A PRECOCIOUS boy who grew up with guardians—both lawyers and teachers—Jan Carlo B. Punongbayan never intended to become the valedictorian of Class 2009 of the University of the Philippines School of Economics (UPSE), battling a competitive class to emerge on top of the heap with a general weighted average (GWA) of 1.151 and becoming UPSE’s only summa cum laude for this year.

Jan Carlo was not the genius he is presumed to be by peers and professors alike, and his guardians, lawyers Genaro S. Perez and Aurora L. T. Perez, acknowledged that the proper balance of nature and nurture could have done the trick that he pulled off.

Preferring to fiddle with his violin at age 6 and nourishing his young mind with all types of literature he could lay his hands on after jumping from kindergarten to Grade 1 in Angelicum College in Quezon City, Jan Carlo was the regular boy in school, doing the same things children his age were wont to do.

A veritable excellent work in progress, he graduated from primary grades without much fanfare and even got wait-listed at the Quezon City Science High School (QCSHS) in 2001 before barging into the honor roll as the 10th best graduating student in 2005.

So concerned were the Perezes for the good intellectual development of Jan Carlo that they relocated to Quezon City from their house in Gen. Trias, Cavite, just to ensure that traffic and agonizing travel time would not hurt his academic growth.

Indeed, he grew, entering the University of the Philippines in Diliman as one of about 7,000 freshmen lucky enough to pass the UP College Admissions Test (UPCAT).

Turning 16 when he entered the university, Jan Carlo excelled, getting straight 1.0s in his subjects and becoming a university scholar for seven straight semesters.

His parents, Dr. Diomedes L. Punongbayan and Ma. Antonietta B. Punongbayan, a nurse, have a solid scientific background and this could explain why Jan Carlo took little time in understanding algebra and calculus, statistics and econometrics, and did his matrices at UPSE with nary a problem.

Jan Carlo says that like his class members, he was given to donning earphones and using iPods, surfing the Web for things serious and light, and e-mailing the big names in economics here and abroad.

He is a questioning young man, like most UP alumni, and admits that UP education made him  ask more, and wonder why things remain the same even as they change.

In his graduation address in April, Jan Carlo showed just how serious he is in economics, repeating the same old talk of UPSE savants that they are not bound by strictures and theoretical orthodoxy despite attacks by critics who continue to be mystified by the school’s preoccupation with neoclassical economics.

He admits being a great fan of Dr. Philip Medalla, just as others before him had similarly considered the late dean Jose Encarnacion, originally from the debate-ridden Department of Philosophy of the College of Arts and Sciences, or even Prof. Ricardo S. Ferrer, a mechanical engineer by training who undertook the arduous task of creating a mathematical model for Marxist economics.

Indeed, students are supposed to be apprentices to their masters, and Jan Carlo took the same beaten path, arguing with teachers, from monetarists and unrepentant Keynesians, in his bid to achieve enlightenment. No one has achieved as much as Buddha had and UPSE economists may one day even write papers about the costs and benefits of Buddha’s enterprise.

He is still on the road to enlightenment, as it were, and he has not abandoned the path to reach it. Jan Carlo says he is not ready to work as a banker, a stock-market analyst or even as a pencil-pushing bureaucrat at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), where another UPSE alumnus, Diwa Guinigundo, is deputy governor.

Next: College of Law

Jan Carlo has just entered the College of Law of UP, where he is sure to tangle with snooty professors, many of them perhaps bereft of practice in litigation, or squabble with smart alecks, as the terrain of battle is entirely different.

No more formulae about the theory of resource allocation, income distribution and the perennial tussle with dispersal of scant resources under a welter of laws, rules and regulations that form an anarchic web that throttles initiative.

To Jan Carlo’s credit, he listens a lot and thinks even more, qualities he must have inherited from the UPSE denizens who have not let go of their theories and occasional papers on how to manage a sinking economy or how to keep it afloat while the rest of humanity drowns.

He needs these traits at the College of Law, and he tells us he is ready for the battle, no doubt armed with the stock of knowledge accumulated by his guardians. Atty. Genaro Perez continues to handle a variety of cases, from threats to academic freedom and violations of students’ rights to land, ejections and property cases; while Atty. Aurora L. T. Perez still works at the Philippine Science High School. Incidentally, Atty. Genaro, now called Henry even by his former students, belonged to the first batch of mentors at QCSHS.

Jan Carlo comes well-armed to tackle the professors of the eminent institution, where children of the high and the mighty had to cower in fear as “terrorists” with academic titles start spewing fire and demanding logic and erudition from students during recitation.

As class valedictorian of UPSE Class 2009 and as bearer of the José Encarnación Jr. Award for Excellence in Economics; the Gerardo P. Sicat Award for Best Undergraduate Thesis (“School Inputs and Student Performance in Public Elementary Schools in Palawan: A Quantile Regression Analysis”);  and the President Arroyo Awardee for Academic Excellence, he would surely be ready to burn the midnight oil in convincing the pedants of the College of Law that he would make a good barrister in the future.

His facility in playing the violin (he joined the violin contest in the National Music Competition for Young Artists in 2000) and in doing posters and ending up as finalist in several poster-making contests should prove to all, as well, that he is no nerd even as he had savored Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time,” and had been awarded as best in astronomy at QCSHS. Music and math go together well for him and for others, too.

He writes as well (he won the 2008 Raul V. Fabella award for an essay on the peso appreciation and wrote for
Sidhi, the official newsletter of UPSE), is now a member of Phi Kappa Phi and Pi Gamma Mu honor societies, both of which are reserved for the “kum latiks” of UP, or those who have more 1.0s than half the class. His valedictory at the UPSE graduation rites is a classic model of praise for his field of study, which had been savaged in much of the world for being cold, heartless and contrary to public morals and policy.

Jan Carlo has been involved, as well, in teaching mathematics to elementary- school pupils and in building houses through the Gawad Kalinga, two types of activities rarely done by economists in their ivory towers.

All these activities have transformed him, surely—from once being just a student engrossed with studying the “dismal science,” with 10 economists in any one room unable to agree on anything and ending up with 11 theories on the simplest issues, or debating till kingdom come why corruption can be healthy for the economy if it could conceivably lead to redistribution on even off-election years, and increased investments elsewhere in this unlucky land, into a serious crusader of the faith who would wage battle to prove that free trade, deregulation, privatization and globalization are a must for this world to be more efficient in allocating resources.

Wall Street has shattered that thinking to most of us but to economists who shun state control and despise intervention by nonmarket forces, the torch is still there and they must carry on the faith. In the long run, as John Maynard Keynes says, “we’re all dead.”

However, Jan Carlo is one who would surely persevere, to prove that beyond the curves and regressions, the ratios and different propensities, and marginal cost of labor, there is still a human face to the economics of scarcity; and that a rational order would somehow dawn upon this planet to make humanity profit from social production and not wallow in collective misery.