PAINT AN IMAGE OF A SCIENTIST

The word “scientist” usually paints the image of a man or woman with wild, unruly hair
like Prof. Albert Einstein’s, clad in dirty-white lab coat with chemical burns and wearing
Coke-bottle glasses. The adjectives usually attached to the noun are also predictable,
usually synonymous with either being a “genius” or a “nerd.” 

“Spatial Resolution in Photon Limited Confocal Optical Microscopy”, “Detection

Statistics of Ultrafast Twin-Photon Pulses”, and “Self-organized Criticality in the Exit
Dynamics of Pedestrians Using a Two-Dimensional Cellular Automata.”

STATE OF S AND T IN THE PHILIPPINES

What is high-tech?

Based on the Technology Index of 1982, the S&T in the Philippines is defined to be -0.1
compared to the United States, the world’s technology leader, which is 100. The
technology index is defined as the average of the sum of the number of patents and
registration of new designs, technology trade, value added in manufacturing and the
export of technology-intensive goods. (AGHAM YOUTH)

The Philippines also ranks low in technological capacity. Reason: An acute shortage in
the number of scientists and engineers doing R&D, and of the inadequate resources
and budget devoted to it. All these factors translate to the minimal invention patents
granted in the Philippines, which likewise indicates little or no economic significance.

“And when it comes to the type of basic technologies-materials technology, precision

equipment, energy technologies, information technologies, life technologies and
management technologies, we have only what’s known as pre-operative capability,
neither is there significant research and development in the country. There’s a low
number of personnel involved in R&D, a lack of adequate research laboratories and
facilities, low output of scientific research publications, lack of funding and lack of
government support for science education. There’s also a low quality of science and
mathematics education in the country.   The UP Institute of Science and Mathematics
Education itself says that ‘many teachers do not have the content background required
to teach the subjects they are teaching.’”

Underemployment, misemployment and the lack of available jobs hound college

graduates. As professionals, our S&T practitioners receive low salaries and are
deprived of the opportunity to improve their skills and hone further their technological
knowledge. Basic industries such as pulp & paper, cement and steel should be the main
beneficiaries of science graduates of a country. But given the absence of such basic
industries, and the lack of government interest in truly industrializing the country, our
engineers are forced to become mere technicians and supervisors in assembly lines
and our scientists and researchers mere teachers at universities.”

SCIENCE FOR THE PEOPLE

Science and technology that genuinely serves the interest of the Filipino people,
especially the poor. S&T professionals and workers to share their knowledge and
expertise through direct community service and come up with basic studies that can
help improve the community’s economic well-being. 

Agham’s advocacies are centered on five issues

1) food security and self-sufficiency  (“This mainly means developing agricultural
productivity and helping farmers”);
2) issues concerning public utilities such as electricity, telecommunications, and
information technology;
3) developing scientific and mass culture;
4) campaigning for national industrialization; and
5) environmental protection.

We want to make science less alien to the common people, to make it serve an
immediate, practical purpose.

 Ivory tower syndrome

Becoming socially-aware…. from a laboratory denizen to activist scientist. 

“Many scientists all over the world are too engrossed in their own discoveries,” he says.
“While they are so responsible when it comes to monitoring developments in the
scientific field, they are often neglectful of the social responsibilities that come with their
creation. Sure it was scientists who invented the nuclear bomb as well as other
weapons of destruction; but it’s the military and their governments who unleashed these
horrors on the world. The problem with scientists is that many of us choose to be
neutral.”

“Although scientists today were brought into thinking that science is neutral and
scientists should keep out of politics and society in general, at some point, they would
have to face the fact that their science has a profound effect on the people at large. As
Einstein said once, ‘Only when science can be made to truly serve the interests of the
people and not of the few can it be truly meaningful.'”

Giovanni Alarkon Tapang

MISEDUCATION

Citizenry that is ignorant of our basic ills and is apathetic to our national welfare.

