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My Ateneo Years |
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by Glicerio Abad
At the Ateneo de Manila Padre Faura campus, I spent four years of high school and a year of college. In the summer of 1946, my two brothers and I applied for admission to the Ateneo de Manila, newly re-opened at Padre Faura Street. In a one-floor wooden building which eventually became our school cafeteria, I remember moving from one white linen-covered table to another, to be interviewed by different white-soutanaed American Jesuits. Not used to such tall people, I found their towering over me a bit forbidding. Fortunately, we successfully passed the interviews and were admitted to the Ateneo: my eldest brother to second-year high school, my younger brother to Grade 5, and I to first-year high.
For the next four years, to go to and from school my brothers and I would separately ride jeepneys (ten centavos a ride then) from our Oroquieta home to Padre Faura. For lunch we walked over to the next-door Philippine General Hospital, where my mother worked as a pharmacist. She brought and heated our daily lunch. We returned home, again separately by jeepney.
My first-year high school was quite a novel experience for me. The Ateneo was an all-boys school. In contrast, at St. Theresa's College where I studied kindergarten to grade six, all my co-graduates, except for two other boys, were girls. In addition, the ages of our first-year class ranged from 10 to 15 years. Many had stopped schooling during the three years of Japanese Occupation. Our first-year class had five sections of about 40 students each -- totaling about 200. But when we reached fourth year, we had only three sections, starting 4th year with only about 120.
Schoolyear 1946-47 started with a general assembly at the gymnasium where all students from all four years were present and different Jesuits gave speeches. But I hardly understood what the Jesuits said -- although English had been the medium of instruction in my six years of grade school. Their American accent sounded very different from the English spoken by my Belgian and Filipino grade-school teachers. And Fr. John P. Delaney's first assignment was to write the gists of the various speeches at the assembly -- to my anguish!
Our classes were held in newly-built Quonset huts -- small hangar-like structures roofed with G.I. sheets, with a wooden-framed metal screen on one side. For the first few days the floor of the classrooms was dirt, but gradually it was cemented. For the old Ateneo-Padre Faura buildings had been ruined by mortar shells and fire. Only the second floor of the old theatre building was still used -- for the administrative offices.
We were also introduced to a new language -- Latin. Jesuit education, since it started in the 16th century, has followed the classical curricula followed in European schools. For the four years of high school therefore, we studied Latin grammar and read the classics of Julius Caesar, Virgil and Cicero in the original Latin. This, in addition to continuing to improve our knowledge and skills in the grammar, literature and composition of two other languages -- English and Tagalog. For mathematics, we studied algebra, geometry and trigonometry. For science, we had biology and physics. For history, we studied Western civilization, Oriental history and Philippine history and constitution. And every year Ateneo, being a Catholic school, had a subject called "Religion" and, in fourth year, the "social encyclicals" of Catholic Popes.
At the beginning of each grading period (four per year), the school assembled in the gymnasium for the Reading of Honors. Students who had earned over-all high grades the previous period were called one by one to walk up the stage to receive a Certificate of Honors. Since students of all four years were present, we got to know the consistent honor students of the entire high school.
For discipline, tardiness or unruly behavior was punished by jug, post, or whack-whack. "Jug" meant writing a sentence over and over (100 times or more), usually on a topic related to the "crime" being punished. e.g., "I will come on time from now on." "Post" meant reporting for military drill on Saturday morning. And "whack-whack" was Fr. Delaney's giving a culprit the choice, instead of the other forms of punishment, of getting whipped with a rattan stick he kept in his office.
In first year, all of us were enrolled as Boy Scouts. But from 2nd year on, we were enrolled in Preparatory Military Training (PMT), which meant marching in drill formation and learning military tactics every Saturday morning.
Contests or competition are a Jesuit way of stimulating interest on a given topic. In our class, Fr. Delaney (who was class teacher of Section A for the first semester) pitted one side of a classroom against the other to determine which side could give the highest number of correct answers. Rewards were given to the victors, e.g., bonus grades, exemptions. Those who maintained high grades in a given subject during a grading period were exempted from taking that subject's final exams.
Inter-school competition was also encouraged. In sports, in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), six schools competed in basketball, soccer and field sports at both the college and high-school varsity levels. The games were held usually at the Rizal Memorial Coliseum or Stadium. After 1950, the Ateneo games were held at the Ateneo gymnasium newly-built in Loyola Heights, Quezon City. Riding a bus thither from Quiapo, I recall how, after Gilmore Avenue, there were no houses, only cogon grass, on either side of Aurora Boulevard. The Cubao commercial area was non-existent then, and EDSA was only a two-lane dirt road winding crookedly along cogon-grass fields.
In academic subjects inter-school competition was also held. Between traditional archrivals -- Ateneo and La Salle -- comparative tests were given in English and Math. I remember that the Ateneo usually scored higher in English but LaSalle in math.
In accordance with the Jesuit ideal of building "a sound mind in a sound body" (mens sana in corpore sano), intramural sports were promoted. Among different sections in a year's class, competition was scheduled. There was a season for basketball, volleyball, soccer, or softball. In the first couple of years, boxing also had a season but, for some reason or other, was discontinued. Such inter-school and intramural sports instilled in us an interest and love for different kinds of sports. Thus not only our minds but also our bodies were developed.
An "honor system" was introduced by Fr. Delaney, first as I-A class teacher, then as high-school Dean of Studies. To instill honesty, he would leave the room without a teacher during tests and expect the pupils not to cheat.
Besides academic subjects taught in the classroom, the Ateneo encouraged also students' voluntary participation in extra-curricular activities. The Sodality was considered as the over-arching activity. Other activities included: the Sanctuary Society (for Mass servers), Ateneo Catechetical Instruction League (ACIL), Rizal Book Club (for library assistants), Brebeuf Club (for athletic referees), Hi-lites (the high-school paper), Aegis (the school yearbook). The class valedictorian and salutatorian were chosen not only on the basis of consistent high grades in all four years but also active participation in extra-curricular activities.
Graduation ceremonies for our class were held at a makeshift open-air auditorium, with the ruins as backdrop, on April 1, 1950. Our class claims the distinction of being the first postwar class to spend all four years of high school at the rebuilt Padre Faura campus. In 1952 the high school moved to Loyola Heights, Quezon City.
After graduation, we went to different schools depending on the career path we decided on pursuing. Fourteen decided to join religious groups -- Jesuit or Redemptorist. Some went to the University of the Philippines or the University of Santo Tomas for pre-medicine. Others went to LaSalle for commerce or engineering. A majority, however, convinced of the need for a liberal education, decided to take up college at the Ateneo.
For the Ateneo College in schoolyear 1950-51, the Freshman Class had three sections: A.B., Litt.B. and Pre-Law. The first two were four-year courses; Pre-Law had only two years, after which the students moved to the regular Law course. That year, the A.B. class consisted of: a third from Ateneo de Manila high-school section 4-A, a third from 4-B, and a third from other schools. Litt.B. was a more mixed group. The Freshman A.B. Class had for subjects: English, Latin, Mathematics, Religion and History of the Western World. The Litt.B. class, however, had no Latin. From Sophomore Year up, the classes did not follow the Freshman Year sectioning, but the students attended classes in different subjects, depending on their major discipline. The class graduated from college in 1954.
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