Mozart, Bach and the Pinoy

Mozart, Bach and the Pinoy


Posted 11:08pm (Mla time) Jan 25, 2005
By Michael Tan
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A13 of the January 26, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


FRIENDS ask, with sympathy and concern, how I've been able to do my columns, teach, raise Alunsina and do the usual thousand other little tasks while nursing a fractured foot and a broken heart. I smile sadly, and then answer with courage: "Mozart."

No, Mozart isn't a new dog or lover (a canine being preferable these days). I'm referring to classical music in general, my mention of Mozart coming from the growing body of literature around the "Mozart effect" or alleged benefits of classical music for everything from an infant's mental development to boosting egg production in chickens.

I can attest to that with life the last two weeks. I'd get up in the morning asking why the sun had to rise but when I stumble into my study, switch on my satellite radio and as music streams in from a classical station, everything seems so much more manageable. No miraculous effects of course-I know some of my recent columns have sort of plodded along-but I really believe classical music does help.

I'm better today, thank you, and thought I should pay homage to Bach and Beethoven by doing an overview of studies around classical music.

Mozart and Einstein

Let's start with the Mozart effect, a term coined back in 1993 when researchers reported that college students listening to a particular Mozart piece (Sonata for two pianos in D major, K448) performed better in tests for spatial temporal intelligence. After that, researchers began doing all kinds of studies on the effects of Mozart's music with all kinds of claims about beneficial effects for people suffering all kinds of health problems, from Alzheimer's to epilepsy.

The most publicized ones are those around the use of Mozart's music by pregnant mothers. The result? These days, you get all kinds of tapes and CDs in music stores, including local ones, offering classical music and claiming these will help fetuses as well as babies to develop their spatial-temporal abilities. The "Baby Einstein" products, which claim music can help stimulate a child's intellectual development, have separate Mozart, Bach and Beethoven CDs. The Mozart effect has become a generic term for classical music in general since the studies suggest Schubert and Bach have beneficial effects similar to that of Mozart.

I wish I had more space to describe the tests here (sample: getting rats to run around a mazeway while listening to Mozart 12 hours a day over two months!) but let me just say the tests aren't all that conclusive. One Harvard study, for example, with 714 subjects, concluded that the benefit of Mozart was more of "enjoyment arousal"-an improvement of listeners' mood-rather than a direct improvement of brain function.

No matter. The tests do show some effects on the brain and the effects may be due to a particular pattern in the music. Music with sequences that repeat regularly every 20 to 30 seconds seem to elicit the best responses from the brain, maybe because sleep wave patterns also occur in 30-second cycles.

Compositions by Bach and Mozart seem to have such sequences. Another classical composer, Philip Glass, has a completely different pattern, and doesn't seem to elicit the Mozart effect. On the other hand, a particular piece from New Age composer Yanni, "Acroyali/Standing in Motion," seems to bring out the Mozart effect as well.

Eggs and milk

So, should we play classical music to infants and children? I'll confess I do get these CDs, but more to counter the constant blaring of rap and hard rock from radio and television. The studies on music and the brain do suggest, not surprisingly, that "slow" music (less than 100 beats a minute) seems to be generally more beneficial to animals (including us) than fast music (more than 120 beats a minute).

One New Scientist article had the headline, "Dogs prefer Bach to Britney," where dogs were exposed to music from Britney Spears, Robbie Williams, Bob Marley and a classical CD that included Grieg, Vivaldi and Beethoven. Oh, for additional comparison, they also had Metallica, a recording of human conversation and a tape that was silent. The dogs responded by becoming noiser (Metallica) or more calm (Bach). Pop music had effects no different from the silent tape.

Another New Scientist article, "Moosic to their ears," reported on milk production in cows. Beethoven seemed to stimulate lactation while the Beatles had the opposite effect.

Chickens, too, seem to boost egg production listening to classical music, although an increase was found, too, for Pink Floyd.

