Culture Education

Ambeth Ocampo writes about the degradation of our culture and mentions brain-drain in this article. Of course I totally agree with him in most of everything he says here.

I took his History 165 (old curriculum) in college, and it remains one of the best courses I have attended. It wasn't necessarily the easiest course to pass, but I subscribe to the teacher's idea that grades don't really matter. So if you want to get an 'A', choose another teacher. Ambeth is hardly a textbook teacher. In fact, the only textbook he really required is the "unsanitized" Noli Me Tangere.

The most important part of the course, in my opinion, is how he "made" us go to field trips. We "had to" go to the Museum in Bangko Sentral, the National Museum and the Metropolitan Museum. In Intramuros, we "had to" go to Fort Santiago, Museo de San Agustin, La Casa Manila and that tsinoy museum which I can't remember the name of right now. Needless to say, it was more history than what can be taught in the classroom. Of course it had some importance in the long-term and mid-term exams but, those related questions couldn't have been any easier, practically had giveaway answers.

In the end, it seemed that all we needed was an excuse to go to these places. Sir Ambeth gladly gave us that.