REAL WORLD EDUCATION

---
Just wanted to share my ... uhmm, sharing ... i gave to the Ateneo faculty in the recent ISEW
---

Good morning everyone. My name is Mark Joaquin Ruiz and i’m an Ateneoholic. I am the product of (16) years of Jesuit educational engineering. Ateneo Grade School Batch ‘91, Ateneo High School Batch ’95, Ateneo College Batch ’99, with a degree in BS-Management Engineering, now part-time faculty in the JG School of Management.

After graduation, like most of my batchmates, i went straight for the jugular of stability. I sought financial sanctuary in the womb of the corporate world. I eventually found myself working for Unilever Philippines --- to this day the only company i can and will ever imagine myself working for --- wherein my growth would accelerate to levels i never thought possible. And yet, crazily enough, it was a life that i eventually said goodbye to.

Although i would love to credit my parents’ genes for my so-called crazy decision, it’s just not right to factor out the (16) years of Jesuit education – the man-for-others mantra -- bubbling constantly at the back of my brain. Looking back, it was this very same Ateneo education which had formed a paradigm of service for me. And truth to tell, sadly it was not so much the subjects or the courses that we offer. It was the faculty (Mr. Pagsi, Fr. Nemy Que, Dax Manacsa, Mrs. Chee Kee, Mr. Tamidles, and so on ... ), the environment, and the culture of the Ateneo that made the most difference in shaping who i am. So we can never discount what profound an impact we can have on our students’ lives.

It was actually around this time that i realized that for most people my age, life offered a bipolar pendulum into which you could swing either way --- either you follow your head, and live a li(f)e of financial stability; or you follow your heart, and much to your parents’ chagrin – you live a life of veritable uncertainty traversing relatively unchartered waters. It was something most of our students would also grapple with.

Having arrived at a state of ‘been there, done that’ in my professional corporate career, i realized that i wanted to prove that there exists a third viable option – to get the proverbial cake and eat it too. Follow your heart, it’s just the right thing to do. Use your head, most definitely. Create an impact, hmmm. And yet, still be able to live and afford the lifestyle that you’ve imagined for yourself, a-ha!

I am – as i was way back then ---still very much hungry. But my hunger now goes beyond increasing market shares, or hitting my targets, or coming up with the next great cross-functional company-impacting initiative. I wanted bigger things, greater things, crazier things. I no longer wanted to be just another cog in the machine. I wanted to build the freaking machine.

For me, all this meant that i had to become an entrepreneur. But mind you, not just any kind of entrepreneur. I wanted to become a strategic entrepreneur who would have a positive impact on society.

So – ‘management engineer’ that i am (coupled with my corporate programming and Jesuit-induced reflectiveness) – i reflected, i thought, i analyzed, and i eventually committed a plan to softcopy in all of its Microsoft Office glory --- a Word-powered vision statement, an Excel-sheet based roadmap, and all the visual digital poetry of my most-beloved PowerPoint.

So in a little over a year since i’ve been out of corporate, i’ve literally been living the dream.

Having been unshackled from a 9-to-5 job, i went after all the things i just wanted to do. Current involvements of mine – a mixture of business endeavours and non-profit organizations -- AdvocomAsia, Rags2Riches, MegaMobile, the Creative Business Council, OneFilipino.Net, and so on and so forth.

But if there’s really one thing that has my passion pump flowing, it’s this --- with the best partners in the world, we set up a Social Business Enterprise, MicroVentures -- a microfinancing business development services company that works in partnership with microentrepreneurs. Our first project is Hapinoy, an endeavor that we really believe can help a lot and a lot of people (http://www.hapinoy.com). We now have 1,000 Hapinoy stores, with the vision of having 100,000 stores by the end of next year. Pardon the scale of the ambition, but we really believe that it can change the world.

Just to share, my latest passion project is The WhyNot? Forum, a business-slash-advocacy on furthering inspiring Filipino ingenuity. It’s a venue wherein we gather the most brilliant Filipinos in a venue and give them (15) minutes each to talk about their passions, ideas, dreams. These talks are then posted online for all the world to see for free! (plugging http://whynotoforum.multiply.com and http://www.whynotforum.com). I guess the tagline of WhyNot? says it all : “Think Big Things. Share Big Dreams. Do Brave Things.”

There’s also one thing in my roadmap that i knew that i really, really wanted to do early on, it was this --- I wanted to teach. And not just teach anywhere – i wanted to teach part-time in the Ateneo. And the subject i wanted to teach was also absolutely crystal, most especially since it was a subject that didn’t exist yet --- i wanted to teach “innovation and creativity’.

The first person in the School of Management that i broached it to actually said no and wanted the safe and trodden path of me just teaching a sales class, since it was my background. But I really didn’t want to do that. Luckily, i eventually linked up with Darwin Yu who was more than willing to bet on both myself, and the class. To give you a fuller idea on why i wanted to teach this, let me share with you snippets from my blog entry i wrote right before i started teaching.

---

This incoming semester, I’ll be teaching an elective in the Ateneo College.

