Not-so-Special Program for the Arts

Some years ago, ca. early 2000's, every summer, I would get invited by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts to help facilitate a theater workshop for teachers from all over the country. They were members of the faculty of the Department of Education's Special Program for the Arts, and I would usually various classes on theater: Acting, Directing, Stage Management, Technical Direction, etc.

A lot of the teachers assigned to this special program were former P.E. teachers, and for some of the participants in that workshop with whom I continued to work with outside the workshop, it was inspiring to see them grow into their new tasks: help mold their students into the country's future artists and culture bearers. Such a program used to only be available at the Makiling High School for the Arts, and having the privilege of knowing some of the school's alumni: Raymond Red, Shamaine Centenera-Buencamino, Soliman Cruz, to name a few, I was really excited by the idea that the Department of Education has expanded the program to pilots schools all over the country.

When the opportunity for one of our children to be in the program at the Baguio City National High School (BCNHS) presented itself, we grabbed it. Our daughter has been taking ballet lessons and was really showing some potential. She took the written entrance examination and passed it, and the next couple of weeks were spent preparing her for the next step: a dance audition. She passed that too.

On her first year, as part of the first batch to be in the recently implemented K-12 program, much of their time was spent learning indigenous dances along with some traditional folk dances. Our daughter would come home excited to show us a new movement she learned and the story behind each step.

They got to experience performing infront of audiences too as their group would usually be invited to showcase a dance or two at various functions within and outside the school. I was already thinking of how much farther she can get in the field of the performing arts when she gets to college. I personally knew some of the first alumni of the BCNHS Special Program for the Arts and was immensely impressed by their talents. I worked with some of them when I had  a brief stint as an artist-in-residence at the University of Baguio (2005-06) and they delivered like professionals in each of the productions we staged.

From the early to the mid-2000's, Baguio City National High School was already slowly evolving into one of the city's arts and culture destinations - then, they regularly staged exhibits, plays, dance and musical performances that showcased amazing young talents. But in recent years, that stopped.

A couple of months ago, some of these alumni, most of whom have pursued more lucrative careers in other fields yet maintained their interest in the arts, while others actually started careers in various institutions engaged in different fields of creative expression, invited me to do a talk for this year's graduating batch. They were particularly concerned about the last few batches' apparent disinterest in pursuing careers in the arts.They were simply uninspired.

A new person was has been installed to head the SPA program of the school and one of her first directives was to trim down the "specialization time," or the time the young artists spent working on their craft, from two hours per day to just an hour. As a theater artist myself, I can't imagine what can be accomplished within just an hour. For theater, warm up and vocalization exercises already take up to 15 minutes leaving only 35-40 minutes for rehearsals or acting exercises to allow for at least 5-10 minutes for the students to cool down and prepare to go to their respective academic classes. It's basically the same with dance. Clearly, the new head has no real experience nor knowledge about the performing arts, or perhaps even the arts in general.

And then we received information that all the current mentors/advisers of all the specializations - dance, theater, musical, literary, visual and media arts were being replaced, mostly by MAPEH teachers. The current mentors have undergone several workshops, training sessions under different institutions through the years, and now they will be replaced by Music, Arts, Physical Education and Health teachers most of whom received their education through textbooks. The reason for the replacement isn't clear, but I'm almost certain that politics isn't totally out of the equation here.

Given the above circumstances, we now believe that the program may just do more harm than good as far as the children's potential creative talents are concerned so we decided to pull our daughter out of the program.

A bureaucratic approach to the program is what's slowly killing it. With Master's Degrees and Ph.D.'s being a dime a dozen these days, people may be given such lofty positions in the government bureaucracy, including public schools, on the basis of their years in service (which do not necessarily translate to wisdom/knowledge or actual skills) and 100% attendance in their post-graduate studies.

Sayang, is the only word I can think of. The Baguio City National High School's Special Program for the Arts held so much promise. But right now, it's just not special anymore.