The Super Bowl of our lives

I went to school in Dallas, Texas in the late ’60s and early ’70s where football is gladiatorial sport religiously practiced by no less than America’s Team, the Dallas Cowboys. But I moved on after graduation back to the third world, and except for the occasional college bowl game I manage to catch in fancy hotel rooms, or at the homes of friends who can afford satellite TV, contact with the contact sport had been very minimal.

Oh, there was that one January day in 1990 when the Aleman contingent at the International School in Makati diplomatic corps and international aid agency children decided to teach my 16-year-old English-Scot-German-Irish-Sino-Malay daughter how to handle a keg of Reinheitsgebot (“purity order”) pilsener in one of those very early morning viewing of the gridiron extravaganza called the Super Bowl.

Joe Montana led the San Francisco 49ers the year before against the Cincinnati Bengals, a thrilling encounter that has been rated as the No. 1 bowl game ever. The 49ers were going for a back-to-back championship performance against John Elway of the Denver Broncos, their fourth appearance after three previous disappointing efforts. This time, it did not prove to be any different. In fact, this was the most lopsided bowl of all times with the 49ers making eight touchdowns against the Broncos touchdown and a field goal.

I faithfully performed my genial doting father function as I kept a watchful on my daughter who accepted the beer-drinking challenge as an act “to reclaim my culture.” But those were the days when professional football was just as wild and unpredictable as their amateur college counterparts have been. Now, the Super Bowl has become a contest of the ads on who could push the envelope the farthest this side of “shocking”, and to assess the quality of the half-time entertainment, making sure the artist’s attire do not come unglued in the middle of a performance. The game itself has become a highly orchestrated dance of the highly paid athletes resembling that of professional wrestling!

Speaking of being “unglued,” it is no longer inaccurate to describe our times as the ungluing of the oil-driven industrial era, or what we knew to be civilization in the last century and a half. On the peak oil journey, i.e., the projected quantity of non-renewable fossil fuel available in the planet, we have now reached the halfway point. Yet, the demand is not showing a trend of less usage. On the contrary, with the voracious appetites of India and China to produce goods for their bourgeoning population as well as to stock the WalMarts and the Debenhams of the world, the Rupee and Yuan economies are not about to let up in their demand for oil. We are on the down slope of the heretofore civilized world of Paris, Rome, Berlin, and London popularized by New York and Los Angeles for the Tokyos and the Rios of the planet! Our global military presence is predicated on the continuing privilege of managing that fuel supply.

The entire hierarchical ordering that we have called “civilization” since Sargon of Akkad deposed the King of Kish and created the patterns and practices of Empire, up to the reign of wistful wispy King George II in the White House where his minions and the surrogate but functional President Dick Cheney would echo the Nixonian dictum that a sitting president cannot do anything illegal at times of war, the ways of autocracy and representative rule is in a steep decline.

But more immediately, the collapse of the deregulated but actually un-free market is already unglued. The ponzi/pyramidal schemes of the Madoffs of the world have come to roost in crashed retirement fund values and the disappearing previously reliable investments virtues.

Behind the widespread and massive Obama call to service is the profound understanding that “We are the hope that we have been waiting for” —neither the king nor the court jester commands allegiance; the citizen can now claim the helm of local requirements. Already, White rhetoric is the popularization of the JFK challenge: “ask not what your country can do for,—ask what you can do for your country.” Barack goes one step further, identifying as responsible citizenship the brotherhood/sisterhood keepership of everyone. “You are your brothers/sisters’ keeper.” A new poster currently being used proclaims, however, with a slight twist: “If you are here to help me, thank you, but No. But if you are here because you are in the same journey as I am, welcome.”

We have come to the Super Bowl game of our lives, locally, regionally and globally. It is a life and death issue. Already, reports of homicides and suicides directly caused by the economic collapse and continuing debacles are geometrically increasing. As in every crisis, the reptilian brain’s response is to flee or fight.

I stepped out of bounds of the current PSS game on MLK Jr. day when I announced to my peers and administrators that I was moving away from my 6th grade classroom and resigning/re-signing with PSS. It was time to speak truth to power.

My next door classroom neighbor Tara White (I did not ask any of the teachers mentioned here permission to use their names, but I have mentioned them before in public, so I will take the risk of incurring their ire) who teaches one of five 6th grade classes at SVES comes to class with the responsibility of a fulltime teacher but with the status and pay of a three-month contracted substitute teachers. She is categorized as an unpassed PRAXIS non-Highly Qualified Teacher!

Substitute teachers are qualified folks who walk in and out of classrooms with teacher in-charge’s lesson plans prepared and ready to go. Ms. White is not a substitute teacher, but she is exploited like one, treated like an insignificant peon in some bean counter’s spreadsheet, rather than the qualified fulltime classroom pedagogue that she is.

Two teachers march their children to the cafetereum every day, and I invariable run into their organized and well-behaved column down my building’s stairs. Bobbie Aguon and Carmen Agulto had been teaching, it seems, since the fanihi was declared an endangered specie. It is a surprise that they have not been extinct-out of the PSS system yet. Bobbie and Carmen are two of our best teachers at SVES by any existing measure, but because they had not hurdled the PRAXIS eligibility line, they are deemed non-HQTs with the punitive dive of their remuneration from their previous status as certified teachers. The two-year contract cycle at PSS does not have a tenure system in place, nor do we measure effectivity. Ironically, we spend more money recruiting new workers than retaining the proven ones we already have!

Rufina Seman had been a certified teacher in the private as well as public school classrooms until PSS decided to raise the bar for certified teacher’s qualification, and she was “demoted” to being merely a teacher’s aide—one who functions in the classroom with the active supervision of a fulltime teacher. Rufina has been handling classes as a substitute teacher, alone and with total responsibility most recently for a class that has been abandoned because the assigned teacher this year segued into another position at centrum, presumably, because working as a fulltime teacher with substitute teacher salary is for the birds, I mean, the fanihi. Rufina was this year’s Teacher’s Aide of the Year awardee, but the description of her functions does not even come close to what she really does.

The first 30 minutes of our morning is devoted to instilling high values and virtues identified by the system. Recitation of the school philosophy and mission is a regular occurrence. They ring painfully hollow before the reality of how we debase the teachers’ integrity of labor and ignored the efficacy of their endeavors. “We are not just employees on a fortnightly paycheck,” teacher Rose Adams once said. “We are vocated professionals!” So far, I had not noticed BoE/PSS recognizing the hypocrisy of our treatment of teachers! The governor is no help; he refuses to appoint a Teacher’s Rep to the BoE on a classic Catch-22 technicality that only highly paid lawyers can appreciate, but leaves the Board devoid of official teachers’ representation!

My professional Super Bowl will have its formal kick-off pretty soon. When the whistle blows, we will see how far this new citizen of the realm can go, and how many will join the journey with a new slogan: YES, WE CAN; YES, WE WILL!
[B] Jaime Vergara[/B] [I]Via e-mail[/I]