INTENSITY IN EDUCATION: A DIALECTICAL CONSIDERATION

Education nowadays as well as the process within it is measured more in terms of extensity than of intensity. Hence, the more relevant burden of academic scholarship in the present era is to locate the concrete vantage point where extensity and intensity may fully be coordinated to effect the realization of the truly educated individual. The lopsided thrust of education and its required features focuses more on the superficial in the matter, manner and method that it possesses. This is in the area of extensity and the problem with the unilateral emphasis on it is the inadvertent isolation of intensity which capitalizes on depth and quality. At the end of the road, we find extensively "educated" individuals who are more particularly interested in the degress attached to their names than in the essential depth of what they possess in the intellect.

Thinking aloud, it could be surmised reasonably that despite the presence of an array of multi-degreed academics, the general landscape of national life is still seen to be retrogressive and less promising. More realistically, the academe and real life do not match up and fit well together for what is taught in the academe are matters so artificial, real life does not need them and real life is so concrete the academe, replete with abstract notions peddled by "schizophrenic" professors, is just a superfluous nuisance.

The intensity of education lies in the fact thet it should be a realistic reflection--a committed theorizing--on what is actually experienced in life. It should be a deeper exploration into the dynamics and mechanics of actual life-events interconnected among themselves and constitutive of a system that prevails at a certain moment of ongoing history. Such education can only lead to a better understanding not of the theory that expresses the understanding but of the practical life given interpretation by the theory. In this condition and situation, real authorities are a common sight and their contribution is not to the growing statistics of half-cooked doctoral degree holders but to the economic vibrancy, poltical stability, social empowerment and cultural intensification.

To be more specific at this point of the discussion, the dialectical notion of progress that characterizes authentic education as an intense reflection of actual practices in social life should permeate every process operationalized in it in the forms or instruction, reseach, and extension.In other words, dialectics operates not only in terms of extensity but in terms of intensity as components of the entire system complement each other to achieve a higher level of development.

(c) Ruel F. Pepa

THE ESCHATON AND BEYOND

(apocalyptic messages at the threshold of hades)

I.

I SAW THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS

i saw the twilight of the gods
when the once powerful were stripped
of their scepter like a child whose
lollipop was snatched from her mouth.

i saw how the gods had fallen
and are now roaming the desert
looking for a heaven in the
hell that they made. i have seen the

gods that refuse to die because
they know that gods are supposed to
be eternal even if worms
and maggots have consumed their souls.


II.

ETERNITY IN THE WIND

eternity at the tip
of a bullet that dips in
the warm blood of hope and dreams
creates haunting ghosts and goblins
that inhabit the wasteland
where the howlings of the wild
dominate the wind and smoke.


III.

WHO WILL TREAD THE PATH OF DEATH

who will tread the path of death
when the laughter of haughty barbarians
fill the air that stinks with the smell
of sweat and burps of cheap liquor
amid a carousing crowd at the thick
of a revelry to celebrate a distorted life?

who will embrace the two-edged sword
of desperation when fear reigns high
in the heart of an impostor escaping
from the sight of a deep ravine
and now makes his way towards the womb
of the dark forest that surrounds
the mire of death ready to swallow even his soul?


IV.

DESTRUCTION AMIDST ARMAGEDDON

the last storm has brought heaps of debris
burying corpses of shattered dreams
washed out in muddy floods. so that e'en
the pain of hopelessness is leveled
off by the wings of lost sanity.

branches are now breaking once again
and the whistling wind intensifies.
the sky is getting dark and no one
dares to witness the firepower of
destruction amidst armageddon.


V.

IN THE SILENCE OF WARS' CLASSIC TRAGEDIES

the steel-cold nights have long stolen
the eagle-spirit that animates the warrior's will,
once soaring high over battles among principalities and powers

the towers have long been abandoned and the battlefield
is now a desolation, no more offensives and rear guards
in the silence of wars' classic tragedies.

the halls of fame have long been ruined;
memories and honors, all scattered and trampled,
broken on dusty pavements, forgotten, desecrated.

for in the skirmishes and collisions
of violent forces in the arena of earthly life
there is not a single victor; only losers and tragic praises.