Joan & Gringo did us proud

By Al S. Mendoza

ONE WAS BORN rich, the other poor. Their differences end there.

Both are No. 1 in exams they had separately taken.

Joan A de Venecia, who belongs to the rich and mighty De Venecia clan that has Speaker Joe DV as its patriarch, topped the bar exams in 2005.

This year, Gringo de Guzman San Diego, the son of a CPA-turned-taxi driver, emerged No. 1 in the board exams for nursing.

Joan is from Dagupan and a product of UP-Diliman, Quezon City. Gringo is from Mangaldan and also a graduate of UP – University of Pangasinan in Dagupan.

At the rate our kabaleyans are going, we might yet end up earning an acknowledgement from the Guinness Book as not just “grilla king” of the world but also the No. 1 producer of top finishers in made-by-government exams. (Just to clarify: there is no such word as topnotcher. Topnotch is informal/slang for first-rate.)

Likewise, whether it’s in the big city such as Q.C., or in the province such as Pangasinan, the matter of where one is coming from isn’t of any consequence in the estimation of who is intelligent. City-born, barrio-born, urbanite or “barriotic,” if one is good, if one is intelligent, the school that one goes to is really no big deal.

You are born rich, you are born poor, doesn’t make any difference.

Not too long ago, I saw a Tondo boy, the son of a laundrywoman and a pier hand, climb up the stage as the valedictorian of the graduating class in the Philippine Science High School, the country’s No. 1 high school. His pair of shoes, pair of pants and barong tagalong had been all borrowed from non-slum dwellers.

Intelligence doesn’t really come from the food you eat. Intelligence comes mostly from the one who owns a normal, even abnormal if you wish, but functioning brain. A functioning brain, of course, is owned by a sane man.

Even people we call abnormal are sometimes the most intelligent people you’ll ever meet. As Florencio Campomanes, the greatest Filipino to ever come out from the world stage of chess, said to me during one starry night in Itoo City, Japan, “I prefer going out with the abnormal because being with the normal doesn’t give me any challenge. Boring.”

Some schools are being projected as producers of great people.  That is true, but only partly.

The truth is, it’s the great people that make schools great, if not look good at least.

With their feats, it goes without saying that Joan A. de Venecia and Gringo de Guzman San Diego made their schools look good, if not great institutions of learning.

But still, I maintain that, always, the school should only be one percent and the student 99 percent. 

You are enrolled in a supposedly great school but you refuse to harness to the fullest your mental faculties, you are worse than a flunk (not flunker as there is no such word).

On the other hand, you are enrolled in an unassuming school but you wrack your brains in pursuit of your grand dream of finishing at the top of the heap, you have already achieved 99 percent of your dream.

Always, it’s the student, never the school; the Indian, not the arrow.

OK, you want a crueler truth?

You got it: It’s GMA, not the Constitution.

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