Okay, okay, so we aren't chickens or cows. But hey, there's also an Israeli study looking at fast music and its effect on driving. Yes, you guessed it, fast music, especially played loud, seemed to induce drivers to take more risks (which presumably mean more accidents). Note that this was not a specific study on classical music, but generally we'd say rock music has a faster tempo than classical pieces. And I do find that I get more easily agitated if I'm driving with rock music...or even particularly powerful opera music.

Filipinos and classical music

One of my biggest frustrations in the Philippines is the difficulty getting good classical music-dzFE, the one and only classical station, has reduced its hours, and the music stores...ask the clerks for "classical" and they point to Frank Sinatra.

I hear Filipinos dismissing classical music as "elitist" or "Western," which is a shame because for all our claims of being a very musical people, we do miss out on very fine music. Not just the Mozart effect and the cow's milk or whatever, but even a chance to participate in the global classical music scene. South Korea, Japan, China and even Singapore now have classical music performers recognized globally. To Imelda Marcos' credit, her support of training for young classical artists did produce Cecile Licad. These days, the support has been negligible.

Don't forget classical music includes chorale pieces and that's a niche we could fill, some of our choirs and chorale groups having won numerous international awards. But again, without government support, the appreciation for classical music will remain limited.

Sure it takes more, much more than classical music to raise a child or do an Inquirer column or nurse a shattered heart (thanks, Justine), but we do miss out on so much by not promoting classical music enough. I do appreciate the Beatles (not having to produce milk) and Paolo Santos and good acoustic music, but what we seem to favor is really atrocious music, the barrage of rap and Sex Bombs. I wouldn't be surprised if some researcher finds, eventually, that music like that is contributing to the dumbing down of the Filipino.

Replaying Frank Lynch

Replaying Frank Lynch


Posted 00:52am (Mla time) Jan 21, 2005
By Michael Tan
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A15 of the January 21, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


BRAIN drain. Folk Catholicism. "Big and little people." Fiestas. Family planning and the Catholic Church. These are some of the topics in "Philippine Society and the Individual," a collection of essays by Fr. Frank Lynch and his colleagues at the Ateneo Institute of Philippine Culture (IPC), many of which were written in the 1960s and 1970s.

Yet, the anthology, edited by Aram Yengoyan and Perla Makil, with an introduction by Mary Racelis, reminds us that "burning issues" aren't necessarily current events; in fact, the most pressing of these burning issues often need retrospectives such as those that we can derive from "Philippine Society and the Individual."

I'll demonstrate this by focusing on the insights generated in the book around two particular issues-brain drain and family planning-which continue to be among our most urgent concerns as a nation.

Brain drain

The essay on brain drain was written by Walden Bello, Frank Lynch and Perla Makil and first appeared as an IPC paper in 1969, mainly to summarize a "Philippine Brain Drain Survey." Brain drain is described as "a ubiquitous thorn in the relations between the privileged nations and the underprivileged..." with an amazing reference to a noted British scientist, Lord Bowden, describing the repercussions this way: "It is beginning to be a fact that fields in India will remain uncultivated in order that America may put a man on the moon."

Lord Bowden was referring to India's brain drain but we, too, were also suffering in the Philippines. We learn that as early as 1966, there were 2,474 Filipino resident doctors in the United States, constituting a fourth of foreign residents in American hospitals ... while back home, even in Manila, our physician-population ratio was 1:671 and in rural areas it was 1 doctor for nearly 5,000 people.

Bello, Lynch and Makil warned us, that early, that the brain drain would affect the way we would develop. They were using an older framework of development as a "take-off" process, and felt that brain drain would prevent us from even taking off.

The essay goes into lengthy discussions of US and Philippine foreign policy as well as development strategies but what struck me was the data the researchers gathered around our educational system and brain drain.

We learn that of all Filipinos who graduated from Philippine colleges, about 7 percent eventually took up permanent residence abroad. Now that's real brain drain. And who contributed most to this brain drain? Adamson University, Ateneo de Naga, University of Santo Tomas, University of the Philippines and De La Salle. Schools with "medium emigration ratios" were Mapua, Ateneo de Manila, College of the Holy Spirit, San Beda and St. Theresa's.

