Monday, March 24, 2008 Pangan: Commencement By Benjie R. Pangan At Close Range
GRADUATION rites are now frequent and aplenty, from this week onwards as schools set the commencement exercises for preschool completers, intermediate, high school and college graduates and post-graduate finishers.
Graduation themes and speeches vary, starting from the traditional exhortation to oratorical piece de resistance of politicians who find graduation rites as timely launch pads for their waning political career and future.
Commencement exercises are supposed to be the beginning of moving up the education ladder and not the staging dais of politicians who oftentimes claim, albeit uncalled for, credit for the students' academic completion although they did not contribute to the latter's hard and difficult struggle to obtain degrees. Such vanity, such pretense, such imperviousness to the students' plight.
The solemnity of graduation ceremonies is sometimes overshadowed by the crass commercialism (and materialism) of those involved in the activities: photographers, legit or fly-by-night abound and they do charge exorbitant prices to gullible parents and guardians, invoking posterity; salons, boutiques and beauty (vanity?) shops make a killing in reinventing the faces of candidates; flower shops, too, come to life as their operators adorn the graduates with garlands and the guests with leis and the graduation venues, homes and school gymnasiums and, of course, the novelty stores which make the plaques and gold-plated trophies and medals. They, too, spring to life as they mass produce, using recycled materials, and variety of graduation memorabilia, relics and other imaginable give aways. Buhay na buhay na naman sila.
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While there is understandably a happy footnote to graduation rites, there is a downside to all the rejoicing the night after. Are there sufficient job openings waiting for the graduates? Would they remain jobless and be forever searching for the so-called greener pastures? Nagging questions, these.
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Over at the DFA RCO Clark Field, good friend Nestor H. Belardo is "agonizing" over the still lacking number of machines needed to satisfy the passport applicants whose number once again rose to its pre-MRP appearance. This, plus the loss of some six employees due to resignation, retrenchment and medical leave, only compounded Nestor's woes and he himself, along with his deputy Imelda delos Santos, had to sort documents and match these with the blank passports and assist in any which way he can just to at least ease the load of the other employees, who had to absorb the workload of those who had left.
The amiable director now pleads with the public to bear with the temporary inconvenience. He says that he and his staff are doing their best to cope with the demand for the MRP-type passports and hopes for additional machines from his head office. Paging Mr. Lucenario, please.
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Ace Computer Institute, headed by Danie San Pedro and housed at PG Building, Dau, aims to contribute, albeit modestly, to computer literacy in Mabalacat with full-blown computer courses and call center basic instruction. According to Danie, his firm gives out liberal terms and discounts to enrollees and transferees and, on meritorious cases, scholarships to deserving students.
For Danie, financial incapacity is not a major problem for students and their parents because ACI's orientation is not to deny but provide easy access to computer education.
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AMA Computer Learning Center Dau Branch, headed by Ms. Rumina Ramos and with offices at Dau Mart II, is also actively contributing to the computer literacy program of the town of Mabalacat. Like ACI, it gives scholarship grants to poor but deserving students and liberal terms of payment may be arranged with the school's management.
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Good words should be given to those who forsook their Lenten vacation just to render public service, particularly motorist assistance. I can mention here the Lakbay Alalay of the Pampanga Sub-District Engineering Office of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH)-Central Luzon, headed by Engineers Rico Guillas and Alfredo Tolentino and their respective staff members. Also, the Citizens Crime Watch, communications groups, the Mabalacat PNP, headed by Chief Inspector Jovencio Flores, the Mabalacat Fire Station led by Inspector Jimmy Suba and, of course, the Mabalacat Traffic Enforcement Group, steered by Chook Santos. Fine job, gentlemen.
