Lessons from the last class

Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia

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esterday, November 29, 2007, I facilitated my last class. I felt a mixed sense of excitement and loneliness that I woke up too early at around 2:00 am. I know that yesterday was special because it was my last chance to interact with my 22 students as a “class”. (We started 24 but two dropped-out.) It has been a lovely academic journey with them, which may be the reason why I felt a bit sad. Often, when the reality of saying “goodbye” strikes my sensibility, it hits me with joyful pain generating neither contentment nor dissatisfaction. It was a feeling between “letting go” and “holding on”. Once in a while, I feel this kind of “contradiction” that I cannot fully explain, and whenever the theories that I know are unable to grasp my overwhelming emotion, I shut up!

I feel the moment. I feel the tentativeness. I free myself until I do not feel anymore.

When such numbness of the mind is alternately occasioned by the gasping breath of my heart, I know that something “good” happened; enabling the power of the mind so that the heart would remember, and not forget.

I believe this was what happened yesterday, when I listened to the lessons my students learned from attending my class on culture, society and international students. It appears that each of my students learned something beyond what ordinary textbooks offer. They spoke about the relevance and the practical life application of the topics we discussed during the class. Yes, we struggled our way to understand “culture” and “society” especially that my students are not into the social sciences. In fact, most in the class have not taken Sociology 1000 and this was one of the greatest challenges that I muddled to overcome. I talked about the sociological perspective and the value of “other” perspectives that the world propounds and presented culture not in homogenized Western form. I know that I disabused the structured worlds they own and encouraged their consciousness to unleash the potential for imagination. Thus, the narrow path of prejudice and discrimination was widened by the theoretical dose of cultural competence discourse. It was hard for most of us, including myself, to admit our cultural blindness. We all know that we are culturally aware and sensitive; but what good that this make the social world if we are unable to translate our awareness into action? Despite the differences of the colors of our skin, we are all too honest to admit that we are culturally incompetent! I think this realization collided with one of the fundamental principles in social life, be it culture or everyday life. It speaks about the principle of change and how change is possible.

Young Marx wrote, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it” (Theses On Feuerbach by Karl Marx, 1845). Is it possible that our class has generated a new level of social consciousness relative to the desire of Canada, and Dalhousie University in particular, to produce students, both Canadians and international, who understand and value diversity and multiculturalism?

I hope that my dear students will have enough “will” to imagine a new better social order for cultures to flourish and for the world to be more humane.

I will always remember.

Below is the song I rendered the class as my way of saying “thank you”. I am indebted to a well-known Filipino folk-singer and song writer, Gary Granada, to his music and the lyrics, which I appropriated for this purpose (in italics).

Thank You Song
(Music and some lyrics adapted from Gary Granada’s composition)
With changes in italics by Clarence M. Batan

Dedicated to the first batch of ASSC 1040 students
Fall 2007, Faculty of Arts and Letters
Dalhousie University

We shared more than a glance
To meet and know each other
And now the time is up
And I am finishing up.

We might have another chance
To meet again together,
To fill each other’s cup
I feel like breaking up!

It’s this time that almost always
Makes me cry,
Before I say goodbye
I want to let you know
I’ll miss all of you.

**Thank you for being my students,
Thank you for taking this course,
Thank you for sharing ideas
‘Coz with all of you I feel I really belong.

Thank you for the lovely memories,
Thank you for learning with me,
And if our paths will cross
Somewhere, somewhen
I‘d love to be your teacher again. (Repeat **)