EDUCATING FOR FILIPINO NATIONALISM - Leticia R. Constantino
(Speech delivered at the Education Forum Symposium, on September 27, 1985 at St. Joseph’s College) Educating for nationalism means educating for a national and social purpose. It means going beyond (but not neglecting) the conventional tasks of training a person to earn a living and developing his intellect, skills and character. Educating for nationalism means consciously educating Filipinos to BE Filipinos – Filipinos who will work for the Philippines and the Filipino people. To be pro-Philippines and pro-Filipino one must have national pride and a sense of national identity. Our present educational system promotes pride in our beautiful land, our tinikling and sampaguita, our Mayon and Banawe, our smiling people. It promotes national identity or nationhood, but nationalism is more than nationhood. Nationalism today has two components –the components –the anti-imperialism component and the democratic component. The nationalist believes that his country’s resources must be preserved for the Filipino people . He demands his people’s right to political sovereignty and economic independence and is aware that we are losing both to external forces –the major capitalist states, their transnational corporations and international banks, and the multilateral institutions dominated by the foreign powers. Educating for nationalism means fostering an understanding of this situation in all its complexity and inculcating in our youth a patriotic commitment to change it.
As to the democratic component –since nationalists are first not only proPhilippines but pro-Filipino people, they believe that any gains accruing from the exercise of political sovereignty and economic independence must favor the majority of our people economically and in terms of their greater participation in government planning and decision-making . Educating for nationalism therefore also means developing in our youth a commitment to people’s right and a determination to help our people exercise those rights. Education is not a politically neutral enterprise . The recent furor over the National Service law made this abundantly clear. Those who control, plan and shape the educational system as a whole, do so for their own purposes. Under Spain and under the United States, Filipinos were being educated primarily to serve the purposes of each colonizer, to be good and loyal colonials. Under Spain, then a theocratic state, education was primarily religious instruction. Spain used religion as a means of control. The Americans used education as THEIR means of control and also as the principal vehicle for the Americanization of our consumption tastes. With English as the medium of instruction , Filipinos learned to look up to American society, thus nurturing a colonial mentality among Filipinos that is still visible even now .
Today our youth are being educated for neocolonialism , to accept our country’s assigned role within the global capitalist system as a source of cheap raw materials and cheap labor, and as a profitable market for foreign goods within an economy dominated by foreign investments. This is the real significance of the provision in the Education Act of 1982 which specifies that education in public and private schools must support the national development program.
Under this program, development is supposed to be realized through foreign investments and production for export. Who really needs this kind of program? To answer this question I must give you a quick historical flashback. During WW2 the US supplied all the needs of the Allied armies. This greatly stimulated the expansion of production. The war made US corporations bigger and richer. When peace came, it caused grave problems to these corporations. The American market could not absorb all their production. More than ever, American corporations needed countries to sell their goods to and countries to invest their extra capital in. in. But the supply of countries was shrinking. Eastern Europe and later China were lost to communism. Many former colonies became independent. It was feared that they might be hostile to their former colonizers and adopt economic protectionism. US corporations (later joined by those of Europe and Japan) wanted to make sure that the economies of the Third World countries remained open to them for trade and investment. What to do? Solution: The World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) would grant loans to poor countries as a way of encouraging them to adopt economic development programs based on production for export, trade liberalization and hospitality to foreign investments –in short, an economy open to TNC capital and TNC products to go in and out. If Third World governments become more nationalistic and their economies would be less open to foreign products, the US herself would experience a grave crisis because today , one out of every five jobs in the manufacturing sector in the US depends on exports and 33% of all farm produce is shipped overseas.
We swallowed the first bait of WB loans and IMF “stabilization” funds under President Macapagal. In exchange for this financial assistance, Macapagal devalued the peso from P2 to US$1 to nearly 4 to 1, and he dismantled import and exchange controls. The pattern was clear even then but few Filipinos realized its implications because as a people we are more interested in politics than in economics.