That early, our government planners and educators should have seriously looked into what it was in our educational system, especially in those high emigration ratio schools, and especially at UP, that produced Filipinos for export. Remember the brain drain then was literal because the ones who left were professionals, many scientists and health professionals who could have spelled a difference in our development trajectory.

One could argue that these schools produced Filipinos for export because they were excellent schools. Sure, but we could have looked too at other good schools named in the essay as having low emigration ratios, including for example Maryknoll, Far Eastern University, Philippine Women's University and Silliman to see if their curricula were factors that encouraged graduates to stay and serve the Philippines.

The IPC paper described the brain drain then as "moderately serious," and noted optimistically that among the most academically gifted Filipinos, "the tendency to return is most pronounced." I leave it to readers to decide if this happened.

Family planning

Another essay in the anthology was written by Father Lynch with the intriguing title, "The Catholic Church: Philippines' Silent Partner in Population Control." Let me say I dislike that term "population control" but the essay was written in 1976, before people began to wonder if we were really after population control or family planning.

What's important though is that Father Lynch cites several surveys done in 1967, 1970 and 1971 to show that disapproval of family planning was not really tied to "closeness" to the Catholic Church (measured by such indicators as attendance at a Catholic school, attendance at Sunday Mass, etc.) In the 1970 survey, involving 897 Catholics, 65 percent approved of family planning and again the differences in views were not connected to "closeness" to the church as described above.

In the 1972 survey, involving 649 Catholics, 76 percent approved of family planning, with additional indicators used here, specifically an "orthodox-morality scale," meaning views about a mother's failure to have her infant baptized, eating meat on a Friday in Lent (a mortal sin, if I remember right, at that time!), etc. Again, there was no difference in moral orthodoxy between those who approved and disapproved of family planning.

Again, I suspect the past is present, that if we replicated these studies we would have similar figures today. Certainly, more recent public opinion surveys from Pulse Asia and Social Weather Stations show that Filipino Catholics are following their personal conscience about family planning. The problem though is that conservative Catholic leaders do pressure politicians to distance themselves from family planning.

Interestingly enough, Father Lynch felt that the high approval rates for family planning among Filipino Catholics at that time was due to the Catholic Church's position being one of laissez-faire, meaning letting things be, rather than actively campaigning against family planning. Even more astounding was his recommendation that Catholic bishops and priests should "speak out openly and often against the false morality of those who extol large families and abandonment to Divine Providence as prima facie evidence of supreme virtue."

We know what happened since then, a triumph of that false morality that Father Lynch spoke against. Alas, too often, brilliant minds like Father Lynch were prophets in the wilderness.

I've given only a small sample of what's in "Philippine Society and the Individual" and hope readers will pick up their own copies or order one for their company or school library. And if you do get a copy, read Father Lynch's essay on intellectuals, whom he defines as people who would be "reasonable, truth-hungry, open to new ideas and capable of integrating them with the old, concerned about the things that will always matter to man, including the right use of power and wealth but not his own amassing of them."

That was Father Lynch's definition of a "true intellectual," in an essay written in 1966. Yet the definition has become even more relevant to the country in the 21st century. I hope, for our country's sake, that intellectuals are not doomed to become lonely voices in the desert.

Faith in America

Faith in America


Updated 10:06pm (Mla time) Jan 18, 2005
By Michael Tan
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A13 of the January 19, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


PEOPLE have asked why I didn't write a column mourning the reelection of George W. Bush last November. Surprisingly, most of the ones who asked were Americans, some of whom joked that they wanted to migrate and stay permanently in the Philippines rather than live in an America governed by Bush.

Of course, the American friends I have tend to be liberals, mostly serious Democrats who campaigned actively for John Kerry. Throughout the campaign period, their e-mails to me reflected the roller coaster of emotions they were going through, at times feeling it was a losing battle and at other times hopeful optimism that they could get Bush out of the White House. As the campaign came to an end, the public opinion polls showed it was a neck-and-neck battle, so there were still hopes that Kerry would win. He lost, and on Jan. 20, we usher in another four years of Bush, with all kinds of doomsday predictions of more problems for America and the world.

