MAGICAL MOMENTS IN BATUAN COLLEGES

For The Bohol Tribune

In This Our Journey

NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS

Last Sunday, 08 March, I was guest speaker at the 19^th Commencement Exercises of Batuan Colleges described in the graduation souvenir program as a “family-supported educational institution.” The Board of Trustees is composed mostly of members from the Digamon Family. Of the trustees, women constitute 42%, but the Administration has 63% women.

This being International Women’s Day, I also counted the graduates based on the list appearing in the souvenir program and noted that out of 77 who completed bachelor degrees in elementary and secondary education, courses in Hotel and Restaurant Service Technology, the TESDA-supervised courses (Food and Beverage, Housekeeping), and Grade VI,  only 22 or 28.5% were boys.

Of the 31 faculty and other staff, only 6 or 19% are men. Hence, it was not surprising, that there was no mention at all of the significance of Women’s Day being celebrated globally during the commencement exercises in which I had to speak on the theme, “The Academe: The of Journey to Progress.” It was clear that women have the numerical edge in the faculty, administration and student body of Batuan Colleges.

In the Foreword to the graduation program, it was noted that Batuan Colleges was founded in 1994 by Dr. Consolacion Digamon-Vinluan “to equip young men & women with the concepts, values and skills that they need to lead successful lives and render worthwhile services to God and Country.” Since its founding, the student population has grown from four to more than 400 and from being a one-room school to having three two-storey buildings.

Among the other achievements cited are as follows: about 90% of the graduates passed the Licensure Examination for Teachers (LET) and 100% in the Competency Assessment conducted by TESDA; several students were among the Ten Outstanding Students of Bohol in school years 2005-2006 and 2006-2007; some students have found employment in Bangkok, Thailand; the institution is the only one in the province awarded by the TESDA-ADB Job-Directed Scholarship Program in several competencies (Baking & Commercial Cooking, Food & Beverage, Housekeeping, Computer Operations & Servicing, Audio-Video Servicing and Cell Phone Repair).

In June, 2010, it signed an agreement with  Urdaneta City University in Pangasinan making Batuan Colleges an extension of the University’s Graduate Programs, and also for degrees in Accountancy, Information Technology and Tourism. The first batch, all women (Josefina Stanford, Cora Uy, Susana Doris and Gina Bantol) graduated in April 2012. In recent years, it has attracted students not only from Batuan, but also from Tagbilaran City, Talibon, Mabini, Maribojoc, Panglao, Loon, 

Sevilla, Lila, Inabanga and Pilar. This could be due not only to its outstanding academic performance, but also to the fact that it makes deliberate efforts to make its fees lower than those charged by other schools as commitment to its objective to broaden access to education by children and young people coming from the peripheries, as Pope Francis would refer to what planners call the disadvantaged and marginalized sectors of the population.

As though to validate the institution’s adherence to this objective, the elementary education degree graduate who gave a speech on behalf of her class, Rosemarie Maslog Luzano, recounted her struggle and that of her parents to enable her to obtain a degree. She talked of how she worked in odd jobs to be able to go to school. She cried as she talked and most of those in the audience did too, an indication that many of those who graduated that day could relate to her story.

Dr. Cholie Vinluan, the BNI President, requested me to also join her and other school officials in the ceremony to hand out diplomas and certificates to graduates in the company of their parents. Most of the parents are simple folks, who came in simple but presentable attire, and when I shook their hands, I could feel those hands were those from people who use them in their daily toil. I recall my Mother and Grandmother having the same rough palms, familiar tools of those who depend on manual labor so their families can survive from day to day. These are the same hands that send millions of children to school as part of their family’s hope for a better life.

It dawned on me while shaking their hands this is the value of having an institution as Batuan Colleges in their midst, a means and symbol for the poor to achieve social mobility for their children so that families can expand their options for the future. When it was my turn to speak, it took me quite a while to clear my throat and prevent the mist in my eyes to turn into tears. Truly I was in the midst of my own people, those who have been betrayed so many times by their leaders, whether from the political right or left, or those incurably corrupt, and their only hope is to believe in what a diploma or certificate can possibly give their children in terms of a better future.

In tribute to the vital role of Batuan Colleges, I said: “By producing teachers committed to educating young people, your Alma Mater is helping build the nation in the hearts and minds of those who will inherit it for themselves and their children. By imparting employable skills among the young people, most of them from marginalized and disadvantaged communities and households, your Alma Mater is helping ensure that young people will be part of the solutions to social problems rather than be the problems themselves.”

Looking at them, these parents and their children, their faces aglow in this unspoken hope for the future, I found the conviction to read from my prepared speech these words from the Irish poet William Butler Yeats: “Educations is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”

Truly I had magical moments in Batuan Colleges just being part of its 19^th Commencement Exercises. I thought I would come to inspire the new graduates and their parents. Instead I came away inspired by seeing vast possibilities for what a committed academic institution such as Batuan Colleges could do to be a force for the common good not only to impart knowledge and skills but, more importantly, to make families  find the hope and passion to lead fulfilled and meaningful lives despite adversities.

Let us have more such academic institutions serving remote communities in Bohol. ###

NMP/12 March 2015/2.07 a.m.