Friday, July 18, 2008 Editorials: Sowing the seeds of excellence
ONE hundred years ago last month, this country’s American colonial administrators extended a charter to an institution of high learning that was modeled after the best of the United States’ own centers of education.
Called the University of the Philippines, it was supposed to be the role model of Philippine schools of learning.
Today, the Cebu branch of UP celebrates the centennial of UP’s founding.
It was first established some years before World War II as a Junior College.
Closed during the war, it was reopened after the war’s end in 1946.
Two years later, a secondary school was established.
Under the Spaniards
Spain, the first colonial master of the Filipinos, did try to educate the Filipinos, but only to those who belong to the native elite.
To a certain degree, they succeeded with the founding of the University of Santo Tomas, San Juan de Letran, and Ateneo de Manila.
However, opportunities for higher education did not reach the level of the parishes.
It was not so with the UP.
It extended priority to the children of the poor and less privileged who have the intellectual capability to tackle its stringent
standard of learning.
The school became the pathway through which the Filipino young with determination, ambition, and the gift of intellectual
excellence, were able to rise above their poverty and became leaders in their own right.
Centenary
Today, as the nation’s highest public institution of learning celebrates its centenary, the situation is no longer so.
The quality of education that it has generated and upheld for 100 years has spread and encouraged other institutions of learning to give premium to intellectual excellence.
As proof, many graduates of our country’s private universities are teaching in and have become deans of UP’s various branches.
Sowing the seeds of excellence in education is a singular gift the government can endow the average citizen, especially the many that are less materially privileged
UP offers such opportunity to whoever has the gumption, the ambition, and the determination to achieve his/her personal fulfillment, even if he/she does not have the material wherewithal needed to realize the dream.