Under President Marcos, this economic development program was fully implemented and under him too, education was fully aligned with this type of economic development. This economic development program is anti-nationalist because it serves primarily the needs and interests of foreign corporations and not those of the Filipino people . Of course we are constantly told by the government that this is OUR development program and that it will bring progress to our people. Actually, it is almost exactly the same program that the WB-IMF combine imposes on all Third World countries who want to borrow money or are already indebted to them.
But perhaps what is good for foreign investors is also good for us? That is what the foreign investors would like us to believe, but data from the government itself belies such claim. Under this program: Real per capita income declined by 30% from 1972 to 1982. Filipinos are eating less and less. Present per capita consumption of vegetables is only 12.4 kilos per year whereas the recommended level is 32, 4 kilos. Per capita fish consumption was 39 kilos per year in 1970 and only 20 kilos in 1980. As of 1984, 53% of Filipino families were eating tuyo or daing for their daily fare. Per capita consumption of beef was already a low 6.1 kilos per year in 1970 but in 1978 it went down drastically to 1.1 kilos. American per capita consumption of beef was 56 kilos per year as of 1978. •
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These are all official figures and they are bad enough. When you consider that computations of per capita income include the income of millionaires and the computations of per capita consumption include food eaten in Malacanang, in 5star hotels and in the mansions of the rich, the reality becomes even worse. Perhaps you may argue that it is not the development program but the Marcos administration that is the cause of our problems . Certainly the administration is a tremendously aggravating factor and the cause of many of our miseries, but other countries that have adopted the same program are also suffering from similar hardships: higher debts, chronic dollar shortages, declining living standards, repression, militarization and violation of human rights. Now we have the minimum background to understanding what is happening in the field of education. In the 1960s, he WB realized that for its economic programs to succeed, it needed to restructure the educational system. Why? Because dollar loans
require millions of pesos in counterpart funds. By lending us money, the WB in fact decides how and where we will spend our own money. I will mention only 3 types of loans. They will clearly show whose interests are being served. Loans for manpower development, for vocational and technical education, and for technical English: TNCs want us to borrow money to train the kinds of English-speaking technicians they need. This saves them the expense of training their own work force. Loans for agricultural education and for fisheries training: American TNCs are heavily engaged in agri-business and in world trade of food products. Current government policies imposed by the IMF are designed to facilitate the entry of foreign corporations in agriculture. The WB itself has declared that we should forget about industrialization and concentrate on producing raw materials. The loans for agricultural education are producing the technicians for foreign agri-business corporations. Fisheries education would be of benefit to Japan which wants us to produce more fish for Japanese consumers especially now that the industrial pollution of her waters and the 200-mile offshore limit have reduced her own resources. Loans for textbook production: These textbooks are intended to inculcate concepts and values supportive of the economic development program. They are intended to inculcate in young minds acceptance of our status as a satellite economy within the global capitalist system. •
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Social studies textbooks give voluminous data on our natural resources, our mines and forests and fishing areas, the many factories and businesses that have been set up especially under the Marcos administration, but they never mention how many of these economic fields are dominated by foreign corporations . In fact, when foreign corporations are mentioned, children are taught to be grateful to them for helping our country. In discussing the fishing industry for example, one book says that we have to import fish because production has not been able to cope with our fast growing population. It does not say that we import canned mackerel because we export our best fish. While the book says that the government is striving to make us selfsufficient in fish does not say anything about the Japanese invasion of our fishing industry, that in fact, the government itself, through Presidential Decree (PD) 704, now allows foreigners to fish in Philippine waters, thus discarding the premartial law policy of conserving our fishing resources for our people. The result has been disastrous for Filipino fishermen but the book can not say this because education must promote the idea that foreign investment will develop our country. Only a well-informed, nationalist teacher can give her students the true state of the fishing industry. Another textbook teaches a child to be proud that his country is known all over the world for its luscious bananas and sweet pineapples. Only a well-informed,