Moral values

With Kerry's defeat, my friends didn't just express sadness but, more often, shame and embarrassment. They knew that throughout the world--in Europe, in Latin America, in Muslim countries--Bush was immensely unpopular, and that his victory reflects badly on the Americans. As one friend put it, "There's only one word to describe it all: stupidity."

Call me naive but I actually have more faith in America and Americans. Let me explain by focusing on the most often-cited reason why Bush won. When my American friend uttered the remark about "stupidity," she had a copy of the Inquirer with her. She pointed to the front-page headline, something about "moral values" sweeping Bush to victory. It was actually a reference to exit polls showing that 22 percent of American voters identified "moral values" as the issue that mattered most in their choice for president. Her frustration came from the widespread interpretation that Americans had reelected Bush mainly because of his conservatism, specifically, his opposition to gay marriages, to stem cell research (the use of embryonic cells to produce new treatments for certain diseases) and to abortion.

I'd be more cautious about the labels attached to American voters. I've never liked the term "moral values" because it can be so ambiguous. Even when you name specific moral values, you'll find that a person's position may not always be that clear either.

For example, the same exit polls showing American concern with "moral values" also came out with a startling statistic: 6 out of 10 of those interviewed were actually in favor of same-sex marriage or civil unions. Bush himself, although vehemently opposed to same-sex marriage, actually said in an interview on ABC News, that he was in favor of "legal arrangements that enable people to have rights," which is what civil unions are all about. With civil unions, a lesbian can arrange to have her partner as her beneficiary in insurance or inherit property.

There are other inconsistencies in this "moral values" explanation of Bush's victory. Again, the public opinion surveys show most Americans are in favor of stem cell research. Even California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a staunch Bush supporter, campaigned actively to allow such research in his state.

Incompetent versus...

No doubt, the conservatives did use this stick-all term "moral values" to mobilize many Americans not so much to support Bush as to defeat Kerry. It's the way these conservatives have been operating all these years anyway, appealing to a fear of the unknown.

This is especially clear in relation to the Iraq war, with Bush's victory interpreted as American public support for the invasion and occupation, and with fears now that Bush's global adventurism will worsen in the next four years.

Again, I'd be cautious here. The Bush camp again used scare tactics, depicting Kerry as weak and saying that this weakness would invite more terrorist attacks. It was a fear of terrorism that eventually overwhelmed Americans. It didn't matter that all the evidence now clearly shows that the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with al-Qaida or weapons of mass terrorism. All that mattered was that Bush was "proving" to the world that America was tough.

It certainly didn't help either that Kerry had flip-flopped on Iraq. Like most other liberal American politicians, he did support the invasion initially. He wasn't too clear either on many other economic and social issues, while Bush was unyielding with his ultra-conservative views.

In the end, many votes for Bush (as it seems here in the Philippines for Bush's ideological bedfellow Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo) were really more of votes cast for what people thought was the lesser evil. The Economist captured it all with a catchy pre-election cover showing Bush and Kerry and the caption: "The Incompetent versus The Incoherent."

Beginning of the end?

Bush and his camp just might be wrong if they interpret the "moral values" statistics in the exit polls as a mandate for all his conservative positions, including Iraq. Americans are a practical lot. Even Nancy Reagan, who is as conservative as Bush, spoke out in favor of stem cell research as her husband, former President Ronald Reagan, was slowly dying of Alzheimer's, a disease whose cure probably lies with stem cell therapy.

Bush has preached an inward-looking ideology: to hell with what the world thinks, as long as Americans get their way. That, too, appeals to American pragmatism, for now. With time, Americans will realize how dangerous this thinking is, especially if Bush gets more entangled in the Iraqi quagmire and more American soldiers return home in body bags. I actually think that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida wanted such a victory because an emboldened Bush, becoming more hard-line against Muslims, helps the terrorists to recruit more people for their cause.

