The Joy of Teaching

Wednesday, 27 October 2010 06:37

Written by Tony La Viña

The original title of this column was "The Peril of Teaching". Like many columnists, I wanted to write about the ongoing controversy on plagiarism involving the Supreme Court. After all, I have a personal connection to the issue being one of the signatories of the UP Law Faculty statement on this issue. In fact, I received last week a Notice of Judgment from the Supreme Court of the Philippines ordering me and 36 other colleagues from the Faculty of the University of the Philippines College of Law (UP Law) to "show cause" why we should not be disciplined for violating specific canons of the Code of Professional Responsibility for signing a statement conveying our concern about what we considered plagiarism in the decision of the Court in Vinuya vs. Executive Secretary, the comfort women case.

For the record, I have complete and unconditional respect for the Supreme Court. Since I became a lawyer in 1990, I have been faithful to the lawyer's oath, and have been diligent and serious about my duties as an officer of the court. Whenever any Chief Justice or Justice or other officer of the Supreme Court have asked for my assistance or service, especially in the field of environmental law where I have some expertise, I have never refused. On controversies involving the Court, even when I disagreed with its rulings, I have always counseled moderation and continuing respect for the Court, pointing out the slippery slope we bring the country to when we defy the judiciary. Lately, in its request for a bigger budget, I have also come out to support the Judiciary. At the same time, while supportive of the Judiciary, I have also opined that respect must continually be earned and that we expect the Court to be wise, prudent and fair in all its decisions.

Whatever happens with this pending disciplinary case, I will continue to conduct myself this way and make myself available to the Judiciary. My work especially with the Philippine Judicial Academy has been most rewarding and fruitful and so long as it would want me to help, I will do so. When I signed the UP Law Faculty statement, I reviewed and considered every word and phrase in that statement and concluded that it was sober, respectful and dignified even if it was forthright and firm in its conclusions and calls for action. I would not have signed such a statement if in fact it was disrespectful of the Court and if it was written to discredit or influence public opinion against the court.

But let me end this discussion of the case here. Prudence tells me to wait awhile before I discuss in detail the merits of the Vinuya case, the plagiarism incident that was generated by it, and the disciplinary proceedings instituted against the UP Law Faculty. At the right time, I will share in detail my views on all of these decisions and processes.

Instead of writing about the peril of teaching, let me instead write about a related, more positive topic – the joy of teaching.

There are five things I am immensely grateful for in my life. These are, and not necessarily in this order: First, the education I have been fortunate to have; Second, my Christian faith and belonging to the Catholic Church which, even as it is imperfect, has never failed me in the more important matters like dealing with suffering, sickness, and death; Third,Fourth, my role as a governance practitioner, social innovator and mediator of public disputes, an amazing place to be in a conflict-ridden society with problems that keep repeating themselves; and Fifth and last, but definitely not the least, which unifies many of the hats I wear, my being a teacher. my nuclear and extended family – the fact that I am a husband, father, son, brother, cousin, uncle and friend which makes everything I do in law, governance and politics personal;

Why did I become a teacher? The answer for me is simple and clear. It is about paying forward and making a difference. Teaching has always been a call, a vocation.

Teaching is paying forward. I consider myself to have been very fortunate in the fact that I went to the best schools in the Philippines and the world – Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro for my basic education, Ateneo de Manila University for my philosophy degree, University of the Philippines for my first degree in law, and Yale Law School for my LLM and JSD degrees. These schools taught me skills and more importantly values that I in turn now share with my students.

From Xavier University, I learned the basics of writing and computing (I was not very good with the latter) and instilled in me a love for reading. As early as grade school, having a Headmaster like the late Fr. Theodore Daigler SJ showed me how music and drama could bring a mind and soul to far away places, making one dream the unimaginable (turns out I ended up being able to visit many of those places). How could I forget Miss Teodoro who, in second year high school, made us read Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and Antoine de Saint Exupery's The Little Prince? And, with religion teachers like the late Fr. Tony Cuna SJ who surprised our senior high school class one day by teaching us the meaning of the Eucharist while actually celebrating the sacrament. Xavier University gave me the first experience of what my faith and religion really meant.

