Sole-Searching to Put Ex-Compatriots in Step

This is the story of how a telephone call to the principal’s office at Grossmont High School led to the question of how many shoes Filipino manufacturers can sell in the United States.

Given the right circumstances, the answer could be in the millions, according to longtime East County math instructor and Philippines native Paz Alegria Lacsamana-Jensen. It’s one that the Cuyamaca College math professor and budding entrepreneur promises to pursue in the same way she has persevered in her teaching career, first in the Philippines and, for the past 20 years, in the Grossmont area.

It all started with a phone call on Feb. 25, 1986, the day the reign of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos ended when he left the country and was replaced by Corazon Aquino in a largely bloodless popular revolution.

“I got an international call in the office of the (Grossmont High) principal from an aide of (the new vice president) Salvador Laurel,” said Jensen, a sprightly woman with an expressive face. “I was asked if I would consider becoming the minister of education.”

A close adviser to Laurel had been president of the student government at the University of the Philippines during the early 1960s, when Jensen was a math student and student government treasurer. In addition, a second Laurel aide knew Jensen from their Peace Corps days, when Jensen had trained volunteers in teaching math.

Jensen’s legacy as a student and teacher had persisted, despite her leaving the country in 1969 for the United States after Marcos became president and his authoritarian tendencies were becoming known. Jensen had taught math, then headed Ford Foundation textbook projects in the Philippines.

“So my name popped up when they were considering people for the Cabinet,” she said.

But Jensen needed little time to say no.

“I was already 17 years in the United States teaching at Grossmont High, had a family, and would have had to give up my U.S. citizenship,” she said.

When Jensen called back, she spoke with another Laurel adviser on economic matters who was a friend from her days with a Catholic action group that was contesting Marcos in the nation’s 1968 election, the last fully free contest for many years. That adviser asked about possible ways to help the economy.

Jensen immediately volunteered to try and locate surplus texts in California to ship to book-starved Filipino schools as an initial way to plan for a better economic future. She was familiar with textbook publishers, having served on the California Textbook Evaluation Committee.

That effort soon led to other ideas to try and boost the Asian nation’s economy, and to shoes.

“As a little girl growing up in the Philippines, I had always (wanted to visit) the shoe manufacturing district of Manila known as Marikina,” she said. “Why not consider selling those shoes in the United States, since I had always remembered that they were well-made with good quality?”

Jensen noted with irony that of the thousands of shoes Imelda Marcos was found to have stored at the presidential palace in Manila, not a single pair was Filipino-made.

An introductory call to the president of the International Footwear Assn. led to a trip to the Philippines, where economic officials promised tax breaks and other incentives for manufacturers if reliable buyers could be found in the United States.

Met With Bankers

That trip then led to Washington, where Jensen met first with officials of the World Bank and later with those of the International Monetary Fund to try to arrange loans for the Filipino shoe industry.

By this time, Jensen had taken a one-year leave from her Grossmont High post, where she had been math department chairman for 10 years. Another Grossmont teacher, Martin Kennedy, also took a leave to participate in the project.

Following the bank meetings, Jensen was introduced to Boston-area shoe experts and a chemist with an appetite for third-world investments. Other meetings both in the United States and the Philippines considered goat skin as a supply of leather for shoes.

Today, Jensen has hundreds of samples of styles, for both men and women, that Filipino manufacturers have produced for her to show at the international display shows held in New York and Los Angeles annually. But there are no large sales as yet. Stumbling blocks ranging from personality clashes to inadequate supplies have delayed her dreams.

Back to First Love

Jensen hasn’t given up. But in the meantime, she has returned to her first love--teaching. And she has no regrets about not seeking the ministerial post in the Philippines.

“No second thoughts,” Jensen said. “But the deterioration of the schools under Marcos does makes my heart cry. There is so much to be done it will take 10 years or more.

“When you run a dictatorship, you first need to destroy the inquiry method of learning, because you don’t want people to ask, ‘Why?’ So, for so many years, there was, for example, none of the discovery method for teaching math and science.

“The corruption under Marcos was everywhere to (ruin education). My mother wrote an English reading book, but Imelda Marcos wanted 10% of the the profits and her picture in front of the book. My mother said, ‘To hell with it!’ ”

Today, Jensen teaches both elementary algebra and calculus at Cuyamaca College, part of the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District. Part of the calculus program centers on preparing engineering students planning to transfer to San Diego State University in their junior year.

The algebra course figures in the “Cuyamaca College Now” program, which Jensen is a part of. The program takes juniors and seniors with untapped learning potential from Mount Miguel and Monte Vista high schools and enrolls them at Cuyamaca in algebra, English and study skills after their regular high school classes end for the day. The program is meant to encourage such students, especially Latinos and blacks, to consider college after graduation.

“I’m enthusiastic about this and hope to give them confidence so that they won’t be afraid of going to college, which many (minority) students are,” Jensen said.

Jensen argues that all students should take math as part of their basic curriculum despite views of some educators that many students do not need algebra or other mathematical knowledge later in life.

“That’s not true,” Jensen said. “Algebra is a way of thinking that develops the liberal mind and shows kids that math has a flow, from sets of numbers to problem-solving, just like a story has a flow.

“If a kid says that he or she can’t learn math, I say, ‘Just trust me and wait and see!’ ”

Jensen is a big fan of having students work at the chalkboard, having them solve problems themselves and encouraging peer learning.

“You can teach and do anything with anybody at any time, provided it is done correctly,” she said.