nationalist teacher can tell her students who control and profit from the banana and pineapple industries. The concept of interdependence of interdependence is well projected in these textbooks. It is correct to teach the young that all the peoples of the world regardless of race and creed belong to the family of man. But when textbooks say that the different states are like a family where the bigger states help the smaller ones with loans and technology as big brothers help the younger ones in a family, then these books are developing in young Filipinos a blind trust in the big states that will prevent them from questioning the actions of these states, the self-serving conditions and strings they attach to their so-called aid. Can we expect a WBfunded textbook to describe what political, economic, diplomatic and military pressures the big states exert on small ones to make the latter do what they want? Only a well-informed, nationalist teacher would be able to correct the halftruths peddled by such textbooks. Only a well-informed, nationalist teacher would know the role the US played in destabilizing and overthrowing nationalist governments in Guatemala, Indonesia, Bolivia, Chile and now Nicaragua. What about history? Textbooks emphasize what our colonizers; especially the Americans have done for us. They have long lists of what we learned from them. Shouldn’t our young people be told of the fierce and heroic resistance of our forefathers? Should they not be told of the tortures and massacres perpetrated by their American conquerors? Should they not know, for example, that General Franklin bell himself estimated that 1/6 of the population of Luzon dies during the Philippine-American War? Instead, our textbook asks: what would have happened to us if the foreigners had not come? The child is being taught to be grateful that his country was colonized! A mind so shaped will not question present foreign intervention in our affairs, political and economic. Only a wellinformed, nationalist teacher can tell her students about our past from a Filipino perspective. Philippine history, properly taught, is a potent tool for developing nationalism. Perhaps that is why history is being deemphasized .
What about democracy? Living as we do under an authoritarian government, we can expect state-approved textbooks to reflect the system, and they do. Martial law is described as a heroic act which saved our country from chaos. A Grade 3 book asks: “Di ba ninyo napansin na masaya ang mga mamamayan dahil pantay-pantay na pamamalakad ng ating pamahalaan? Iyan ang pangarap nig ating bayaning si Dr. Jose Rizal”. So the New Society is Rizal’s dream come true!
The concept of democracy is distorted by lessons on citizenship which enumerates duties but omit rights and which equate democratic participation with cooperation in carrying out government projects. Only a well-informed, nationalist teacher can give her students concrete data on presidential decrees that curtail citizens’ rights, and on the many other ways that democracy has been emasculated in our country while being rhetorically extolled.
It would take me more than 3 hours to discuss all the half-truths and misinformation, the anti-nationalist and anti-democratic concepts propagated by these books. Let me just give you my own favorite example of colonial mentality. Discussing the merits of our local fruits and sweets, one book says : “masarap ang ating matamis na santol, lasang prunes.” Must our yardstick for what is good always be a foreign yardstick? Now what is to be done? Since educational policy and the direction and content of education are tied- up with the economic development program, the educational system will not change fundamentally until we Filipinos secure fundamental changes in economic and political policies –in short, until a truly nationalist government comes to power.
But this does not mean that we can do nothing meanwhile. Filipinos can take an active part in opposing certain policies, as so many have done regarding the national Service Law. While officially following prescribed curricula, school administrations, parents and teachers can cooperate in finding ways of making the actual educational process serve the cause of nationalist transformation. For example, a required college subject like land reform was intended to acquaint students with the supposed achievements of the government. I know of college instructors who teach the course as a critique of the land reform program and other related practices. Whenever I describe the contents of primary and secondary textbooks, the solution of teachers is either to change the books or not to use textbooks at all. Administrators, parents and teachers could evaluate the various textbooks available but generally, they would find the content and perspective differ very little because writers must follow MECS guidelines so that their product may receive Textbook Board approval. If we opt for no textbook, there is the problem of finding adequate material at the proper level for each class. Parents can help teachers obtain useful material with a nationalist perspective but frequently such material is too complex and difficult for the lower grades. It would take a creative, diligent super-teacher to rewrite the stuff. Why don’t nationalists write nationalist textbooks? Without the prospect of MECS approval publishers would not print such books –unless enough school administrations guarantee that such books will be used as supplementary reading. This is something for nationalist-oriented schools to think about.
