Cyberthingie

ADOLESCENCE is not only maddening. Try understanding an adolescent on cyberspace.

My nieces in Australia mailed me their photos. That is, their mother/my sister got them to turn over their school snapshots to store in my wallet. A tone of duress wafts from one note written at the back of a photo.

Rory, 5, writes: “Dear Nanay and I will be your best firend Love love Rory Rory”. Nana, 15, is terse: “Dear Nanay, the photo needs no explanation. I ask that you refrain from showing this picture Love, Joanna”.

Beauty perhaps means differently at certain stages. Still nestling at the cusp of childhood, my younger niece is self-possessed. She smiles at the world, confident that it is beaming back at her.

A young woman loses the dew of openness. Framed by old man’s glasses, Nana’s eyes yet hold a glimpse of the child I first saw in my sister’s arms, later carting armloads of books and a puppy, and last seen up close afloat in the other world of “Twilight”.

I take my lovely girls and mystification to another teenager. My son Carlos, 19, directs me to Nana’s Facebook page. I “like” her profile picture but have to wrestle with my son, who tries to prevent me from leaving a comment.

I succeed. I post: “Hi, Nana!” I want to add more but feel tongue-tied in the company of Aratrika, Parth, Breanna, Sehar, Sherridan and Nana’s other friends who “like” her photo, too, but don’t leave a note.

Now I notice I am the only one who does (where is my sister?).

When Carlos sees my pallid, short-for-me note, he groans with all the what-have-you-done ominousness only a teenager can muster. From his raving, I gather that I might have mortified poor Nana until the next century, irrevocably trespassed some digital divide invisible to oldies but glaring like neon-sprayed disaster to the young.

I bluster. Doesn’t “hi” still mean “hello” on cyberspace? Why would I cyberbully a girl I love as a daughter?

My son only gives me a look. I feel like I’ve suddenly sprouted wild facial hair and spouted even wilder notions of truth and fairness like a certain favorite senator.

For the first time, I step into the shoes of those who see the virtual world as chaos waiting to be unleashed. Where the familiar and pedestrian, like windows and traffic, can become altered and new, and a slip can open a vein to stir up all frenzies.

To create order from this disorder, the temptation is to impose: pass a cybercrime prevention law that dangerously sweeps, along with 16 other cybercrimes like cybersex and child trafficking (as tabulated by Janette Toral of digitalfilipino.com), the constitutionally protected right of freedom of self-expression, as well as right to privacy, with a murkily defined cyberlibel.

Protesting hacktivists, Netizens and 15 Supreme Court (SC) petitions may have won a reprieve when, six days after Republic Act 10175 took effect, the Supreme Court issued a temporary restraining order that puts the law on hold until early next year.

Issues raised by the controversy—the definition and penalties of cyberlibel, as well as the manner by which this clause was “inserted” and the law passed without public hearing—should continue to engage us. How do we protect ourselves from the unscrupulous that will misuse quickly evolving digital technologies to invade privacy, steal identities, exploit gullibility? How do we ensure we don’t abuse the Web?

At the same time, with reason, we suspect that applying traditional means to control a new medium following new logic makes us vulnerable to the evils we swore never to let loose again: repression, dictatorship, chaos, death of society.

To break the impasse, many demand authorities consult stakeholders. Others call for online self-regulation and digital media literacy.

Adolescence and cyberspace are so much alike. Both are constantly shifting. It’s a maddening thing, sure. But the only way out is to go through it.


(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)

*First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s Oct. 14, 2012 issue of the “Matamata” Sunday column

Teacher's pet

I WILL never forget my kinder teacher, Ms. Espina. She had a soft voice, calm hands. She was the kindest woman. In my five-year-old mind, she was the best thing about school.

For a while, I thought that our class was named after her: “kinder” for the woman my classmates and I were all drawn to, like ants homing in on molasses.

When I was promoted to prep, I was heartbroken to learn Ms. Espina stayed in my old classroom and I had to enter a new one. This was ruled by a teacher shorter and smaller than Ms. Espina.

Boy, was she fierce.

When a pupil bawled and ran after her mother on the first day, and my other classmates hiccupped and started to cry and also moved towards the door, our new teacher herded all the runaways back to the room. She locked the door. And leaned against it. And looked back at us.

My heart almost stopped beating as I wondered if I would ever see again my mother and father and Ms. Espina across the hall. When our class was dismissed shortly after recess, I walked past my old classroom. Ms. Espina was at her desk but I didn’t go in.

At six, I felt old, wise and doomed. Not only can I never be with this gentle soul again, I could not imagine the other teachers lying in wait out there until I finally would be old enough to never enter a classroom again. E-ver.

