Library Afternoons and Personal Annotations

Between the rigors of UP in the new chapter of my life and the times when I felt the tendrils of loneliness embrace my soul being home away, I spent my afternoons in the quiet libraries of the university amidst the heaps of books that contain wonderful epistemologies and metaphysics. It has brought my perspectives to wider dimensions of life and it amazes my human existence every time I come to realize that such realities of ideas exist in this world. Indeed, in this seemingly small geographic enclave, there is still so much worlds to come, to see, and to conquer.

One of the tree lined streets in UP on holy noons going to the library.

Here are some of the most celebrated, at least to me, annotated bibliographies that I managed to write:

Rorty, A. O. (1998). Philosophers on education: New historical perspectives. London: Routledge

The implicit paradigm of Freud to learning was the way children conducted “sexual researchers.” Children should discover sex in their own ways based on their own needs at particular stage. He further illustrated a war between curiosity and education. Children want to know sex but adults tell them to learn education to distract them. Hence, education teaches the child to get disinterest in what really matters most to learn – sex.

Edgerton, S. H. (1996). Translating the curriculum. New York: Routledge

This selfish love is the one where the lover soaks as much experience into the self from the other who is loved though not in intrusive and obliterating way. It is different from selfless love which involves emotional investment that includes risk of rejection at the same time. But in order for love to grow, it should be selfish that it cannot risk to be rejected... it must require reciprocity and the lover must get in return of that investment. This deconstruction of hierarchy of love is found in the transference love – a love that is peculiar to pedagogical situation. This love here does not function as analogy for teaching and learning; it is real and important condition for pedagogy.

Orata, P. R. (19780. Self help barangay high schools. Quezon City: New Day Publsihers

If Mohammad cannot go to the mountain, then the mountain should go to Mohammad. If the children cannot go to the schools, then the schools should go to the children. We desire the same philosophy in our educational system today. We should stop looking at the other side of the fence, the educational systems of other countries; the grass is always greener in our own backyard, the unnoticed margins of our education history.

Ballenger, B. (2007). The curious researcher: A guide to writing research papers. New York: Pearson Custom Publishing

Tourists still buy bags of seeds for about a dollar and pose for pictures drenched in appealing flocks of pigeons. On the other side, officials of these cities continue to wage war they call “pest control” against these birds that decay cultural monuments and drop dung fungus. It is hard not to admire the traits of these pigeons, but it is also undesirable for these creatures to earn a negative label when it is only a normal part of their pigeon existence. Some wars we encounter today, either personal or social, are some wars that we cannot win because humans just know that the rewards of winning will not be worth the cost. Like the pigeon battle, our wars are futile endeavors that we cannot win because we also battle our own conflicts: our political responsibility to protect the great works of humanity and at the same time our moral obligation to share space with other lives in this planet.

Pratt, D. (1994). Curriculum planning. Orlando, Florida: Harcourt Brace, Inc.
Knowing has always focused on the objective study - dispassionate and detached. This objectivity fails to create harmony of relative realities, which in turn produces a crippling isolation of dream and reality, ambiguity and certainty, thought and action, poetry and science. This is the concern of the feminist movement in curriculum. The modes of thought and action experienced by women are process rather than product, social rather than isolated, facilitating rather than competitive, intuitive rather than rigid, supportive rather than difficult. What the feminist pedagogy offers is not simply a curriculum that responds more fairly to the needs of women, but a curriculum that reflects fully the nature of humanity.