The elective I’ll be teaching is something new. It’s called “Business Innovation Management” Given that it’s a new subject, I had to build the syllabus/modules from scratch, which actually turned out to be fun. As the Department Chair said, “A class on Innovation has to be in itself innovative.” I couldn’t agree more, and I took that as a semi-blank check to propose a class that would be as ‘different’ as possible.

If I have a soft spot in my heart for certain advocacies, then my head is consumed by the possibilities of imbuing Innovation and Creativity everywhere. It’s not only something I want to learn, breathe, and experience more of, it’s something I want to actively teach and impart, starting with inarguably some of the best and brightest minds in this country (yes, my blue blood spilling all over here).

I think it’s because the way I see it, we’re in desperate need of NEW new ideas. That’s not a typo, it’s really New x 2. Because our current crop of ‘new ideas’ aren’t really new, if you think about it. We live in a culture of “copy-and-paste” and “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” What was the last product or service or business or suggestion that made you stop and scratch your head, unconsciously thought-bubbling, “Why didn’t I think of that?” I’m not pompously nor self-righteously saying that there aren’t leading lights out there, but they are admittedly few and far in between. More often that not, the comfort zone is to be generically undifferentiated, to seek shelter in the refuge of the herd. Think back - during the peak of their popularity, just how many Litson Manok stands, Shawarma stalls, and Zagu stations did people rush and latch onto, creating conditions wherein supply immediately outstripped demand, causing the total market to erode?

Again. We need NEW new ideas. After all, whatever happened to Filipinos’ innate talent of being truly creative and imaginative?

---

I have a confession to make. My favorite class during my four years of quantitative management techniques --- was actually philosophy. Dr. Leovino Garcia, Fr. Nemesio Que – they blew my mind.

But I’ll never forget a line that rang in my head, which i overheard from an upper batchmate when we would --- pun intended – wax philosophical. “The problem with Ateneo teachers is that they teach you about a world that doesn’t exist.” Whoa. That’s not only heavy stuff, that’s downright insulting to all of us here.

So coming into my class, i wanted to flip that. I wanted to prepare my students to the realities of what’s out there. I wanted them to be dreamers, but more than anything, i wanted them to be doers. They would see the world as it is, but wouldn’t be disheartened. In fact, they would be further edged on to remold the real to the ideal. I wanted to spur students who just wouldn’t talk about “what i want to do”, but students who would actually go down, get their hands dirty, and do stuff.

And that is why i didn’t want come into this just as a pure academician. I needed to be an academic-industry practitioner hybrid - for it to make absolute sense in the way that i believed it would make absolute sense. I wanted to be able to show my students that i could eat my own dog food.

---

So why – despite the fact that my gas costs so much more than what i get from teaching – do i not only continue to teach, but i still do so loving every minute of it?

I’ve a simple answer : it’s because of the students. It’s because of what they represent for me. It’s because i believe that we as educators are literally shaping our country’s future.

Of course it’s not always a bed of roses. Teaching can sometimes be frustrating, especially if some students are disconnected, apathetic, and have a very narrow worldview. But i guess its precisely our role as educators to shift those paradigms.

But then again, there are also a lot of psychic perks. When you receive an email from a student telling you how your class had inspired them. When you receive feedback on how you’re encouraging them to move forward. And when– especially in this generation of students – you appear in their blogs, it’s just really cool.

---

So to end, let me share with you what i believe Ateneo teachers should be and do.

I’ve got three I’s on my list – Ateneo teachers should 1. Inspire, 2. Immerse, and 3. Incite.

1. Inspire

Speaking from the School of Management, it is our responsibility not only to our students, but to our country-at-large, to push and challenge our students to THINK BIG. In this hypercompetitive global arena, our country is just falling way way way behind. It is our moral imperative to generate a generation of leaders and entrepreneurs who will build world-class businesses and create the next wave of sectoral industries. We need visionaries.

2. Immerse

We have to open our students’ eyes and hands to the Real World. We’ve got to encourage entrepreneurialism and practicality, so as to translate grand visions into street-smart on-the-ground applicability.

In my case, I wanted to remove the dangerous programming of schools. And truth to tell, this actually meant being a bit unconventional at times. Surprise, surprise – i gave no quizzes, no long tests. I wasn’t going to build the next generation of innovators on a bedrock of just being rote memorizers . Their grades came from practical outputs and judged and graded using practical means. I wanted my students to be synthetic and entrepreneurial, grounded yet imaginative, practical yet visionary.

Immersing also means exposing our students to the harsh realities of inequality in society, and how it is also part of our servanthood and purpose to do something about it. That’s why in my class, i actually had groups working on a prisoners’ cooperative and a payatas community.

3. Incite

We have to get our students moving. We need to spur them TO ACTION. Ateneans are known to be talkers. I’d much rather we were known as doers. ‘Nuff said.

So to end, i really love to echo this really cool inventor, Dean Kamen in a talk that he gave.

Will our work result in the most brilliant students the country has ever seen ? Will we as educators actually be able to shape the future of our country? Will we make a difference?

I really really don’t know.

But we’re trying.

AMDG. Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam. All for the Greater Glory of God.

Thank you.

Mark Joaquin Ruiz
October 27. 2007
http://ruizmark.blogspot.com