Education and Development:
A Cultural Perspective*
In 1958, British sociologist by the name Michael Young wrote a satirical
essay entitled, “The rise of the Meritocracy – 1870 – 2033”. The central thesis of
the essay was the British society was transformed from one stratified into the
wealthy, noble and highly placed in the government into one based on
intelligences and effort. The only trouble was that the society that emerged was
equally stratified into the very intelligent, the less so, and the least intelligent. The
instrument that was used was very scientific; no less than the I.Q. test or the
psychologists which was so sharply refined that it could predict the intelligence of
a baby while it was still in its mother’s womb.
In the new meritocracy, I.Q. tests were administered periodically and
depending on the result, a person could be retained, promoted or demoted.
Inevitably the new system found itself divided into the leaders who thought of and
development policy, and those who implemented it in the middle and lower
levels. The educational system also reflected these divisions, the best schools
being exclusive enclaves for the high I.Q.’s. As the result of the scientific
precision of the test , the most intelligent of the working class found themselves
in the leadership stratum and the stupid among the old elite were relegated to
mechanical or manual jobs. But since everything was automated by that time a
large residue of low I.Q.’s found themselves unemployed.
The solution to this serious problem was to create a new class of domestic
servants for the high I.Q.’s whose time and brains were too precious for domestic
tasks. So British society went full circle from wealthy nobility who were attended
by domestic servants, the commoners, and working class, to machine operators,
middle level workers and an intellectual aristocracy who also had to be attended
by domestic servants out of sheer necessity. The basic irony is the assumption
that those who do well in academic activities as suggested by I.Q. tests are ipso
facto the best leaders in any society. This is Plato all over again.
Is it possible to have a really classless society? It is possible to have a
society without those who lead and those who follow? A more relevant question
is: is it possible for a society to achieve development without being divided into
the few rich and the numerous poor or the few rich, a comfortable majority and
no poor? Many theories of development have been advanced, none of which has
been adequately verified. And none of them is explicit on the issue of whether
from the process of development they advocate an unstratified society or
whether a less rigidly stratified society is likely to emerge.
One of the problems in studying the relationships between development
and education is the lack of clarity in terminology. For the economist,
development is reflected in a rising GNP and an ample dollar reserve; for the
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doctor it is indicated by reduced incidence of illness; for the architect it is in better
housing for all the people, for the social worker, in less people on relief. Now the
educator is in a most ambiguous position. Would having more people in school
truly indicate development? The pious answer would be in the affirmative. I
suggest that we suspend judgment until we have examined what development
and education mean.
If we are to define development clearly, I suggest that we avoid the
esoteric language of the economists and other social scientists. If a country
claims that it is pushing development the questions we should raise are: What
has happened to poverty or to the gap between the rich and the poor? To
unemployment? To health services? To housing? To schooling? If the numerous
poor have decent jobs, better food, enjoy improved health, and are able to
provide their children with enough basic literacy and social skills as well as
functional skills to make them self-dependent, then there has been development,
regardless of the GNP. The GNP is convenient to use as an indicator, but used
singly it cannot reflect fully and accurately the state of development of any
society. After all, the locus of development is the individual. The richest nations in
the world have pockets of poverty amidst plenty, pockets inhabited by people in
rebellion against their state. Developing societies like the Philippines, on the
other hand, are characterized by minuscule pockets of wealth amidst
widespread, grinding poverty.
What about education? One of our mistakes has been in equating
education with that which occurs, however inadequately, in schools. Actually
education begins at birth and proceeds throughout life, as the individual learns
the norms and practices of his culture. This process is what anthropologists call
enculturation. By focusing on the development of skill in social interaction, the
sociologists label the same process as socialization. Although most socialization
research emphasizes the early childhood years, the fact is that we unde4rgo
socialization anew each time we join a new group or organization. We have to
learn not only our own roles, but also the other roles and statuses that make up
the new entity. The stress on early childhood is partly a result of the diaper theory
of personality development, which postulates that parent-child, specially motherchild relationships in the early years of life, are significant in shaping the
behavioral system of the individual.