Of course, Bush need not worry because like Ms Arroyo, he's not going to be eligible to run again, but if he's thinking of how history will look at him, a reckless and relentless pursuit of his existing policies may just mean the world remembering him as the president who ushered in the beginning of the end of the American empire.

I lived in the United States during the Reagan presidency, with all kinds of doomsday predictions that he would plunge America and the world into disaster. In spite of Reagan, the world in fact moved forward, many countries dismantling the right-wing dictatorships installed by the United States, often with the help of freedom-loving Americans.

We need more faith in America--not in its arms or in its tough talk, but in the ideals of freedom and democracy that many great Americans crafted and tempered into powerful weapons of morality. We need to continue to speak out in defense of those freedoms and in the end, just as the Philippines will survive Ms Arroyo, the world will survive Bush.

Acts of God

Acts of God


Updated 01:12am (Mla time) Jan 07, 2005
By Michael Tan
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A13 of the January 7, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


HAVE you noticed how insurance policies often include a disclaimer, limiting payments in cases of "acts of God"? The term is used to refer to natural disasters, an implicit acknowledgement that some events are beyond human control.

There's more to these "acts of God" than insurance coverage. As humans, we are always trying to understand why such events occur, especially when there's widespread suffering and death involved. We often turn to our religious leaders for explanations and they, in turn, will offer theodicies, attempts to explain the co-existence of God and evil. It's not easy doing this, especially in religions like Christianity, where God is supposed to be omnipotent and loving. If God is all-powerful, why would He allow evil?

Beyond the theological debates, there are also lay theodicies, coming from religious leaders as well as experiences of families and friends. It's important to listen to what people are saying, and where they pick up their explanations, because it helps us to understand how people cope with adversity-whether catastrophic personal illnesses or something like the tsunami-and how we might want to tap into more positive aspects of these belief systems.

Divine retribution?

All over the world, there's a strong tendency to look at illnesses and natural disasters as divine retribution or, in Tagalog, “gaba.”

One newscast the other night featured a Sri Lankan Catholic priest who said the tsunami was God's way of telling us to "change our ways." And last December, a friend told me that shortly after the destructive typhoons, a Catholic priest delivered a homily in his parish in Quezon City in which he warned the congregation that the typhoons were God's way of punishing politicians, specifically in Nueva Vizcaya and Aurora, for having supported family planning and a reproductive health bill in Congress.

My friend was understandably upset, and I can share his dismay, especially because the sermon played with facts. The most deaths occurred in Quezon, which was not mentioned, while Nueva Vizcaya, while hit hard, had a very low toll of lives. Now even if the typhoon had killed thousands in Nueva Vizcaya, we would have to ask, is God so displeased with family planning and reproductive health that He (or She) would send typhoons to destroy lives and property? Then, too, if this God so abhors family planning, then why were so many children killed? What happens to the politicians and the doctors and millions of people who practice and support family planning?

With the tsunami, one could ask, too, what kind of God would again kill so many children to express displeasure? Some Christian fundamentalists might then refer us to the Old Testament story of God slaughtering the eldest born of Egyptians to pressure them to let Moses and the Jews leave.

We need to question this view of a wrathful and partisan God. The tsunami struck a prison in Sri Lanka, allowing its inmates to escape. Was God on the inmates' side? The tsunami struck the hardest in the province of Banda Aceh, where there is a very active secessionist rebellion. Was God punishing the rebels?

My main gripe against these "God's punishment" interpretations is that they are often used to impose certain beliefs, about "us" the good and about "them" the evil, "them" being anyone who doesn't agree with us. These "explanations" are manipulative, shamelessly capitalizing on people's fear and suffering.

Trials

I suspect that many Filipinos tend to hold a dualistic view involving forces of good and of evil. On one hand, you have Satan, even human beings who have pacts with the devil, who cause disasters, misfortune, suffering. On the other hand, you have God and, for Catholics, the Virgin Mary and the saints. The world is a battleground for good and evil, and our hope lies in appealing to the forces of good to vanquish evil.

