TEACHING FOR LIFE

Jose Ramon T Villarin SJ,
University President
Xavier University
Faculty Symposium
13 November 2006

I would like to talk to you about three levels of commitment in our school here at Xavier. These levels can be described by the story of three men carrying hollow blocks. When asked what he was doing, the first man, who appeared the saddest of the three, tartly replied that he was just carrying blocks. The second, less depressed, said that he was feeding a family. The third, with a smile, said that he was a building a cathedral. The story tells of three perspectives, three ways of seeing what we do. Let these three levels be our frame for what I wish to share with you today. These three are (1) the personal (or house-building), (2) the interpersonal (or homebuilding), and (3) the transpersonal (or church-building). I hope you will see that the five elements of the provisional formation framework I mentioned in my investiture last year (i.e. professional development, community building, leadership development, vocation promotions, and spiritual formation) are embedded in these three levels.

HOUSE-BUILDING

On the level of the personal, I wish to highlight two things: professional development and what I shall call “housekeeping.”

On professional development, I stress once more the importance of getting the teacher’s ultimate visa, which is a graduate degree. I wish to encourage everyone to obtain a Master’s degree at least. In the university, a graduate degree is no longer an option. For us, it is more than a title. It opens many more doors to greater service in university life. I learned two important things in graduate school: I learned how to learn, and I discovered that I am my worst enemy. Aside from the customary graduate degree, I do hope that we will try our best to hone our own teacher skills in communication (speaking and writing) and in using the internet as a powerful mode of multiplying one’s self to teach a greater number of people. I would like to encourage you to engage in what I now call “research for social development” which is a bridging of the academic with social outreach. It may not be as esoteric or arcane as fundamental research, but you will be helping grassroots communities, and I assure you, your teaching will be enriched as well. Imagine tackling multi-faceted groundlevel yet groundbreaking topics and problems. This will push you, I hope, to work with others. All these will require a robust faculty development program, which will be devolved to the level of the colleges. The keyword here is “program” which suggests that faculty development should not be just a collection of plans and activities but a graduated, calibrated plan to get people to a destination with definite timelines and plan B’s.

The other concern I wish to raise here is what I term “housekeeping” and/or “house-owning.” By housekeeping, I mean taking care of the basic teaching and campus environment. I hope you see this gradually happening as we try to upgrade our faculty rooms, equip some of our classrooms with sound and video systems, etc. Hugaw man ang atong campus ba. Well, hugaw man ang CDO sa tinuod lang. The state of our CR’s, the indiscriminate throwing of waste, the vandalism on our walls may seem inconsequential to some, but these small things mirror who we are. We do not know the common good. Perhaps too, we do not have a sense of ownership of this school. A school has to have clean space for leisure, space (which includes silence) to think and wonder and pray, good space to gather people who must speak and write and brew ideas.

The other aspect of housekeeping has something to do with professionalizing administration. That means operating systems, and here, the keyword is “system.” Please do not begrudge central purchasing. It is an experiment to make things more efficient and cost-effective. I am also trying to institute clear lines of accountability and command responsibility. This means clarifying the layers of governance and empowering those entrusted with leading the different units in our school. Devolving faculty development to the colleges is one attempt to apply the principle of subsidiarity.

HOME-BUILDING

On the level of the interpersonal, or home-building, I wish to stress two elements: community building and trust-building. Let me explain. For community building, I would like to encourage that we open and sustain as many lines of communication Jose Ramon T Villarin SJ, University President Faculty Symposium, 13 November 2006 as possible. This is helped by technology (e.g. email, web) but it would be unwise to rely on this alone. We may be adept at texting but we still need to learn how to communicate our displeasure or dissent in conflict situations.

We need to build academic teams or circles so that a critical mass of minds is reached and knowledge can truly move forward. This means departments will have to decide to focus on a few topics or themes around which to rally these academic teams. You cannot have one thematic circle for every faculty member. Teams are built also through an effective mentoring program (involving senior and junior faculty, and students). Collegiality is a matter of chemistry, which means that even if we are rational and professional about banding together in this academic enterprise, we need to be aware of and practical about the impact of political turfs and personalities on collegiality.

The second element is building trust, or what I would call social capital, since social capital is none other than this network of relationships built on trust. (Some of my thoughts here I have discussed with our two coops last February 2006. There I shared what I thought were the things that build and deplete social capital.) Competence increases social capital. The XU brand is so because of the proven competence of XU graduates. Parents entrust their children to us because they know we deliver this quality product called Jesuit education. They trust us. What can deplete our social capital? The lack of meritocracy, our feudal ways of relating with each other, the padrino system, all these erode social capital. What can build social capital? Aside from competence, I would say ethical living. An institution that no longer knows what is right and wrong, what is true and false, will not last. Now I know we are not angels here. “Liki” or “lamat” notwithstanding, for others to trust us, they need only trust that we who are associated with XU are struggling and striving to be good, despite the odds. When suppliers and contractors come to us, I will say, “ibahin niyo ang Xavier.” If the way of the world teaches you to pay your way with commissions and perks to get into power, “ibahin niyo ang Xavier.” The way of falsehood, of cheating is the way of a deluded self-destroying world. As teachers therefore, let us be sensitive about the veritas we proclaim. For instance, let us be careful about cheating, and not just about the cheating of students, but the cheating that we sometimes do to them when we shortchange them by our non-attendance or our lateness, or our cavalier attitudes about grades.