From the Ateneo de Manila, I was taught to think and about thinking (an amazing experience, the first time you become aware of it) and how to apply that thinking to real life problems like I-thou relationships and social and political problems (plenty of them in the Martial Law years). But the most important lesson I learned from my years studying philosophy in Ateneo comes from Fr. Roque Ferriols SJ, who taught Ancient and Medieval Philosophy and introduced me to the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. Because Fr. Roque also taught or inspired the professors who influenced me the most – Dr. Ramon Reyes, Dr. Leovino Garcia, Prof. Ramon Sunico, Dr. Manny Dy, Fr. Joel Tabora SJ, and Prof. (now Atty.) Pablito Perez – I consider myself his student not only in these two subjects but in many other subjects as well.

I still remember the day when Fr. Roque lectured about truth as aletheia (disclosed or revealed being) as understood by the Pre-Socratics, emphasizing how little the truth was compared to the whole of reality but because truth was our only connection to reality, there is a demand to be faithful, even die for it. I do not exaggerate when I say that this lecture by Fr. Roque changed my life and sent me to many quests and pilgrimages seeking the truth and what is right. Because I consider my crossing to law a necessary detour and not the end point of my professional journey, I still hope to end my working years as a philosophy teacher and give this same gift of insight to students as Fr. Roque and my philosophy teachers gave to me.

Paradoxically, because law is an instrument of power and can be a weapon of oppression, this commitment to the truth was reinforced when I decided to become a lawyer and studied first in UP Law and then later in Yale Law School.

In UP Law, I was taught by professors like the late Haydee Yorac, former Supreme Court Justice Vicente Mendoza, Prof. Alfredo Tadiar, Prof. Ruben Balane, Dean Merlin Magallona, Dean Salvador Carlota, Prof. Araceli Baviera, the late Prof. Samilo Barlongay, Prof. Myrna Feliciano, Prof. Popo Lotilla, Prof. Domingo Disini, and others. There are many things I can say about these teachers – that they are opinionated or sometimes too passionate for example – but definitely one thing they taught me was the importance of intellectual honesty and personal integrity in the way we behaved as law students and future lawyers. The models to me for public service continue to be the way Prof. Yorac and Prof. Barlongay lived and died. They inspired me then and continue to inspire me in my work for good governance.

Yale Law School was a wonderful experience, and continues to be the best academic experience I have ever had. In Yale, honesty and integrity were a given, expected from all of its professors, students and staff. Brilliance too was a given. It was a memorable experience being told by then Yale Dean and now US Court of Appeals Justice Guido Calabresi, when he welcomed first year JD and LLM students with the conclusive statement that we were the best and brightest in the world and we did not have to prove anything in Yale as our Professors, also the best and brightest in the world, knew this. But brilliance was not a reason for pride, certainly not a means to hurt other people. For me, more than the knowledge and set of skills I learned from Yale Law School, the great take-away was the realization that you can be a great lawyer and still be always kind and compassionate.

The combination of great minds and good hearts are what I saw in my first Yale adviser Prof. Jay Katz, the readers of my dissertation former Dean and now US State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh and Prof. Donald Elliott, and above all in my dissertation and international law mentor Prof. Michael Reisman. Prof. Reisman, in his devotion to the late Prof. Myres McDougal (who himself mentored a generation of Filipino lawyers) and in his dealing with foreign students like me, exemplified what Thomas Merton calls an "apostolate of friendship", a relationship that I too strive to have with my own students and mentees. Having been taught by these great teachers and others in Yale Law School, having lived the New Haven experience, I became a much better teacher and human being when I came back to the Philippines.

When I teach today, I bring with me the sum of all my experiences as a student and as a teacher together with the sum of all my experiences in the worlds of law, policy and social conflict where I am immersed. My teaching experience begun 29 years ago in 1981 when I was a Jesuit Volunteer in Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro teaching philosophy and continued in the 1980s when I taught philosophy to a generation of Ateneans in Manila and religious workers in Mother of Life Formation Center and a number of seminaries all over the country. In the 1990s, after law school, I moved to UP Law and taught my first generation of law students. And when I became an Undersecretary at the Department of Environment and Natural Resources from 1996-1998, I was joined there by a group of young lawyers who looked up to me for mentoring and professional guidance.