Education is a vital weapon of a people striving for economic emancipation, political

independence and cultural renaissance. We are such a people. Philippine education
therefore must produce Filipinos who are aware of their country's problems, who
understand the basic solution to these problems, and who care enough to have courage
to work and sacrifice for their country's salvation.

The picture that is presented for the child's admiration is an idealized picture of a rural
Philippines, as pretty and as unreal as an Amorsolo painting with its carabao, its smiling
healthy farmer, the winsome barrio lass in the bright clean patadyong, and the sweet
nipa hut. That is the portrait of the Filipino that our education leaves in the minds of the
young and it hurts in two ways.

First, it strengthens the belief (and we see this in adults) that the Philippines is
essentially meant to be an agricultural country and we can not and should not change
that. The result is an apathy toward industrialization. It is an idea they have not met in
school. There is further, a fear, born out of that early stereotype of this country as an
agricultural heaven, that industrialization is not good for us, that our national
environment is not suited for an industrial economy, and that it will only bring social evils
which will destroy the idyllic farm life.

Second, this idealized picture of farm life never emphasizes the poverty, the disease,
the cultural vacuum, the sheer boredom, the superstition and ignorance of backward
farm communities. Those who pursue higher education think of the farm as quaint
places, good for an occasional vacation. Their life is rooted in the big towns and cities
and there is no interest in revamping rural life because there is no understanding of its
economic problems. Interest is limited to aretsian wells and handicraft projects. Present
efforts to uplift the conditions of the rural masses merely attack the peripheral problems
without admitting the urgent need for basic agrarian reform.

Education must both be seen not as an acquisition of information but as the making of
man so that he may function most effectively and and usefully within his own society.
Therefore, education can not be divorced from the society of a definite country at a
definite time.

The education of the Filipino must be a Filipino education. It must be based on the
needs of the nation and the goals of the nation. The object is not merely to produce men
and women who can read and write or who can add and subtract. The primary object is
to produce a citizenry that appreciates and is conscious of its nationhood and has
national goals for the betterment of the community, and not an anarchic mass of people
who know how to take care of themselves only.

What should be the basic objective of education in the Philippines? Is it merely to

produce men and women who can read and write? If this is the only purpose, then
education is directionless. Education should first of all assure national survival. No
amount of economic and political policy can be successful if the educational programme
does not imbue prospective citizens with the proper attitudes that will ensure the
implementation of these goals and policies. Philippine educational policies should be
geared to the making of Filipinos. These policies should see to it that schools produce
men and women with minds and attitudes that are attuned to the needs of the country.

RECTO

In the present age, economic development is, for all practical purposes, equivalent to
industrialization. Stagnation and poverty are the alternative to industrialization.

The clues to a correct and clear understanding of what industrialism means are,first,

the circumstance that the finished products consumed are of local manufacture and the
conveniences enjoyed are also locally produced, and in factories and plants
predominantly owned by the citizens themselves; and second, the fact that most of the
people, not just a minority enjoy these finished products and modern conveniences of
life. 

Agri vs Industrial. Since raw materials, whether in the world market or in the various
national markets, are always of much lower value than the products into which they are
processed, it follows that the producers of raw materials always receive much less
income than producers of finished products. This is likewise true among nations:an
industrial nation is a prosperous and, hence, a strong and dominant nation; while
an agricultural nation is a poor and, consequently, a weak and dependent
nation. Industrial nations have never wanted other nations that are raw-material
producers to industrialize. England tried to prevent or hamper manufacturing in
America. This was one of the major causes of the American Revolution.

Because of our rich mineral resources which include petroleum, iron, coal, copper,
nickel, manganese, chromite, and other important raw materials -which today are being
taken away from our land for the use and benefit of foreign industries- we assuredly
can industrialize, despite foreign advice to the contrary. The prosperity of the
Filipino people will always be an impossibility if we do not industrialize.