The other factor that builds social capital is credibility. By this I mean the importance of professional and personal competence even in non-school matters. A business professor who runs a business poorly outside XU will sooner or later have problems getting students to believe him or her. People might dismiss personal extra-curricular matters as beyond the professional purview of this school, but again we need to be wide-eyed about the sometimes pernicious spillover effects such matters may have in the sensitive formative atmosphere of a campus such as ours.

CATHEDRAL-BUILDING

The third and last level, cathedral-building or the level of the transpersonal or societal or ecclesial, holds the key to our being able to teach for life. While it is important to possess the credentials and environment we need in order to teach well (house-building) and to have the interpersonal network of family and colleagues to sustain us in our teaching (home-building), I believe it is this last level of commitment that spells the difference between teaching as profession and teaching as vocation. It is the “who” we do this for that ultimately defines who we are. If you see that what we are trying to build here is no mere subdivision of houses but a great cathedral for God, then perhaps you will see the importance of having builders here who are not just teacher-professionals, but teacherdisciples as well. Before this is misconstrued as pious crusade-for-Christendom rhetoric, let me explain in two parts what this theme of cathedral-building is all about. Two questions to these two parts: (1) what is this cathedral we are trying to build? and (2) how are we going to build this cathedral?

I have to be careful here lest you think that I have a ready-made blueprint for this masterpiece we are trying build here in Xavier. Presidents are often asked for their vision. Perhaps it is good that I have glaucoma to remind me that I need more than my own pair of eyes to see beyond the immediate horizon.

What I see readily at least is what we are not merely building. We are not merely teaching people to read and write. We are not merely enabling them to graduate and survive society. We are not just empowering them to create wealth and amass political power.

I have two phrasings (very tentative and dated I am quick to tell you) of what it is perhaps we are trying to build. Phrasing one: We are building communities of disciples who are learning to love the Lord, who express that devotion by dedicating their entire lives for others, with special sensitivity to those who live at the margins here in Mindanao. Or, in less explicitly spiritual language, if you wish, phrasing two: we are building a cadre of leaders who are committed to change Mindanao for the better, transforming this great island from a place of broken dreams and promises to one of healing and hope.

Think about it: a band of teachers, a circle of schoolpeople, setting out to change this great island, so that people no longer believe they are marooned or compelled to leave it. A mere roomful of chalk-wielding teachers patiently teaching a grammar of hope and healing to the pupils of poverty and conflict. Is this not a veritable cathedral we are building for God and His people?

Development and peace (and their antitheses, poverty and conflict) are the main pillars of concern of this cathedral. On development, the imperatives I see where our action is sorely needed are in four critical areas: food and livelihood, environment and health, education, and leadership development. The Colleges can be reconfigured to converge and work together to make a substantial difference in these sectors. On peacemaking, the University can be a table we set for our war-weary kababayan, where intra-faith and inter-faith conversation can happen.

On the second question of how we are to build this cathedral anchored on development and peace for this great island of Mindanao, I say we will build not merely with cement and hollow blocks; we are going to build this with people. And we will start with ourselves.

To build this cathedral with people, we shall need three things at least: leadership development, vocation promotions, and lastly spiritual formation.

About leadership, I have often asked what it means for Xavier to be a school for leaders. Are we developing generals here? If so, then all we need to become is a small academy for a chosen few. There is no need to teach 15,000 young people because not all of them will become generals. Our understanding of leadership however is not confined to that hierarchical elitist notion. For several decades now, we have been developing corporals and foot soldiers, along with a handful of our nation’s generals, as many as our classrooms could hold. As we continue to do this in the coming decades, let us work even harder to capacitate our students to eventually become leaders in their own right, wherever they are sent. Let anyone who comes from Xavier learn to lead and take charge, whatever his or her station in life. Primus inter pares.

For ourselves, this means embarking on a leadership development program on campus. Such a program must include at least three tracks of leadership formation for university-based leaders: academic, administrative, and research-for-development leaders among our ranks. Again, bearing in mind our democratized notion of leadership, this does not suggest that the faculty member who is not a general in the department can not lead others in his or her own field of academic or non-academic expertise.

As an example of research-for-development leadership, I recall a young alumnus in physics at the Ateneo de Manila. He has spent much time with the Mangyans of Mindoro, and with communities in Sulu and the Liguasan Marsh doing what he knows best with the physics he has learned. He is looking for water for them. When I see the children of Puerto with their water cans and makeshift carts, dangerously latching on to those trucks headed up for Bukidnon, I am disturbed and enraged: this does not have to be; things do not have to be the way they are. We who have the talent, who have the power, we can change things for the better. Xavier can lead in education, she can lead by proxy through her graduates; but as an institution, she too can lead in meaningful research and capacity building work that have direct social bearing on the urgent problems of development and peace in Mindanao.

