I’m very glad to be here in UP Manila, which I consider to be UP’s historic home, the cradle of its spirit, of its ideals and traditions. In keeping with that spirit, I’ll speak today about the freedom to think, to speak, to study, and to teach – things which we in UP tend to take for granted, but shouldn’t, and I’ll tell you why.
I am a UP graduate, BSA major in Ag Edu, 1965, weighted average 2.36 and yes, I can vouch that at UP, we have the freedom to think, to speak, to study and to teach.
It’s no big secret that rebellion and resistance are coded into UP’s DNA, because we have always encouraged critical thinking, which in turn encourages – at least for a while, until complacency sets in – an attitude of dissidence, of anti-authoritarianism, of rejection of the status quo. That’s how knowledge happens, that’s how it begins, as every scientist since Galileo has affirmed.
At UP, Mr Dalisay says, “We have always encouraged critical thinking.” That is correct – and that’s exactly what’s wrong with UP! My alma mater encourages mostly critical thinking – when it should be encouraging mostly creative thinking. The UP Oblation offers all of himself to critical thinking!
Galileo is nobody. UP has never learned from Einstein, critical mind plus creative genius. He did not argue himself into his Theory of Relativity, E=MC2 – he intuited it first. You create first so that you have something to defend. Otherwise, you defend the status quo, and you will never get out of that rut.
In the sciences, education & law, UP does not teach creativity. At UP Los Baños, they teach scientific thinking, which is logical thinking, critical thinking. They do not teach how one may arrive at a scientific theory where there was none before – they do not teach the dual genius of Einstein.
I learned my creative thinking on my own, starting in high school at my hometown Asingan, Pangasinan, in the library of Rizal Junior College where I voraciously gobbled the Reader's Digest, among other digestible matters. In 1974, my Pacifica copywriter friend Orlino A Ochosa gifted me his copy of Mechanism Of Mind by Edward De Bono, published 1969 – that opened my mind to unbelievable creativity that, as the above inset text says, since 2000, I “have blogged neatly composed 7,000+ essays: 7M+ words.” Which explains my intellectual tease: “How about a Nobel Peace Prize for Non-Fiction Writer Online? Wake up, Digital Nobel!”
My unsolicited advice to my alma mater UP Los Baños: “Cultivate minds even as you cultivate soils!”@517
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