Monday, July 6, 2009

DOCUniversity Tour: UP Diliman

The Mass Communicators Organization (UP MCO) recently hosted one leg of the Correspondents’ DOCUniversity tour in the Media Center of the UP-College of Mass Communications.

Seasoned broadcast-journalists and Correspondents Karen Davila, Abner Mercado and Bernadette Sembrano presented their greatest works and talked about being in the business of making documentaries.

The first documentary, “Ito Ang Klase Ko”, a 3-segment story by Karen Davila, showed the inhumane state of our elementary schools. They compared and contrasted a public elementary school to a not so expensive private elementary school, and the learning environment the kids are subjected to. Also, they pointed out the absence of the ideal environment for kids to be able to learn.

Docuniversity

She was really shocked and disturbed when she did the story on Payatas Elementrary School. To illustrate, one Grade 4 classroom had 146 students, and neither one of them was able to spell a simple word --- “beautiful.”

“Kids nowadays do not learn anymore,” Karen said. She explained that the kids do not even have the nutrition they should get, the right learning environment (teacher to student ratio, classroom facilities, etc) and the right home environment, for them to be able to study and to really learn something.

The short segment elicited a mixed feeling of sympathy, frustration and anger. “Wala tayong karapatan maging tamad, at ‘di pumasok,” one student said. She’s right. We don’t have the right to cut classes and be irresponsible because those kids should deserve more to study in a good school in your place.

In her 20 years in News and Current Affairs, Karen admits that the writer in her stands out. From being an anchor in the daily news TV Patrol World, in Wonder Mom, co-anchor in Pasada Sais Trenta, and in the Correspondents, Karen says that she enjoys doing stories for the Correspondents the most because she can educate the people.

As Iskolars-ng-Bayan, like Karen, we should be able to be “agents of change.” She says that even though every year stories may be similar, it’s important to look for these stories (of injustices, inhumanity, and other ills of society), because one way or another, it will touch people, and change will bound to happen.

What I admire most of Karen is her humility and her passion in doing the best she could in her line of work, and to be, one way or another, an agent of change in the Philippine society.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to finish the event because I had to rush to my STS class, which discussed the “Possibility of a transcendental subject” by CSSP Dean Zosimo Lee. Blog about lectures of ENG’G Dean Rowena Guevarra on “Science, Technology and Music,” and CSSP Dean Lee shall soon be posted.

Similar posts:

Science Technology and Society,” CS Dean Caesar Saloma
The Culture of Medicine,” Anthropology Prof. Felipe Jocano, Jr.
Alternative Sources of Energy,” NIP Director Henry Ramos

1 comment:

  1. Uhuh that's right! if we need change, we need to start in our selves first. and our government must do something in this.

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