To sustain our ranks, we shall need to promote more vocations to the teaching enterprise. This means employing a programmed approach to recruit the best among our students, even the best out there in government, civil society, or the private sector, so that they will take up teaching for life. You do not have to be a marketing person to know that this entails taking out the lampstand from under the bed and letting our light shine. One of the most effective means of promoting the teaching vocation is the joy and passion we exude when we are most ourselves before our students. They must see that we are teachers not by default but by choice and careful discernment. We are here not because we have no other place to go to, but because of all the places we could have gone to, this is where we find our life’s true meaning and fulfillment. If our young people see the strength of our conviction, they will come. I recall here a recent message I received from a faculty member who texted to tell me she was back in academe:

From B Oris, 5 Nov 2006:
Hi fr. Thanks! I took a leave from teaching for a year and a half. I did ‘corporate work’... It was a ‘what if...’ issue that i decided to face. I needed to know whether i had been teaching because it was the only thing i know how to do (and i am just afraid of ‘the world’) or it is that w/c i know best how to do. Ü I learned a lot from the corporate setting, did well, but it is not my calling, my deepest desire. Am sure you know how that feels. Ü See you!

The third and last element that is needed to build this cathedral with people is spiritual formation. My hope is that by going through a rigorous yet practical spiritual formation program, one that is designed for busy people like teachers, we are led to a deeper sense of mission and identity. Ignatian spirituality is a gift we Jesuits would like to share with you. It is the wellspring of our apostolic energy and it is what sustains us in this mission we share with Christ.

To continue sharing this spirituality with you, we will need to create structures (times and places) whenever and wherever possible that help cultivate Ignatian spirituality. These can be in the form of personal and group prayer and the experience of the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola. I do hope that at some point you can make a discernment retreat which can help fortify your resolve to teach for life and thus lead you indeed to a deeper personal sense of mission and identity. But these prayer events are not all. My own relationship with God has been deepened by community and direct friendship with the poor. Let us then be creative in building this union of minds and hearts among ourselves, and in immersing ourselves in service of poor communities outside campus. I promise you, the faith of companions and the faith of the poor can be such a grace to your own search and struggle to believe in God.

Aside from directly spiritual activities, I encourage everyone to learn and read up on good theology. Theologies, like software, are dynamic things. Every so often we need an upgrade. Perhaps the RS Department can lead here. I find that some of our infantile notions of faith and spirituality can be traced to stunted premature theologies and philosophies that we learned in college or high school. Why theology? Why not go straight to prayer and spirituality? While religious experience is paramount and is after all the prelude to any theologizing, experience which is neither seasoned with subsequent reflection nor critiqued in the light of reason can be dangerous. Our theologies have a subtle way of coloring the way we relate to God and with each other.

We can start with questions we have always wanted to ask about God, our faith, and our church. We can start with the messy concerns of ethics and the institutional stances the Catholic church has taken which we have yet perhaps to understand or appropriate. We can even start with an adult catechism. As part of their liberal education, all our students go through some philosophy and theology while in college. That educational policy is anchored not merely on the notion that we are a Catholic university but on a firm belief that a liberal dose of the humanities is necessary “to make good people out of educated people.” And so perhaps we too can embark on an abbreviated and adult version of theological reflection on the issues and concerns of our time. Let me assure you that theology, like veritas, can be truly liberating.

CONCLUSION

Having said all this, I would like you to know that I am excited by the prospect of building this cathedral with you. There is no dearth of good people here who would like to do things that make a difference, things that truly matter in the lives of others. There is no lack of good souls here in Xavier who would readily enlist in a cause that is noble and holy and greater than themselves. Our work here is no longer simply teaching or imparting skills to others. Teaching at Xavier is no longer a job that merely feeds our families or quenches our insecurities and loneliness. Think about it, ponder who we are: a band of schoolpeople, a mere roomful of chalk-wielding teachers patiently teaching a grammar of hope and healing to the pupils of poverty and conflict. Are we not on a crusade, in the deepest, holiest sense of the word? Are we not thus engaged under the banner of the Cross, invited to share in the labor and passion of Christ as He transfigures this island of shards and shadows to one of light and redeeming peace?

As I began with a story, so I end with one. Two people were digging a hole, one did not seem to be from Xavier, while the other was an alumnus. When asked what they were doing, the first replied with a despondent voice, “I am digging a hole.” The second, with sweat on his brow and lightness in his heart, said, “Friend, I am digging a well. My children there in Puerto are thirsty; I am giving them something to drink.”

May the Lord look kindly on what we do here at Xavier so that when, at the epilogue of our lives, the Lord asks us what we have done for him, we will tell him we gave the best of our lives for our children and His little ones, we gave Him something to drink.