Well, I recently turned 47 and I’m still wondering about those teachers. Last June, I entered graduate school.

Two of my former students became my classmates. Instead of passing notes in class, we update each other through email, Facebook, e-groups, text. When our professors posted our class standing, the use of student I.D. numbers to mask identity didn’t apply to me. I have the only I.D. number that begins with “1983-…” while the rest of the class have “2000-…”.

I’m even older than my professors. One teacher and I are the only ones in our class that saw President Ferdinand Marcos alive. Later, I learned that my professor was still in high school while I was a senior undergraduate during the dying days of the dictatorship. While he was still into Archie, I was reading “Das Kapital” in comic book format. Cool.

Yet, sitting inside a classroom as a student, not as a teacher, I realize how I’m not drastically different from the six-year-old who realized that the only secret to getting unstuck from that seat and walking out to take deep gulps of blissful freedom is to please the one who can lock and unlock those doors.

That’s essentially how I got to be such a teacher-pleaser. I like school. I like assignments. I like commuting early to be in campus eight hours before my class starts. I like libraries where no one is selling coffee, blowing smoke my way or hoarding the newspapers. I don’t much like exams but I like tussling with a problem, pinning it down and walking away, feeling like the Terminator. Yeah.

Most of all, I like being a student and trusting my teacher to take me to a place I’ve never been before. No one will ever take the place of Ms. Espina in my heart, but it was actually fierce, tiny Ms. Prep who, true to her name, stood me at the edge of the precipice, challenging me with her eyes to jump.

Backwards to safety or forward to vastness and possibility.

On World Teachers’ Day, I write this letter to reassure Ms. Espina she will always be my first love but my gratitude goes to her and Ms. Prep and all my teachers who make magic.

Jump.

(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)

*First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s October 7, 2012 issue of the “Matamata” Sunday column

Teacher's pet

I WILL never forget my kinder teacher, Ms. Espina. She had a soft voice, calm hands. She was the kindest woman. In my five-year-old mind, she was the best thing about school.

For a while, I thought that our class was named after her: “kinder” for the woman my classmates and I were all drawn to, like ants homing in on molasses.

When I was promoted to prep, I was heartbroken to learn Ms. Espina stayed in my old classroom and I had to enter a new one. This was ruled by a teacher shorter and smaller than Ms. Espina.

Boy, was she fierce.

When a pupil bawled and ran after her mother on the first day, and my other classmates hiccupped and started to cry and also moved towards the door, our new teacher herded all the runaways back to the room. She locked the door. And leaned against it. And looked back at us.

My heart almost stopped beating as I wondered if I would ever see again my mother and father and Ms. Espina across the hall. When our class was dismissed shortly after recess, I walked past my old classroom. Ms. Espina was at her desk but I didn’t go in.

At six, I felt old, wise and doomed. Not only can I never be with this gentle soul again, I could not imagine the other teachers lying in wait out there until I finally would be old enough to never enter a classroom again. E-ver.

Well, I recently turned 47 and I’m still wondering about those teachers. Last June, I entered graduate school.

Two of my former students became my classmates. Instead of passing notes in class, we update each other through email, Facebook, e-groups, text. When our professors posted our class standing, the use of student I.D. numbers to mask identity didn’t apply to me. I have the only I.D. number that begins with “1983-…” while the rest of the class have “2000-…”.

I’m even older than my professors. One teacher and I are the only ones in our class that saw President Ferdinand Marcos alive. Later, I learned that my professor was still in high school while I was a senior undergraduate during the dying days of the dictatorship. While he was still into Archie, I was reading “Das Kapital” in comic book format. Cool.

Yet, sitting inside a classroom as a student, not as a teacher, I realize how I’m not drastically different from the six-year-old who realized that the only secret to getting unstuck from that seat and walking out to take deep gulps of blissful freedom is to please the one who can lock and unlock those doors.

That’s essentially how I got to be such a teacher-pleaser. I like school. I like assignments. I like commuting early to be in campus eight hours before my class starts. I like libraries where no one is selling coffee, blowing smoke my way or hoarding the newspapers. I don’t much like exams but I like tussling with a problem, pinning it down and walking away, feeling like the Terminator. Yeah.

Most of all, I like being a student and trusting my teacher to take me to a place I’ve never been before. No one will ever take the place of Ms. Espina in my heart, but it was actually fierce, tiny Ms. Prep who, true to her name, stood me at the edge of the precipice, challenging me with her eyes to jump.

Backwards to safety or forward to vastness and possibility.

On World Teachers’ Day, I write this letter to reassure Ms. Espina she will always be my first love but my gratitude goes to her and Ms. Prep and all my teachers who make magic.

Jump.

(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)

*First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s October 7, 2012 issue of the “Matamata” Sunday column