Clearly, our best hope for a nationalist education at the present time lies with the teacher. But the quality of education the teacher transmits depends on the quality of her own education. The education of the educator is therefore of primary importance. I think we can safely assume that most teachers did not receive a thorough nationalist education. Therefore, what is needed is a re-education of
the educator. This re-education is not synonymous with teacher training. Although HOW you teach is important, WHAT you teach is fundamental. Aside from a thorough grasp of her subject area, the teacher must have adequate knowledge of many other subjects. Knowledge cannot be compartmentalized because reality is not compartmentalized. As a Filipino teaching Filipinos she must be well-acquainted with Philippine history from a nationalist point of view and she must be likewise conversant with present political and economic developments so that she can situate her teaching within the Philippine context and educate for nationalism. All of this preparation requires effort, time and resources, which very often teachers do not have considering their modest salaries, the length of time spent in teaching and in other activities. School administrators and parents can be a big help. Schools should systematically build a library of nationalist books. School administrators can encourage the formation of faculty study groups to discuss various issues and subjects to widen intellectual horizons. They can set up throughout the year a series of short courses on different subjects such as the present international economic order, Philippine history after the Pacific War, the role of the global communications system in the shaping of Philippine culture, the policies on food, science and nationalism, etc. Administrators should give due recognition and material reward to teachers active in such intellectual efforts and to teachers who produce useful instructional materials. At year-end, when schools recognize the academic achievements of students, they should give due recognition to the achievements of teachers as well. In short, school administrations should pay particular attention to the creation of an active, nationalist, intellectual climate in faculty ranks. Parents can help in various ways. They can contact nationalist Filipinos who can handle short courses to upgrade the interdisciplinary background of the faculty. They can use their financial resources for gift books and gift subscriptions for the bookshelves of the faculty room. After all, such gifts are in effect gifts to their own children who will surely benefit from a more knowledgeable teacher. Many Filipino scholars are writing books and producing research papers which should reach the faculty of every school. I may mention IBON, the research papers of UP’s Third World Studies Center, certain books and papers published by Ateneo, La Salle, etc. and of course the 20 articles that the teachers Assistance Program of education Forum procedures for teachers every year. Whatever project administrators and parents may decide on, we must all remember that re-education is a slow and even painful process. It will mean consideration of new ideas, new values, and new yardsticks for judging people, institutions and events. Therefore, no project can succeed unless it is designed and sustained as a permanently ongoing process and one in which the teacher participates actively in changing herself.
Teacher militancy in defense of teachers’ rights and prerogatives is one of the most admirable aspects of today’s protest movement. Teachers must get what they deserve. At the same time, teachers must provide our youth with the education they deserve –a nationalist education. So I address myself directly to the teachers : If you believe that we Filipinos have a right to control our own political and economic life for our own benefit, then you must build in the classroom, a generation of thinking Filipinos committed to that task. To do this efficiently and correctly you yourself must strive constantly to broaden your intellectual horizon and to reevaluate the concepts, values, information and orientation you imbibed when you were a student. You must constantly study developments in Philippine society and also all the external forces and institutions that today exert so much influence on our present and future. Above all, you must pay special attention to the study and analysis of economic policies because our growing poverty, the climate of repression and militarization and the violation of human rights are ultimately traceable to economic policies instituted to benefit foreign interests and our own ruling elite.
Let me end, finally with this thought: These are crucial times for our country. More than ever we need teachers who, despite political constraints, will try their best to infuse in a new generation that firm nationalist commitment that will reverse the process of denationalization and de-Filipinization of our economy, culture and society . I pray that more and more teachers will perform this task with intelligence, creativity, patriotism and courage.
