Molo town, cradle of learned Filipinos, known as “Athens of the Philippines,” had colegios during the later Spanish era and the first public elementary school in the country, Baluarte element would have inspired students to learn more and achieve greater heights as statesmen, feminists, educators, Supreme Court justices, and senators of the Republic. It had the first government high school outside of Manila, the Iloilo National High School. Iloilo city, known as an educational center for the region, has eight universities. RA 7743 (1994) mandates public libraries in each congressional district, city, municipality and barangay 25 years later, a study of the National Library found that merely 3% of the ideal number had been achieved. At the reading room of the British museum, I saw familiar names engraved on a plaque of notables who had been there – Rizal, Ho Chi Minh, Dickens, Marx, Darwin, Woolf, among others.Īnd this is why an initiative of Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas, to have a library in each of the six city districts, is laudable.
The Welch medical school library in Johns Hopkins was open 24 hours a day in the 1990s, with couches where students could actually nap. Some of the collections – especially those in the Treasures section of the British Library – made me gasp in wonder. Wherever work took me, I’d visit public libraries in New York, Washington DC, Baltimore, and London. Decades later, favorite haunts would be second hand bookstores, and rent-a-book clubs. Reading was a great introduction to the big world outside, a source of endless pleasure, firing up my imagination, coloring my dreams and nightmares. Using this technique, we’d make our own notebooks using leftover ruled paper from examination booklets. Book binding cloth with gum Arabic was applied to the spine.
In high school, I finished the school library serials like the Bobbsey Twins, the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and the Agatha Christie mysteries. I spent my 1975 summer break doing YCAP (Youth Civic Action Program) at the city library as an assistant. I dusted shelves, covered books with plastic wrap, and repaired old books by manually boring them with an ice pick, binding and tying them together with “ hilo veinte” run through a candle, then threaded into a large sewing needle. Once she gave me a book, forgetting that she had given me the same one the year before. My librarian aunt would often give us books for birthdays and Christmas.
YOUTUBE BEFIT SERIES
In elementary, we had the Osias series of Philippine Reader books I to VI, handed down from four older cousins, the title page covered with all their names, to which I readily added my own. Prized displays at home were the encyclopedias – Grolier’s (11 volumes) Book of Knowledge (20), and the Book of Popular Science (10). When I was in high school, Mom bought on installment a 24-volume set of Collier’s from a family moving to the US. In addition, we had children’s books – dinosaurs, which fascinated me the Andersen and Grimm fairy tales and bunches of comic books. Growing up in Iloilo city, I was surrounded by books, thanks to Mom, a pharmacist and Dad, a doctor, who were both teachers. My aunt became the city’s first librarian. My uncles were voracious readers and subscribers to monthlies like the Reader’s Digest, Pageant, National Geographic and Life, which I devoured with gusto. Mom kept detailed “baby books” for all seven of us, writing on mine: “Recognized the alphabet at two, by four reads nursery books…by five, reads everything – newspapers, the Book of Knowledge, elementary and high school books…comprehension outstanding…”
0 kommentar(er)
