the Lakers or the Celtics and their favorite iconic players. And that happens too when the PBA or the NCAA or the UAAP or the barangay summer youth leagues from Batanes to Tawi-Tawi go into the final rounds.

We understand why futbol is almost alien to Pinoys except where Don Bosco brothers put up schools or mission houses or around open spaces where Europeans and Asians from former Old World territories gather to roll and kick the ball in their leisure days.  It was never in the athletics program of the public school system that the Americans initially implemented in the early 1900s (they have another kind of football!).

However, basket ball (that was how it was spelled in the old days) took root in the Philippine Islands a few years after it was invented in 1900. It came with the Americans who put it into the organized athletics program of the public school system.  To the American education authorities, a balance curriculum consisted of academic instruction ('the three R's, geography, history, and certain cultural and professional branches'), industrial work ('clearly defined form of vocational training'), and physical training ('physical exercises to improve physique and health').  

Physical training involved general school games like group and play yard games, and organized athletics comprising baseball, indoor baseball, boys' and girls' basket ball, volleyball, track and field, and tennis, which were the areas of competition in amateur meets within school divisions, of inter-provincial organizations and the Philippine Carnival.  Many of the rules governing the athletic games were based on those used in the United States "with special adaptation to the needs of the country."  These were all gathered in a handbook issued as Bulletin No. 40 in 1911 (revised in 1913)  to all public school teachers for guidance.    

For boys' and girls' basket ball, the Spalding's Official Basket Ball Guide for Boys was used, but with some modifications for the girls. For example, a boys team for match games consisted of five players, while the girls had six players, the extra player being known as "side center."  A boys game consisted of halves of twenty minutes each with a rest of ten minutes in between, and basket change at the end of the first half.  On the other hand, a girls game had three periods, the first and third of ten minutes each, and the second of fifteen, with a rest of five minutes between the first and second and ten minutes between the second and third; and baskets changed after each period.

Girls' basket ball could have been greatly encouraged, and this is evidenced, for example, by twenty-six girls teams (see picture above) of the Central School of Laoag. The other pictures tell us that girls' basket ball was an interesting feature in the athletic meets. 

It's possible then that our parents or grandparents who went to the public schools before the second world war had several specialized athletic teams to join in, and we are not surprised if our mothers and grandmothers were in basket ball teams.

At this juncture, we do not know how long girls' basket ball remained in the meet events before the war, or when it was dropped from the organized athletics program for some reasons, say, because girls' interest did not get to be as frenzy as the boys'.  We post-war babies did not see our girl classmates get recruited to basket ball teams although some were into softball (not baseball); we never saw tennis rackets too.

There was a revival of girls' basketball (modern-day spelling) early in the millenium, and a national team had competed in the regional and world games.  Of recent memory is the inclusion of women's basketball in the UAAP or NCAA, and we're wondering if it's still there although the championships are not as madly watched as those of the [male] Blue Eagles, Green Archers, Tamaraws, Maroons, and the like.

Well, the only time we'll see women basketeers again will be in the next Olympics in London, I guess.

References.

Bureau of Education. (1911, 1913). Bulletin Nos. 40-1911 & 40-1913.  Athletic Handbook for the Public Schools. Manila: Bureau of Printing.  Retrieved from http://name.umdl.umich.edu/acp1028.1911[1913].040.

Bureau of Education. (1916). Sixteenth Annual Report of the Director of Education, January 1 to December 31, 1915. Manila: Bureau of Printing. Retrieved from http://name.umdl.umich.edu/acs9512.1915.001.

Government Publication. (1920). Facts and Figures about the Philippines. Manila: Bureau of Printing. Retrieved from http://name.umdl.umich.edu/afj2127.0001.001.

Did your Parents or Grandparents pore through the Rizal Readers?

On the 19th of June next year, the nation will be celebrating the 150th birth anniversary of the national hero from Calamba, Laguna, who was schooled at home by his mother Teodora before he was sent to the public school in Binan, then to the Dominicans and the Jesuits in Intramuros before going to Europe for further studies and his patriotic mission.

If Pepe Rizal was seven when he went to the Binan school, he and the other first graders, and the public school system in the Philippines were just about of the same age. It was only in 1860 (150 years ago) that O'Donnell, the Spanish minister of war and colonies, established the public primary school system--one for boys and one for girls--in each town in the archipelago with Spanish as medium of instruction.  Since the schools were in the town center, education was forbidding to children from far-flung barrios; hence, it was a privilege that the children of the rich families enjoyed. 

