point and counterpoint

Kids in Class­room (flickr.com)

Classes have started for barely a month. It was a warm June after­noon, lunch break just ended, and the class were busy hav­ing good chats before the next classes start, punc­tu­ated by the per­cus­sive foot­steps of some stu­dents hur­ry­ing to get back to their class­rooms in time.

The Eng­lish teacher walked right in, and the class was in order. After the manda­tory prayers, the stu­dents took to their seats. “Today,” the teacher said, “we’re going to write an essay.”

The chat­ter fell silent at the men­tion of the word “essay”. After all, when you’re deal­ing with the teacher who han­dled the school paper for more than a decade the mere men­tion of the word evokes a death sen­tence. “And because you’re in high school now,” the teacher con­tin­ued, “this won’t be the same as your grade school ‘for­mal theme’. You won’t be copy­ing your teacher’s sam­ple essay; you will make your own.” Sens­ing the stu­dents’ appre­hen­sions,  he said, “I won’t make it hard for you. You will be writ­ing your thoughts on a topic you all know about.”

At the time, the coun­try was gripped in the frenzy of the Metro Manila Film Fes­ti­val scan­dal, which involved a hand­ful of big names in show­busi­ness. This was before the age of The Buzz and Startalk, before Hay­den Kho and Kat­rina Halili. “I’m sure you all have some­thing to say about this, don’t you think?” the teacher said. Some heads nod­ded. “Good. I’ll help you out by writ­ing one essay myself.”

The Eng­lish teacher wrote a short out­line of a typ­i­cal essay…at least, as he saw it. He wrote a sen­tence as the young eyes fol­lowed his hands. “Now how do you think we should con­tinue?” he said. A few hands raised, and one sug­ges­tions fol­lowed another. A few hands copied each sen­tence from the blackboard.

“Class, don’t,” the teacher said. “You’ll need to come up with some­thing orig­i­nal. I’m just show­ing you how to do your essays.”

After a few min­utes, the sam­ple essay was com­pleted, all six para­graphs of it. In his deep tenor voice, the teacher reread the essay, punc­tu­at­ing his read­ing with some expla­na­tions on how the para­graphs jell together. “Lis­ten up, every­one,” he said, “I don’t care if your grasp of Eng­lish is not very good. That’s what this class is for. What I care about is how you write the piece. Write to express, not to impress.”

Silence. “Now it’s your turn,” he said. “Since we don’t have much time left [back then, only 40 min­utes was allot­ted for each sub­ject], you can write at least the first few sen­tences or para­graphs. I’ll return your papers before you go home later this after­noon so that you can work on it at home.”

* * * *

On the day of the next class meet­ing, the stu­dents talked about their essay grades. The teacher promised that the essays would be graded by the morn­ing, and that they will be handed to us on the next meet­ing. For most of the class, the expe­ri­ence was any­thing but excitable or enjoy­able; many stu­dents were relieved that the ordeal was over after a few days. The only ques­tion that remained was that how the papers were marked.

And then the teacher walked in.

“So,” he said, “how did you find your essay writ­ing projects?” Half of the class groaned, while the oth­ers only smiled in bemuse­ment. A few eyes rolled, relieved that their ordeal was over.

“But this is just the first grad­ing,” the Eng­lish teacher said. “You still have three quar­ters to go.” The teacher enu­mer­ated his over­all impres­sions of the essays, high­light­ing the class’ col­lec­tive mis­takes. “Take a look at this sen­tence,” the teacher said, writ­ing another sam­ple. “Some­thing there doesn’t make sense, and a good num­ber of you wrote this way.”

(flickr.com)

After the litany was over, the teacher erased his writ­ings. “I want to show you now one of your classmate’s work,” he said. “It’s some­thing you might want to con­sider study­ing. This is the only one that got every­thing correct.“With the paper in one hand and a chalk in the other, he scrib­bled the first few words of the first sen­tence, which read so much like it was writ­ten by a refined hand.

Hav­ing com­pleted copy­ing the essay, the Eng­lish teacher then read each and every sen­tence of my essay and, again, explain­ing every now and then why it worked. “You see,” he said, “This is how you avoid get­ting round­about. That’s how you should write, direct and straight to the heart of the mat­ter. And if you noticed, he used a semi­colon here.”

After his dis­course has fin­ished, our Eng­lish teacher said, “I’ll be hand­ing out the papers to you guys. Please do study what went wrong. I did read every sen­tence of your works and I hope you’ll pay atten­tion to my com­ments, it will help you.” Turn­ing to the model writer, he said, “And as for you, I only have very few cor­rec­tions. Mostly lit­tle gram­mat­i­cal things. Keep it up. And, oh,” he said, turn­ing to me. “You may want to join the school paper, by the way.”

And that…was how I dis­cov­ered I could write, fif­teen years to this month.