Age?
None of Your Business
June 24th, we had a simple
brunch trip to Tagaytay. It was Jeg’s
birthday (never mind how many years).
This was my first time to visit the popular stop-over called the Bag of
Beans Coffee Bar. Nice place. Jeg’s guests
were niece Danyelle, sister Ruby, and
mom Lita. The place is actually
nice. Wouldn’t mind going back there for
a tumbler of coffee, together with their over-sized wafer cake.
Jegs is looking just great these
days. Of course, both of us do need to
get rid of some amount of excess luggage such as on the midsection. But it’s difficult to go against centrifugal
force. Even the earth can’t. See, as the earth rotates on its axis, it
tends to bulge on the middle, which is why the point that is farthest from the
center of the earth isn’t Mt. Everest, the highest point on earth, but Mt.
Chimborazzo in the Andes mountain range in South America, which is located one
degree above the equator. As the earth
rotates on its axis, it bulges on the midsection, which is where Mt.
Chimborazzo is nearest.
Couple
of Publications
The year 2012 seems a good year for
me. During the first half of the year a
couple of books came off the press, Both
carried works I’ve done earlier (meaning the previous year and earlier). Let me tell you about these two books.
The first book, titled Development
Communication in Directed Social Change, A Reappraisal of Theory and
Practice. It was edited by Professor
Srinivas R. Melkote of Bowling Green State University in Ohio, USA. Professor Srinivas is an expert in
communication for social change. This book, organized in four parts
(Introduction; Rethinking Theories in Communication and Directed Change; Social
Change Communication in Action: Macro & Micro Contexts; Case Studies in
Communication and directed Change). All
in all, the book has 13 chapters, the 12th one I prepared. This chapter is titled Development
Communication Education in Los Baños: Contribution from Graduate Research.
In 2011, Dr. Sundeep Mupiddi,
Secretary-General of AMIC in Singapore, visited Los Baños and specifically
requested me to contribute to a book he was organizing at AMIC. He did mention that the book would deal with
some kind of reappraisal of devcom from a theoretical point of view. Well, I’m not a theoretician, but I did tell
Dr. Sundeep that I would gladly participate in the project although I would
prefer to write on a specific topic of my choice, to which he agreed. I chose to write about the role of graduate
research in the training of devcom specialists at UPLB. I focused on the PhD dissertations produced
at the College of Development Communication at UPLB from 2000-2010.
In general terms, the thesis of my
chapter is that graduate research in devcom done at UPLB is a good measure of
how devcom is taught in Los Baños.
Devcom graduates of UPLB are highly skillful in the use particularly of
ICTs. However, due to the heavy
expectations on devcom experts in the university to help solve the development
problems of the country, they (experts) have not been able to do substantial
research that contributes to theorizing.
In fact, the great bulk of staff and graduate research done in Los Baños has been
focused on solving development problems, largely from the points of view of government agencies or the
mother institutions of graduate students.
There has not been enough time and financial resources to do research
that substantially leads to theorizing in development communication, which is
one reason why devcom remains a skills-oriented field for many practitioners
and academics.
This book is available from AMIC in
Singapore. Visit this website: www.amic.org.sg.
The other book is titled People’s
Radio (Communication Change Across Africa), authored by Dr. Linje Manyoso, a
development broadcasting expert from Malawi in Africa, and currently lecturer
and director of the MSc Programme in Media and Communication at the London
School of Economics and Political Science.
This book is Linje’s doctoral dissertation at La Trobe University in
Australia. I’m honored that he made substantial use of my book titled Rural
Educational Broadcasting, A Philippine Experience, which was published in 1985.
Dr. Linje asked me in 2010 if I could
write a preface to his book since I, too, have been in the field of development
broadcasting plus the fact that my book was a major reference in his
dissertation. Little did I know that the
piece I wrote for him would end up as a special chapter in his book, titled
Manifesto for a Development Radio Broadcaster.
This book was published by Southbend
Sdn. Bhd., publisher of development communication books, based in Penang,
Malaysia. People’s Radio is one of the
titles in the Communication for
Development and Social Change Series, where a good friend, Professor Jan
Servaes is Series Editor. I invite those
interested in this book to email my friend Chin, owner of Southbend: chin@south.pc.my. You may also visit: www.southbend.com.my.
Visit the UPOU HQ
Do find time to visit the campus of
the UPOU in Los Baños. But don’t pick
the luscious-looking bignay berries just yet.
They have been sprayed with chemicals, perhaps to get rid of the
excessive ants. Perhaps the UPLB Institute
of Food Science has contracted the berries for their wine-making project.
By the way, Dr. Armand Palijon, the
UPOU Landscape Architect, has been really taking care of the landscaping
requirements of UPOU. Quite easily, I’ve
heard someone else say so, the UPOU frontage is much more beautiful than any of
the other campuses of UP. Well, you
gotta be in the place to appreciate its beauty.
We’ll see when the entire frontage
will be full of sunflower during graduation next summer. Could be more beautiful than that of
Diliman. We’ll take bets later.
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