The emphasis is not so much on the punitive than on getting God, Mary and the saints to act on our behalf, protecting us from or warding off evil. Folk Catholicism sees humans as so vulnerable that a whole arsenal has been developed against evil: prayers, novenas, holy pictures, holy water, scapulars, amulets, rosaries and, lately, feng shui and Taoist charms thrown in for good measure.

If despite that arsenal calamities strike, one after another, friends will console us by saying that like Job in the Old Testament, God is testing our faith. Keep praying, we are told, and it will all pass, leaving us stronger. Such theodicies have also been criticized by theologians themselves in the way they explain evil by citing ultimate good in another life.

Catholic theologian Terrence Tilley, writing in "The New Dictionary of Theology," offers us useful advice: "The problem of evil is often treated as an invitation to theological debate. But when the endlessness of philosophers' debates reveals the hollowness of human explanations, something more remains. In solidarity, people can enable each other to face evil of every kind without denying its reality."

Tilley emphasizes that overcoming evil is not just a matter of helping its victims but of confessing to our own sins, including the times we fail to do good. We actually have a popular saying around this, "Nasa Diyos ang awa, nasa tao ang gawa" -- it is up to God to be merciful; it is up to us humans to do what we can.

Morality

A secular alternative to the idea of "acts of God" is to look at illnesses, tsunamis, typhoons and similar disasters as natural phenomena that strike more or less randomly. Instead of gloating over who has been "punished," we instead search for explanations from the natural and physical sciences, with the hope that in the future, some of these disasters can be prevented, or how we might reduce the adverse impact if they do happen.

To be secular is not to throw out morality. Ultimately, we do concern ourselves with human "evil" or frailties. We look at how unhealthy lifestyles contribute to illnesses, for example, although note that religion may have its own labels for these behaviors, like gluttony or lust. We recognize, too, social "sins" such as the destruction of the environment that sets off floods, or in the aftermath of natural disasters such as what we're seeing now after the tsunami, the scams, the looting, the gang-rapes, the kidnapping and trafficking of orphans.

Unicef had a full-page ad in yesterday's Inquirer naming Real, Quezon, Dingalan, Aurora and several places in India, Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka hit by the tsunami. It goes on to appeal for help, especially for many children that are at risk from disease and from human vultures. Unicef notes: "Nature makes no distinctions. Neither should we."

It's a message that reminds us that we can be moral, that we can counter evil, without clinging to a belief in a vengeful and destructive God.

Pinays to watch

Pinays to watch


Updated 09:28pm (Mla time) Jan 04, 2005
By Michael Tan
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A13 of the January 5, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


NOTWITHSTANDING the male connotations of the year of the cock, I propose this is going to be the year of the Pinay. And the reason is that we have so many able women, other than the President, charting the Philippines' fortunes as they hold key positions in politics, business, education and, let's not forget, mass media.

This is not to downplay the tremendous problems women face in the Philippines. Males still dominate and women often suffer grievously, but, in common with other Southeast Asian societies, we do live in a matricentric society where women can wield great influence and power. Even more fascinating is the way they keep a low profile, working slowly but surely to achieve their goals.

I thought of focusing on three Filipinas to watch during the next year, not because they're necessarily going to be making waves this year but because they epitomize that quiet strength, that subtle thoroughness that brings lasting and substantive results.

Susan Roces

Her legal name is Jesusa Sonora, but she is better known as Susan Roces, a popular actress who played lead roles in more than 40 films. She went into semi-retirement over the last few years but re-emerged in the public limelight late in 2003 when her husband, Fernando Poe Jr., ran for president. If FPJ was the reluctant politician, Susan Roces was said to have been even more wary of politics, but she played the role of the Filipino wife, standing by her husband in all his campaign sorties and smiling enigmatically when asked if she would take over her husband's candidacy if he were disqualified.

After FPJ's death in December, Susan Roces once again came into the limelight when she spoke out against what she felt was the mass media's biased coverage of her husband's campaign and lashed out against the insincerity of politicians now rushing to pay homage to FPJ.

