Images of November

Teaching

After two weeks of teaching the first conclusion I can definitely report is that teaching is Hardwork!

Steph and I are teaching English and Maths to the technical trainees. They spend most of their time learning practical skills but also have lessons in English, Maths, Entrepreneurship, Ethics, Theology and PE.  This education is alongside, daily mass, frequent prayers, practical chores and hobby time.

We are teaching all the English and Maths, and also writing programmes for both subjects which will be used by the teachers who follow us in years to come, not just here but also at the other Salesian Training Centres across the Southern Philippines.

Every week we each have 14 hours of teaching, 8 hours of assisting the others teaching, 1 hour of faculty meeting and a Marathon Saturday afternoon when we give extra classes to those who need them for as long as it takes, yesterday it took just over four hours. On top of that there is all the planning, marking and logging of results. I am sure the experienced teachers among my readers will think nothing of this relatively light workload. But for someone who has never taught before, and so is lacking confidence, it is pretty tiring.

We have 220 students, the biggest class is 37, the smallest is 23

Despite the tiring nature of the work I am enjoying the challenge. Teaching the intelligent students is relatively easy, it is the less able ones who present the challenge, but they also provide the biggest reward. There is definitely a certain thrill in helping an 18 year old to grasp simple addition.

This experience of being a teacher is itself teaching me a lot about the virtue of patience, teaching involves a continuous need to be patient. Understanding how concepts which I find easy can be difficult for another person does not come naturally. The temptation to get frustrated with their slowness to learn is an ever present.

This necessity, as a teacher, to try to see the subject through the eyes of the student is, once the frustration has past, a real gift.

Why didn't Noah Swat the Mosquito?

These are really annoying....

A New Reading Site – Part 1: Reading the Reality before my Senses

Whenever I encounter a new experience or encounter a new reality my brain quickly goes into overload trying to make sense of it. My brain does not sit easy in the midst of experiential chaos; I like to make order out of chaos at least to the satisfaction of own mind. I am pre-disposed towards finding conclusion to situations quickly. This tendency is not a bad thing, intelligence is there to be used, and yet at the same time it is an approach to new realities which is full of risk. I have to continually remind myself of the arrogance of a resident alien believing he can make logical sense of the Philippines within a few weeks or months.

So I have been getting very philosophical, thinking a lot about how I see the world, and how I make sense of the world. Here is where I am up to!

Whenever we encounter something new our pre-existing dispositions, ideas and prejudices weigh heavily on how we see, interpret and understand any information we receive. The way in which we make sense of the world depends very heavily on the place from which we view the realities in front of us; all of us have a particular location from which we read the world, our own personal ‘Reading Site’.

Take for example a written text, a novel, a sacred script or a newspaper article. The interpretation of this text often owes as much to the ‘reading site’ of the reader than it does to the intentions of the author. Two people can read the same text and yet construct a very different interpretation of it.

What goes for written texts in this example applies also to wider experience, to the sights we see with our eyes, to the discussions we have, to news media, to films, to liturgy, to art, to magazines and to music.

I as a Western European, so my first instinct is inevitably to make sense of The Philippines from my Western European ‘reading site’.  I have to be aware that this affects what I notice, what strikes me as important, what affects me emotionally, what makes sense and what doesn’t make sense.  I have to remember that ‘Objective Truth’ is always hidden behind a thick wall of ‘Subjective Truth’. As a human being I cannot stand outside the reality I have brought with me. (Incidentally I am very aware that these ideas about truth are in fact the result of my own very post-modern reading site!)

To believe we can read reality without a ‘Reading Site’ is to delude ourselves. However being conscious of my inherent prejudices and assumptions can allow me to be on alert to them. I can attempt to make judgements more slowly and listen to the world around me much more carefully than I normally would. The challenge while living here is not to make sense of the world here according to my own ideas and prejudices, that is easy. The real challenge is to deconstruct, and become aware of, my own ‘reading site’; and to attempt to understand how the ‘reading site’ of the people who live here is different.

What does reality look like for the very poorest people? Where are they seeing reality clearer than I am? And at the same time, what are their prejudices and pre-existing ideas that obscure their lenses?

What do I, as a wealthy European, look like through the eyes of a Philippino child living on the streets of Cebu? What do I, as a citizen of a seemingly secularising nation, look like through the eyes of a devoutly Catholic Philippino? Who am I from their reading site?

Pacquiao v Marquez

This morning we experienced another cultural phenomenon. Philippinos are not just devoted to Catholicism, they are also devoted to Manny Pacquiao!

Manny Pacquiao is the reigning World Welterweight Champion, and considered by many experts to be the best pound for pound boxer in the world. To the Philippinos he is much more than that, he is their only world class sports star and probably second only to 'Imelda' as the most famous living Philippino. The man himself is an unusual boxer, in interviews he is quite humble and complimentary towards his opponent, he prays in the ring before he fights, and when he isn't boxing he is an elected congressman in the national parliament.

