school profile
My first indication of laborious ascent to the inhospitable region where dwells the school meant outfitting myself for the drastic changes in climate that would undoubtedly assail me as I sought the fabled Baguio campus — a picaresque ascent into the foothills. Naturally, surroundings abound around the Brent Baguio campus, sprawled scenically around seventy-five green acres of decrepit pines, endless avian vocalizing, obsessively cultivated landscaping and a labyrinth of paths.
Looming at the entrance like a glowering sentinel is the greening copper colossus depicting Bishop Brant, the missionary founder of the school who was sent with to-be US President Taft to tame and exploit the recently-wrested Islands. A centennial celebration seems somewhat out-of-place under the specter of his august solemnity, but the Philippine Historical Commission did earmark the school as a National Historical Site, and no amount of recent structural and design meddling will dampen the dry weight of a century.
Such is the heritage beyond price which the campus instills into the countless legions of students that have been processed here. Many would recall heeding the call of the outdoors, surreptitiously or otherwise, while desperately inspiring themselves to continue on the endless various subject tasks: projects, group discussions, education activities and even occasional thinking. The sports fields, the playing courts, and walking trails served as arenas for internal struggles, or against outsiders and infidels.
Brent Baguio currently retains 300 students of various cultures from at least 22 nations, blending and kneading to create that homogeneous flavor of a “Brent family” where one knows and is compelled to interact with (almost) everyone else across the grades and across cultures, thus exacerbating any possible conflicts.
A commitment to community is obvious, consistently positively and negatively reinforced, and the boarders are remarkable in their family semblance. Quite apart from encouraging insularity, however, the ideals of the school repeatedly tout such things as “the molding of global citizens” with “a multicultural and international perspective”. Such events as United Nations Day are part of the all-encompassing nurturing of correct and appropriate ideals that have been subjectively determined by ecumenical leaders both constrained and eventually inspired by the development of the Western liberal tradition.
Christmas is celebrated in a noticeably Western fashion, as expected from the underlying Episcopal ideology of the school, but of course not without plenty of obvious examples of the native tradition to foster a seemingly multicultural spirit. This determinedly inclusive program encompasses the approach to the larger community, from the local barangays (who are inundated with both Christian myth and semi-Christian Western symbols (i.e., the Santa pantheon). By design, the overall project “responds to the needs of the children” while offering them a tempting vision of the potential of altruism and community.