The nation noticed, and approved, touched by her ability to speak out, mincing no words and yet maintaining her composure.

I am not surprised. Filipinas are strong, but Filipino widows are even stronger. Our widows have been known to surpass their husbands in business and politics. The potentials with Susan Roces are actually tremendous, given that she has far greater mass appeal than Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo or Cory Aquino.

Easily, Susan Roces could become someone like Sonia Gandhi, daughter-in-law and widow of Indian prime ministers. Despite strong public clamor for her to become India's prime minister last year, she declined and has, in the process, become an even more powerful woman. Like Gandhi, Susan Roces may yet prove her mettle by choosing to be political without entering the quagmires of politics.

Emerlinda R. Roman

Next month Dr. Emerlinda R. Roman will become the 19th president of the University of the Philippines. The fact that it took almost a hundred years for the university to have a woman president speaks volumes about the paradoxes of Filipino society's gender relations.

Dr. Roman's first year of office will be crucial, setting the tone for a centennial presidency that will impact not just the university but the entire nation. It has been a tumultuous century for the university, of grappling with its colonial and patriarchal beginnings, of growing up pains and explosive radicalism in the 1970s. Dr. Roman has seen the most crucial transitions, and has herself been involved in many of the uphill battles, having served more than 10 years as chancellor of UP's main campus in Diliman, Quezon City.

Even more daunting for Dr. Roman will be the practical problems of running a university that continues to have to live up to almost unrealistic expectations from the public about training the country's future leaders, even as Congress mercilessly cuts its budget each year. Dr. Roman's most immediate challenge will be defending a controversial new charter that will redefine the university as a state institution generating its own resources without necessarily becoming commercial.

There will be more to revitalizing the university than improving salaries for professors. Dr. Roman's leadership style will be crucial in dealing with the often vicious intramurals that plague government institutions and drive away some of our best professors. She is foremost a manager, a consensus builder who will listen graciously and silently to all sides but will speak up when needed, firmly, almost sternly. Yes, when I heard people explaining her style, I thought, just like a nanay (mother). There is hope yet for the university.

Patricia Evangelista

For the third Pinay to watch, I wanted to name someone young. Easily, that would be 18-year-old Patricia Evangelista, a speech communications major at UP (sorry for my bias) who beat 60 contestants from 37 other countries to win the 2004 Best Public Speaker competition in London.

Evangelista wrote her own speech, "Blonde and Blue Eyes," reflecting the ambivalence we face over the Filipino diaspora. She describes wanting to be "blonde, blue-eyed and white" in her childhood and then growing up, with a greater awareness of being Filipino, and labeling those who leave as deserters. We sense her dismay as she mentions that out of her brood of 16 cousins, there will only be five of them left in a few years because so many would have left to work and live overseas.

But Patricia becomes more optimistic, speaking of the Filipino diaspora in a borderless world as an opportunity for "an extension of identity." She speaks of Filipinos contributing to the world, and learning from these experiences. Ultimately, she says, "leaving sometimes isn't a matter of choice. It's coming back that is... A borderless world doesn't preclude the idea of a home."

I've seen Patricia interviewed on two television talk shows, once with Tina Monson Palma and once with Cito Beltran. She's sharp and feisty, avoiding cliches and empty rhetoric. At the same time, she can be refreshingly awkward at times, almost embarrassed with the recognition she's received. Simple lang, I would say, using the Tagalog-Spanish sense of the word. She has said she wants to work in mass media and I'll be watching, hoping she maintains her "simple" asset and resisting the temptation that so many of our mass media personalities succumb to: of becoming too self-absorbed, too messianic, too male.

Indeed, if Patricia Evangelista, Emerlinda Roman and Susan Roces are to leave their mark, it will be by carrying on a Pinay tradition that we see all the time in homes and in boardrooms, in classrooms and in Congress: of being strategic in choosing to speak up or being silent, of being nurturing and firm, of being of wise mind and of even wiser heart.