Calendar Changes at UP Diliman

            Recently I met with a friend and colleague, Joel Mann, who had spent the spring semester as an Exchange Professor at the University of the Philippines Diliman, the main UP system campus.  In the fifteen or so years that our institution, Saint Norbert College, has had an exchange program with UPD, the differing academic calendars have presented some challenging logistics.  The academic calendar in the Philippines has been sensibly based on climate conditions.  That has changed, along with another major change.  I found these of considerable interest. 

            I was not surprised when Joel told me that the new academic calendar had gone into effect at UP.  I had heard that they were moving to adopt the calendar used in the US.  What I hadn’t thought about was that the secondary and primary schools kept the old system.  Basically what this meant was that UP students were still in class until late May, while their younger siblings (and families) were enjoying their vacations in the nice March and April weather.   And “it was brutally hot in May” said Joel.  Some of the students, he added, simply joined their families on holiday for a week or more.

            The other bit of news involving school calendars in Manila and presumably throughout the country, is that instead of graduating from High School at age 16, students now will graduate at age 18.  That is the norm in the US, but not, I know in the UK, and I’m guessing much of Europe as well, where it is 16.  I must confess, however, that I smiled when Joel told me this news.  I had taught in a classroom at UPD right next to a class full of sixteen-year-olds, the noisiest group I encountered the entire semester.  Still that's a big change to keep the noise down.

rhb