Thesis. Thesis! Thesis?

I AM very amazed at the sight of students, running here and there just to finish their thesis/research projects. Usually, I find it very funny to see students stay late in the library looking for texts that would support the findings he made in his thesis. I am also amazed to see students carry their eye bags because of the sleepless nights they have had solving for the inferential statistics needed in their thesis project.

I once read from an old book about how a retired teacher assessed the present Philippine education. She wrote that in the past, education was not too formal and structured, yet, the students were socially conscious.

She also noted that when problems would arise, a solution was immediately thought of. She laments that in the present system, solutions should be based on studies conducted. She farther laments on the sad state of Philippine education. I agree with her.

Today, everything is so structured that even the number placed in the chapters are being debated. It is confusing whether to use the roman or the Arabic. I usually would read the theses of students and the first three chapters are all structured. I cannot really understand why great theses did not have many chapters before but today a good thesis—or best at that—should have at least all the aspects of the first three chapters. I once handled a research class that was research in communication. I told my students to be innovative in their works. I did not subject them to the structured and formal works.

I got a very positive response. I saw that each one had enjoyed writing their theses and a good deal of initiative came from them. Today, All I hear from tertiary students are their lamentations regarding their theses projects.

What is a thesis? According to one author, thesis is a position or proposition that a person (usually a candidate for scholastic honors) advances and offers to maintain by argument. In another book, thesis is a dissertation embodying results of original research and especially substantiating a specific view. Never was it said that a thesis should make the life of people miserable. Today, theses are not only making the lives of people miserable because of its structured and formal state but it makes us also financially miserable.

In history, Einstein, Hegel, Martin Luther and Marx, to mention a few, had their own ways of writing their theses. They did not spend too much time on the structure and form. They put more weight on the content of their findings. Yet, until today, their theses are being studied in great universities.

Today, why are we so formal and structured? Are there people interested in our thesis? Who reads our theses?

We become so structured because we have nothing more to give. We have nothing more. People structured and formal are people who are not agents for social transformation but they are agents for social degradation.

Many in our academe miss the point that they should be agents for change and not agents for rotting other people’s interests. Structured and formal people are those who are people who make the lives of others miserable. These are people who seem to know everything but actually know nothing. These are people who value position over transformation.

Actually, no one reads theses. Today, people are more interested at surfing the internet and other forms of technology than going painstakingly over the structure of thesis. People read theses just to get an idea of how to make one. Structured and formal theses have no place in the present society. It is only fit in the shelves of Graduate School offices.

So, theses are here to stay and to beautify the academic offices of the structured and formal people but please do not let theses govern your lives. Make these that would help make us better persons and not intellectual monsters.

The late Engr. Faraon Lopez told me once that to be remembered in life is to make good imprints in the minds of the young people through good deeds and by making their lives easy and not miserable.

St. Ezekiel Moreno and Lorenzo Ruiz; Blessed Pedro Calungsod and John Paul II; and Sir Faraon Lopez, pray for us.