Saturday, November 18, 2006 Roperos: The ‘meet’s’ mindset By Godofredo M. Roperos Politics Also
IT LOOKS as if the contemporary version of the provincial athletic meet is quite a radical departure from the traditional version.
It is now an enriching experience for the select elementary and high school youth. Once upon a time, it was just a pure physical skill and stamina competition that left the mind out of the individual endeavor. Today’s version, as I gleaned from my phone conversation with Councilor Allan Adlawan, the annual school festival is now a balanced exercise of the school young’s mind and body.
The provincial meet which opens in Balamban tomorrow does not just measure the mettle of the individual participants from the close to a hundred delegations of the 47 towns of the province, but also the level of academic learning of the youth. For while there are the traditional sports events scheduled throughout the five-day festival, running parallel to them are also various academic competitions that pit the best of the crop from the different towns. These “academic” events offer diversion from the hectic physical ones.
Thus, those who would come to witness the unfolding of blooming talents from our school age youth could now wish to participate in depending upon their preference. On Monday, there is the “English festival” with the spelling contest, the scrabble as well as the public speaking competition. All held from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Balamban Central School. On the cultural front, there is the competition of the traditional “harana” or serenade, which features our native love songs, the vocal solo, and the duets. Then the presentation of Balamban’s child rondalla, that should make us recall our cultural past.
On the third day of festivities, a folk dance competition is set at the same time and in the same venue. Here, what the Western rock and roll had replaced our native pastime would take center stage again. On the academic side, there is the Elementary Science Festival, followed on the following day with the math expo competition. There was a time in our youth when every literary/musical programs would bring us out in barong and long pants to dance the itik-itik or the pandango sa ilaw. Not anymore in recent years; they have been replaced with such sexually suggestive dances of the “grind and bump” genre.
Perhaps, it’s time we try to let our dead past rise and live in our hearts again.
On the penultimate day of the festival on Nov. 22, there is the dance sports competition. Not long ago, there was reported in our local dailies the fact that Cebuano dancers participating in the international dance sport competition in New York had won handily over many other foreign entries. This only proves, said one retired public school teacher friend, that the “Cebuanos” are a very “dancerous people,” a remark I did not expect to hear, because it not only rhymes with cancerous, but also with preposterous.
Anyway, the dance sport would be accompanied in the schedule with the Secondary ScienceFestival and the ICT competition that sort of updates our youth to the fast changing world of mass communications. And then comes the fifth and final day schedule which, I am sure would stir a lot of interest, as it usually does during Filipino festivals: the selection and crowning of the festival queen. Ah, but a way to end the grand effort of a town to impress its neighbors with what a grand host it can be.
