Professor Justice's Secret Files

First Encounters With The Admin's Wife

The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) requires college faculty members to have at least finished a master's degree. They do checks on universities to make sure everybody would comply. But not all of those who have master's or doctor's degrees would like to teach. Thus, not all universities could comply.

There are those who do like what they did with me.

I have a master's degree. One of the faculty members in our department was a wife of one of our school administrators. She did not have a master's degree. She did not even have any license while the rest of those in our department had either a license or a master's degree. Some even had both.

This is why it was agreed that, as far as the official records are concerned that would be submitted to CHED, the subjects assigned to her would be as if they were assigned to me. She did not exist as our faculty member as far as CHED is concerned. But as far as our university was concerned, the subjects were assigned to us through "team teaching."

We had to act, substitute, or show up in each other's classes when we receive a tip that CHED was coming over. It is important that CHED would see me in her classroom when they pay a visit.

I did not earn extra under that arrangement, but I did not find that wrong back then. I was okay with it. I am aware other schools do it. It's not peculiar to the university I was working for.

Because of this, I had time to talk with the Admin's Wife. She was concerned about the deteriorating culture of our generation. She was worried for the preservation of our culture because young people do not appreciate so much of our museums, art, and indigenous way of life. She sees the xenocentrism or the appreciation of other cultures better than our own in the way a lot of Filipinos were living. She wants the youth to be more nationalistic.

Generally, I have no problem with her worries and concerns. Those are part of my concerns too. We both want our values and culture to be improved and better appreciated.

But there's one thing we disagree on. I prefer sending, encouraging, and incentivizing off-campus activities. I want to support our museums. I was always on the lookout for activities where I could encourage my students to go and participate. She was scared to all of that. For her, all learning activities should be done in the classroom or strictly at home. For her, it was not safe to be outside. She did not support field trips. She even preferred on-the-job training or work immersion to be just done inside the university.

Since it was merely a matter of preference, I thought I would never have any problem with that. Besides, we have to respect each other's preferences for as long as there is no valid law criminalizing the preference or the actions associated with that.

Little did I know that I would have to deal with the Admin's Wife later. She would cause me and others a lot of stress starting the following year.

But, as of this point, we were "friends."