Lessons from calling 'Quezon' an idiot

SABBATICAL NOTES. 30 JUNE 2014. MONDAY. N4. 
Lessons from calling 'Quezon' an idiot 

A SUPERVISOR in Ilocos Norte used a minion of a public school teacher under her supervision to destroy me. 

That was years ago, long before MTB-MLE would become MTB-MLE. 

The teacher wanted to become 'a famous person of some sort', according to the supervisor, and so the supervisor wrote a news account of my talk at the launching of MTB-MLE in Laoag City when MTB-MLE was still in its gestation stage, when our attempt to resist and struggle against this widespread Tagalogization happening in our schools and public life was still an infant's attempt at crawling.

The ragtag band of believers of MTB-MLE went to many places, and at that Laoag sortie where I was one of the speakers, I talked about the idiotic policy on the national language of the commonwealth president.

The supervisor was not present in that talk.

Instead, she sent her pit-bulls to report to her what I talked about.

And then I landed as a banner story of the Ilocos Times, the title screaming, and the opening line equally screaming because I called the 'Father of the National Language' idiot.

I did not know about this unhappy event until someone from the Philippines notified me of this misdeed of a supervisor who was more than her prime and poised to retire.

A journalist investigated, and found out some clues to the connivance.

And then some years later, a colleague found out the real story: that the supervisor who used the minion of a public school teacher to fight her war against me.

She used the name of that teacher in that news story, the story supposedly written by the minion. 'That news story would make him famous,' she claimed, referring to the minion who connived with her. 'Ta kayatna met ti agsikat' was the phrase she used.

I had the chance to talk to that minion of a teacher, and he cried, apologizing to me profusely, asking for forgiveness, and promising to correct his mistake.

Today, that supervisor has become a beneficiary of the struggle many of us were engaged in, a struggle that led to the MTB-MLE.

I played a small part--just a small part--in that struggle, but today, those who were opposing us like pit-bulls are now benefitting from what we had done.

FELIPENAS/