It has been a great pleasure seeing the fruits of my law teaching and mentoring – with most of my students and mentees now overtaking me in stature and knowledge. For a teacher, nothing is more satisfying than this experience of knowing that your students and mentees are now better than you.

As for my current students, whether they are political or environmental science students in the Loyola Schools, law students in the School of Law, and public officials or politicians in the School of Government of Ateneo de Manila University or my students in UP Law, I emphasize to them that they are getting something that is a mixture of theory and praxis. I both do and teach, act and theorize. I keep crossing back and forth the worlds of academe, social development politics, and governance. I share with my students my belief that while the real world is tough and fraught with challenges, it is possible to do good, indeed to be good – in what you do and as a human being. I teach them skills of course – depending on the subject I am teaching – but beyond skills, I would like to think that I teach to my students an approach, an attitude to work and to life that will do them well later on.

To illustrate this approach, I have developed a teaching methodology that encourages my students to work in teams and work collaboratively with each other. This stems from my belief that, in the world today, good work is usually no longer a solitary product but a result of solidarity and collaboration. Certainly, this has applied to the work that I do – I am able to accomplish a lot because I have many partners and co-workers who make it possible for me to do a range of things. At the core of a collaborative approach or attitude however is honesty and integrity. If you are to work collaboratively, you have to trust each other. If I encourage my students to work together, if I work closely with others, it is only right to expect the sharing of both burden and credit. Ethical fiber is more needed in a situation where you are continually interacting with each other, unlike the situation when a student is working mostly alone and is in a sense answerable only to her conscience. Indeed, collaborative work requires a code of ethics based not only on intellectual honesty but also in sensitivity and respect for each other.

Let me be clear that I am not a perfectionist. I have a high tolerance for mistakes. I actually think such a high tolerance is a good quality for teachers. This is because I too am imperfect, have made many professional and personal mistakes, and know I will continue to make such mistakes. I am, as a person and as a teacher, accepting and find it easy to forgive. I probably err on the side of giving high grades to my students. I would have no problem forgiving a student who plagiarizes a paper or who cheats in an exam so long as there is admission and contrition. There also needs to be an acceptance of some kind of appropriate penalty. I also strongly believe that humility and acceptance of error and limitations is a necessary insight for anyone to reach such full potential.

This brings me to why I signed the UP Law Faculty statement and why I stand by it. I deliberated long and hard on whether to sign this statement and in the end concluded that it was important to do so as a witnessing to my students not just in law schools but wherever I teach. In addition, as an advocate of good governance and ethical behavior of public servants, how could I not sign such a statement?

In sum, I teach because of the difference I think I am making when I am working and with my students so they can become the best they can be.

For the issues I care about – protecting the environment, halting and adapting to climate change, ending poverty through new approaches such as social entrepreneurship and a base of the pyramid approach, ensuring permanent peace in Mindanao and our country, and achieving a just and well-governed society – teaching is the most effective way to make a difference. These are huge issues, large problems, and almost insurmountable challenges. These battles cannot be won in a generation. We must outrun them, go far ahead of the problems, and find effective solutions early so that they do not repeat themselves in the future. All these problems need a new generation of leaders, scientists, lawyers, social entrepreneurs, and activists. That is why I teach – so I can help foster and support such a community of change makers.

Even after 29 years, I am still nervous when, at the beginning of a semester or course, I meet my students for the first time. I still worry whether I will be a good teacher to this class, whether I can deliver to them the skills and values I want to impart. Nowadays, because of a hectic travel schedule, I especially worry about my absences and whether I am shortchanging my students. At the end of the semester or course, I still shout for joy when I realize, from their exam answers or from private messages they send to me, that my students have truly learned and they will be/are better professionals and persons because of it. I do jump, yes literally jump, for joy when I see former students, many years later, living what I have taught them. I do not of course take credit for what they accomplish and what they have become but I have to say that I beam with pride in seeing my students live good lives. Those moments are really the joy of teaching.

Whenever someone asks me, during speaking engagements, how I would like to be introduced, the standard phrases I suggest are: "Teacher, thinker, lawyer, social entrepreneur, and good governance, human rights and environmental advocate". But if pressed to choose only one; without hesitation, quickly and with conviction, I would choose, "teacher". It is a title I hope I will always deserve.