We were woken by the sound of the sports coverage being played on loudspeakers. This was a full five hours before the fight actually started. Most Philippinos can't afford the pay-per-view cost of seeing the fight in their home. So neighbourhoods will club together and split the cost. The fight was as much a social occasion as a sporting event. Early masses were packed with people who would normally go later, even the homily was about Pacquiao.

At 1.00pm everything in the Philippines stopped and they collective paid homage to their hero.

As it happened the fight was much closer than we had been lead to believe it would be. At the end most of our fellow watchers seemed to think that the Mexican Marquez had won, but not according to the judges. Pacquiao edged it on a split decision.

As you can imagine they are all very happy!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/boxing/15710641.stm 

Praying for Peace

Here in the Philippines today is a national day of prayer for peace. We, along with the whole school, stopped lessons at 11.00am to pray the rosary for peace. It was not just a two minute pause, everyone stopped for twenty minutes of prayer.

11^th November has no historical significance for the Philippines. The First World War was a very European war fought a long way away. The Second World War was, of course, very different. The Philippines lost 800’000 lives, of which 750’000 were civilians.

Today (11^th November) is not a day on which soldiers are honoured or remembered, it is simply a day of marking the cost of war, of mourning, and of longing for peace.

This of course contrasts with the UK. Over recent years (in the UK) the 11^th November has drifted from being a day on which we lament the cost of war and pray for peace towards being a day on which we celebrate our military in a very partisan way. Wearing Poppies has subtly become understood as supporting our soldiers at war rather than remembering all the victims of war regardless of political allegiance. Unquestioning support of the military is now main-stream, to criticise soldiers has become a form of heresy. (If you take offense at me expressing this opinion then that illustrates exactly my point)

All of this is nothing new, in the 1930s there were significant numbers of First World War veterans who felt that their experience, and the deaths of their comrades, were being used as a justification for future uses of violence. These men rejected attempts to give retro-active meaning to their (as they saw them) pointless military experiences, or to the (as they saw it) pointless death of their fellow soldiers, and spoke against a cheap military jingoism which was beginning to grow amongst a younger generation who hadn’t experienced the horrors of the Somme or Paschendaele.

Today’s time of prayer for peace has been quite eye-opening. It has allowed me to see a different, perhaps more life-giving, way of marking Remembrance Day.  A day to free ourselves from the partisanship of only mourning our own dead; a day to rid ourselves of the immediate assumption that what is ‘us’ is always righteous; a day to be very cautious in declaring any war worth the price; a day to question ourselves as to the ways in which we can be builders of peace; and above all a day to let the indescribable pain of war overwhelm us and in the midst of this pain to allow ourselves to be inspired to change.

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood 
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, 
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, 
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest  
To children ardent for some desperate glory, 
The old Lie;

Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori.

Intramurals (Sports Day) - Dance and Sports Competitions

Here are some highlights of the Dance Competition which was part of their Intramurals (Sports Days). Participation was compulsory for all students, some were more keen than others. Steph and I had to judge the Dances! If your interested, the woodwork students won.



and after the dance competition came the sports.....



Intramurals (Sports Day) - Opening Ceremony

This is the Opening Ceremony for the Vocational Training Centre's Sports Day (two days actually). No pressure London 2012 but if this is how they open school sports days here.......

Celebrating the Dead

In British culture the idea of celebrating death is very alien, our cemeteries tend to be places of quiet, places where exuberant joy is considered inappropriate, a subdued manner is the expectation. Here is the Philippines the culture is very different.

1^st and 2^nd November are days which belong to the dead. Virtually everyone goes to the cemeteries to visit their deceased relatives. During the days either side transport networks are at their busiest with people travelling back and forth, to and from their family homes and family places of burial.

The atmosphere in the cemeteries is not of mournful lament and quiet weeping. 1^st and 2^nd November are days of celebration. Families are reunited over the graves of their common dead. The whole day is spent in the cemetery, prayers are shared, picnic food is eaten, barbecues are lit, board games are played.

In the cemeteries of the better off tents are set up over the graves sheltering the living from the sun. Fast-food franchises set up temporary branches, vendors wander around selling flowers, candles, balloons, ice-creams and even rubber skeletons. Children play ball games in the roadways.

The atmosphere in the poorer cemeteries is much the same sense of festivity only there is less space. Above ground concrete ossaries, sometimes two stories high, stack mortal remains four or five people high. Families are squashed together trying to find the space to decorate their family graves with paint, candles and flowers.

These two days are very special days of festival but they are only the pinnacle of an ongoing devotion to the dead that exists here. Daily prayers are prayed for, and asked of, those who have died. A very immanent sense of relationship is maintained with those who have died. Death is talked about freely, it is certainly not a subject that is feared or hidden away from.

The experience of visiting the cemeteries has been fascinating but also strangely disconcerting. My European mindset shies away from focussing too much on the subject of death at times when it doesn’t have to. Perhaps I maintain some less than fully conscious superstitions about death which my mind prefers to leave hidden? Death is usually a subject I prefer to keep away from normal life in a walled off space different from the rest of life.

The practises here are both an inspiring eye-opener and a deep challenge.