MANILA, Philippines- Unless the Society of Jesus or the Jesuits will run the school, chances of re-opening the Ateneo De Tuguegarao is zero.
Noted Filipino Engineer-entrepreneur Diosdado Banatao said he is willing to spend his millions in dollars if only to revive the quality of secondary education he got from his alma mater, the Ateneo De Tuguegarao.
“We attempted many times to re-establish the school but we failed to get the core of such education, the Jesuits,”Banatao told the Northern Forum in an exclusive interview on .
The Ateneo de Tuguegarao was founded in 1945 when the Jesuits took over the administration of the Cagayan Valley Atheneum, a secondary school of the Archdiocese of Tuguegaro. It was the 5th Ateneo established by the Jesuits and was closed in 1962 when the Jesuits left Tuguegarao.
“I wanted the same quality of education I got from Ateneo De Tuguegarao to be the same education for our children in Cagayan,” Banatao said crediting the Jesuits for his way of critical thinking.
Majority of the all-male graduates of the Ateneo De Tuguegarao went on to become leaders in business and industry, public service, the academe among other fields of endeavor not only in the country but outside of it.
Banatao said he personally talked to the Vatican to provide the planned school with Jesuits who will manage instruction.
He quoted Vatican as saying there are only a very few Jesuits now in the world and the Holy See cannot provide any to the proposed new Ateneo De Tuguegarao.
“I was ready to build the school and I don’t care how much it will cost me. I just needed the Jesuits for the school. They are the best in terms of instruction,” he said.
Banatao who was born and raised in Barangay Malabbac, Iguig, Cagayan is the only Filipino player at Silicon Valley and has been dubbed ‘the Bill Gates of the Philippines’ after he developed the first Windows Graphics accelerated chip for personal computers.
His Banatao Filipino-American Fund assists Northern California high school students of Filipino heritage pursuing engineering courses.
He visits the country four times a year to attend to government programs and projects he has been assisting. The toast of all media in the world, he said he was glad that finally, a media group from Cagayan covered him. Benjie De Yro/Northernforum.net
