Are Labels Enough?

By I.V. Mallari

Its a cause for despair that the chef concern of the average college student of todayaside
from having a good time and making a big splash on the campusis to persuade his professors to give
him as high grade as their consideration will permit to finish all the prescribed courses by resorting
to all the wiles and ingenuity at his command, to graduate, to get a diploma and a degree. To him, the
diploma and the degree are sufficient proofs that he has become an educated man.
But are they? Is the label on a bottle enough guarantee that the content of that bottles what
its claimed to be? If the labels to have any validity at all, if its to inspire credibility and confidence, it
must keep an accurate conception of the nature and quality of what its intended to present. In the
same way and for the same reason, a college diploma or degree must serve as a symbol testimony of the
academic proficiency and cultural development that its possessors supposed to have attained.
First, has its possessors stay in the college preserved and sharpened his sense of wonder? Has
it broadened his intellectual horizon and made him intensely aware of the phenomenon of nature and
work of art around him? Has it awakened his curiosity about the casual relations between his own life
and his natural, social, and historical environment? Has it encouraged him to follow the guiding hand of
scienceat least with his minds eyetowards the ever-expanding borders of the borders of the
universe, towards the exciting interior of the atom, towards the mysterious working of his own mind
and heart?
Second, has his stay in college developed in him a sense of ordera passion of neatness and
accuracy in whatever he does; an ability to organize his thoughts to bank his emotions, to apportion his
time, and to view every problem from as many angles as possible; to find out, and to make note of, what
has already been said or written about it; to organize his own ideas about it; and to express these ideas
with clarity, with accuracy, with force and with grace? Unless it has, hes bound to fritter away his time
and his energy, as well as to find it difficult to communicate to his fellows his thought and his feelings,
his desires and his dreams, his beliefs and his social attitudes.
Third, has his stay in college refined as well as strengthened his sense of values, both ethical and
aesthetic? Has it crystallized in him a wholesome attitude towards God, a wholesome attitude towards
nature, a wholesome attitude towards his fellowmen? Has it made him realize that the creation and
appreciation of beauty is a form of prayeran attempt to establish harmony between the something
within him and the Universal Something outside and around and about him?
If his stay in college hasnt done this, itll be impossible for him to fulfill within himintelligence,
love, creative power. Disregarding this responsibility of his, hes likely to use his gift simply to promote
his own selfish aims, at the expense of his fellows.
Ignorant of aesthetic values, neither will he be able to savor to the fullest his cultural heritage.
The achievements of the race in science and technology, in painting and sculpture, in music and
literature, in drama and the dance, in architecture and city planning, and in all other forms of art which
have human life so pleasant and so comfortableall this, to him, will have no meaning and no worth.
Fourth, has his stay in college developed in him a sense of dedication? Has it helped him decide
on a worthwhile goal in life, and has it prepared him for the difficult task of tackling the manifold
problemsintellectual, in his striving to reach that goal? If it hasnt, his lifes likely to be a ship without
a rudder, without an anchor driven by the winds of chance and circumstances.