An image that continues to illustrate the value of books, or the importance of teaching young children how to read, or the joy of reading, is that of Pepe listening to his mom read to him a story from a book.  The original drawing was done by Fernando Amorsolo for the Philippine Readers of Camilo Osias in the 1920s.

Reading was a major subject in the primary (Grades 1 to 4), intermediate (Grades 5 to 7) and secondary (first to fourth year high school) courses of study in the 11-year American public school system set up in the country in 1901.  

The primary schools aimed "to give children a knowledge of letters ... to make the common people literate in the English tongue" (Bureau of Education 1909) with four years of reading, language, writing and spelling, among other subjects. After Grade 4, the pupils could choose to go to any of three-year intermediate courses of study: general course, the course for teaching, the course in farming, the trade course, the course in housekeeping and household arts, and the course in business" (Education 1912).  Grammar and composition, and reading and spelling were major subjects in the intermediate grades.

Proficiency in English was the admission ticket to the secondary courses: the pupil's "written and spoken English [must be] approximately equivalent to that of an American school boy upon entering high school."

It was thus necessary for the public schools to have basal and supplementary reading materials.  At the start, all of these were brought from America, designed for the schools there but whose material and character contents were alien to Filipino children. Subsequently, calls were made for textbooks written especially for Filipinos and well adapted to local conditions, and American publishers responded with books by American and/or Filipino authors. By the 1920s, the primary and intermediate pupils were already reading "The Philippine Readers, Books 1 to 7" by Camilo Osias, "Rizal's Own Book" as translated by Agustin Craig, and "Rizal Readers, Primer to Book 7"  by various authors.

Of the Rizal materials, "Rizal's Own Book," published and adapted for use as supplementary reading in Grade 4 in 1918, had authentic local appeal since it was written by the hero himself about his experiences in life.

Starting in 1924, the  Primer and First Reader of  the "Rizal Readers" were textbooks in Grade 1. The Second up to Seventh Reader became supplementary readings correspondingly in Grades 2 to 7 in 1925.

The books' titles were misleading actually.  In his review of Philippine schoolbooks in 1930, Frederick Starr commented that the Primer of the "Rizal Readers" "contains little else that smack of the Philippines," while "the First Reader contains little folklore, a brief article upon Rizal, and some pictures with local color." 

Starr said that the color frontispieces of the two books are portraits of Jose Rizal. From the advertisement  (above) placed by John C. Winston Company in the September 1930 issue of Philippine Magazine, allusions to Rizal can be seen only in the cover decorations of the First Reader (his Luneta monument) and the Seventh (his portrait).  

In 1924-1925, authorship was attributed to Firman and others for the Primer, First Reader and Third Reader; and to Lewis and others for the rest of the Readers.  In 1927, the Primer and First Reader were attributed to Firman, Maltby, Marshall and Estrella; the Second and Third Readers to Lewis, Marshall and Estrella; and the Fourth to Seventh Readers to Lewis, Rowland, Marshall and Carreon.

Revisions in the book contents could have come from changes in authorship, which could be the case when these were advertised in 1930 as "adapted to the Philippine Islands," whatever that meant, by Elizabeth J. Marshall, Cesaria R. Estrella, Miguel L. Carreon and Gabino R. Tabunar, the last three being all Filipinos.

Our conjecture is that the "Rizal" in the book title and the portrait in the frontispiece were dedicatory in nature, and a brief article on the hero was a simple obligatory token.

When we entered the public elementary schools, "Pepe and Pilar" was our primer in Grade 1, the Rizal Readers were no longer in circulation but the Philippine Readers was still in our reading list.  

It's no wonder then that our parents spoke and wrote in English quite well; they were required to go through basal and supplementary readings, story telling and writing what they learned. 

Their time was almost a century before this cut-and-paste and jejemon age, when the medium of instruction is Pilipino, and English is again a must to learn just like when the Americans were newly arrived with that language.  

References.

Barrows, D. (1903, September). The aims of primary education in the Philippines. The Official Gazette. 2(4):58-67. Manila:Bureau of Printing. Retrieved from http://name.umdl.umich.edu/acs9512.0002.004.

Bureau of Education. (1906 to 1928).  6th to 28th Annual Report of the Director of Education. Manila:Bureau of Printing.  Retrieved from http://name.umdl.umich.edu/acs9512.xxxx.xxx.

Starr. F. (1926). A review of Philippine School Books. The Philippine Republic. 3(10):12. Washington DC. Retrieved from http://name.umdl.umich.edu/acc6198.1926.010.

Copy of advertisement from Philippine Magazine (1930, September issue).  Retrieved from http://name.umdl.umich.edu/acd5869.0027.001.