by May Anne Joy de Lara-Romanes
University of the Philippines Diliman
March 11, 2016
Education plays a very important part in nation
building. I believe that nation building is the ultimate purpose of
education—that if an individual is well-educated, then he/she will most certainly
contribute in a positive way to the general welfare of his/her country. Because
education is very important to us as it generally dictates our future as separate
individuals and as a nation, we should use it to provide relevant and effective
solutions to our existing problems, which can be traced from our past.
First
of all, I strongly believe that our education should be based on our own
culture; our culture is our identity and it’s what truly makes us.
Unfortunately, we were not taught, or rather not educated, based on our own
culture but based on the culture of the foreigners, who forcibly invaded our
country.
Back in the Spanish era, our ancestors, the
Indios, were educated to be subservient
of our first colonizers. We were taught to obey the Spaniards without asking
any questions. From this time, most of us, Filipinos, lost the respect that we
have for ourselves. When the Americans came, we were educated based on their
culture and not ours. They taught us to love their culture more than our own;
thus, it gave birth to our perennial illness of colonial mentality, and death
of our little love for our own identity as Filipinos. I wonder ‘If I ever lived
in that time, would I be called an American, or a Filipino?’ I thought of this
because, no matter what I do, I cannot be an American; however, I cannot be a
Filipino because Philippines was still a colony of US at that time. When the
Japanese came, they aimed to remove the influence of the West on us, but these
Asian colonizers did not succeed. Elevazo and Elevazo wrote in 1995 that the
murder of thousands of innocent civilians, the abuse of our women, and a
million tales of injustice just made us, Filipinos, more steadfast in our
friendship with the Americans. After the Japanese left, we had our so-called
‘independence’ but, are we really independent? Are we really free from the
influence of the foreigners? I don’t think so.
Now,
let’s talk about the present. What kind of Filipinos are we trying to produce?
(Elevazo and Elevazo, 1995) Can we produce a Filipino out of the Western-type
of education? How about producing one out of the Oriental education? It’s like
asking: “Can an apple tree bear a mango fruit? And if it is possible, how would
you react about it?” I don’t know about others, but I would find it hilarious
to find such weird tree, just like a foreign educational system trying to
produce a pure nationalistic Filipino, who would someday build his own nation
out of his purest intentions of serving it for the welfare of the present and
the future.
At this point, I have some questions
in my mind: “If Ferdinand Magellan didn’t find the Philippines, would the
Filipinos be the same?”; “If we successfully built our primitive society out of
our love for dignity, honor, nobility, and discipline, would our educational
system be better?” (Gregorio, 1976, p.13); and “If the colonizers weren’t able
to invade our country, would we be more progressive or less progressive as what
we are now”? All these questions are yet to answer, but one thing is for sure,
our philosophy of education should root from our true Filipino culture, because
lack of culture means what it always meant: ignoble civilization and therefore,
imminent downfall (Wright as cited by Morley in 2014).
References:
Elevazo, A. O.
& Elevazo, R.A. (1995). Philosophy of Philippine education.
Manila: National Bookstore, Inc.
Gregorio, H.
C. (1976). Introduction to education in Philippine setting.
Quezon City: Garotech Publishing.
Morley, M. P.
(2014). Culture in design: the analysis of culture through semiotics and its
role
in the automotive industry. Retrieved from
https://etd.auburn.edu/bitstream/handle/10415/4180/Thesis_Morley_v2.pdf? sequence=4.