The policy of industrializing the country should be pursued vigorously and sincerely.
Many of the industries to which our administrations, past and present, point with pride
as achievements of their so-called industrialization programs are nothing more
than assembling, bottling, or packaging plants or concerns which import an almost
finished product and merely perform the last stage of manufacturing before placing it on
the selling counter.

When we refer to these enterprises as "industries," we are deceiving ourselves.

We are contenting ourselves with spreading a thin veneer of industrialism on a
backward agricultural economy. Such industries import the almost finished products of
foreign labor so that only an infinitesimal amount of labor is utilized here to complete the
manufacturing process. This, as I said, is subsidizing foreign labor at the expense of
local labor.

A predominantly agricultural economy garnished with a few minor industries spells

poverty, unemployment, and the continuation of our colonial status, whereas
industrialization and the eradication of the vestiges of a predominantly colonial
agricultural economy is the only way out from underproduction, unemployment and
poverty.

Picture of industrialism. Let’s eat rice.

ROLANDO TOLENTINO

 Umibig nang lubos dahil dito magkakaroon ng ibang konsiderasyon labas sa sarili. Manindigan para sa
iba, lalo na iyong hindi kayang maninindigan para sa sarili.

Ariin ang iyong mundo dahil kundi aariin ito ng iba.  Makibahagi sa mga protesta, lalo na sa bansang ito
na hindi nauubusan ng isyu at mga dapat ipaglaban.  Walang exemption, manindigan parati para sa
bayan.  At wala ring exemption, pagsilbihan ang bayan.

Matutulungan ninyong magkaroon ng syentifikong kultura ang bansa na ang mga peryodikong paglubog
ng mga feri na ikinamamatay ng daan-daan taon-taon, o ang penomenong naganap ssa Onday ay hindi na
sasabihing simpleng “acts of God”; na sa pagkakaroon syentifikong kultura ay higit na magpapatibay sa
sistema ng akwantabilidad sa governance ng bansang ito; na sa pamamagitan ng syensya, uunlad ang
buhay ng mamamayan at magkakaroon ng panlipunang hustisya.  At sa hinaharap, sa iba’t ibang yugto ng
inyong buhay, lilingon at babalik kayo sa inyong Kolehiyo at sa UP na nakangiti si Inangbayan:   ang
honor, excellence, at public service ng UP ay inyong isinabuhay, at ikararangal niya kayong tawagin noon
at sa hinaharap na kanyang syentistang skolar ng bayan.

 “Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school”; ikalawa, para sa
pagpili ng prioridad sa buhay, “”Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can
be counted counts”; at ikatlo, para sa pananagutan natin sa bayan, “Those who have the privilege to know
have the duty to act.”
Pagbabalik ng panginoon

Ano tayo bilang pamantasan?

Edukasyong mapagpalaya, mapagkalinga, mapaglingkod, sumasaling sa buhay ng mga dukha at
pinagkaiitan
ng kapangyarihan
Nakikinig, nagbibigay ng oras

Sino ang maliliit?

Magsasako- nakagapos sa tnc, pinagkakautangan
Mangingisay- di kanila ang mga salik ng produksyon
Lumubog sa buhay ng pinaglilingkuran
Matutong umiyak
Baboy sa hagonoy
Sasaling sa 9

Know that which you want to serve.

Nandidito tayo para sa iba
Si kristo...pinanganak sa sabsaban, pumili ng mga disipulo
Servant!
Nakalublob sa buhay ng pinaglilingkuran
Partnership not patron client relationship---recognize the power of the people
Living learning and working with the people
Di nila tau malilimutan dahil pinalakpakan natin sila
Mahalaga ka kung bahagi ka ng pamayanan

Our duty is to multiply ourselves.

Ang ating gawain ay gawain ng pagpaparami, to multiply ourselves
Parable of the talents

Organize.
Organizing is central
Utang na loob
Pakikisama
Palabra de honor
Damayan

Bangkilas