Be that as it may it is important that we distinguish between education and
schooling or, if you wish, formal education, which is a deliberate, organized
process of teaching individuals in a specified spatial and temporal order though
activities labeled as curricular.
Thus it is logical for the anthropologists to regard schooling as a process
of cultural transmission. By no means does this denote that what is transmitted is
necessarily static, obsolete or irrelevant, for culture which is actually an
intellectual construct, is different from a specific culture borne by people who are
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living beings and subject to change. The most primitive of cultures does change,
albeit more slowly, than a highly industrialized technological society.
Another dimension of the anthropological perspective is the assumption
that schools have a culture of their own, that there are regularities in the behavior
of its constituents which reflect certain values. The analogy is carried further by
the observation that, as in the life cycle, schooling has rites of passage such as
admission, entrance examinations, initiation into fraternities, proceeding from the
freshman to the senior year and graduation, rites of intensification such as
athletic pep rallies, field day and Christmas celebrations, class reunions, etc. The
classroom is itself a little society, with its own norms for governing behavior.
Some acts, like cheating, talking and excessive moving around are sanctioned,
whereas docility, compliance with teacher assignments are rewarded. There are
two ways of regarding a school: as a formal organization in the manner of the
sociologist and management specialist, or as a social institution with a cultural
dimension in the manner of the anthropologist.
It was the latter I attempted in a case study of a Philippine barrio school
and the surrounding community. From being a somewhat ivory-towerish armchair professor I became a participant-observer to find out what school and
community were really like. To use a popular phrase, I went where the action
really was to be able to tell it “like it is”. To say that I was not too happy about my
findings is to understate the case. Having been a teacher for the greater part of
my life, it was a shattering experience to see some of my most cherished beliefs
about education and pedagogy refuted by reality.
What did the elementary school mean to the people most directly involved
with it? Nothing more than a limited instrument of socio-economic advancement,
competing on uneven terms with stronger economic forces in the local culture. If
a child’s services were needed in the home because his parents were working in
the fields, he dropped out of school without much ado. Survival was simply more
important than schooling.
This economic definition reinforced the conception of the school as
primarily a credentialing institution for the next higher level of formal education.
Its certificate was essential, but gave little prestige. If the child was unable to
complete the elementary course, at least he had a minimum of schooling, which
was less shameful than having none at all.
Despite the high rate of pupil dropouts, children who reverted to illiteracy
did not lose the ability to count and compute, because even the simple village
economy required these skills. On the other hand, the paucity of reading
materials in barrio homes and the increasing reliance on the transistor radio for
news and entertainment reinforced this reversion to illiteracy.
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The rhetoric of official objectives notwithstanding, traditional values and
basic literacy skills persisted as the institutionalized purposes of the school.
Whenever there was an attempt to depart from them, there was no dearth of
criticism and/or resistance. Thus most parents saw little value in gardening,
selling and other domestic chores required of the pupils. Nor was there much
enthusiasm engendered for Boy and Girl Scouts activities or for Field Day. Again,
teachers subverted the bureaucracy’s community improvement program by
engaging in perfunctory surveys. Detailed action programs for changing a
particular aspect of community life were eschewed for various reasons.
The teachers claimed they were overburdened with work, an excuse not
without basis. Moreover, such projects did not have lasting effects, as the ill-fated
community school movement had shown.
But community education through classrooms instruction continued as a
nominal part of the curriculum. In such subjects as health, it was hoped that the
teachers’ work with pupils would somehow be communicated to, and adopted by
parents. This was the approach supposed to be used to change villagers’
attitudes, which was considered essential to permanent community improvement.
There was no evidence that children were practicing ideas taught in the class at
home, let alone that parents were adopting them too. Moreover, children as
models and teachers of parents ran counter to the culturally defined notion of the
old and the adult as exemplars.
The concept of the community school had never really taken root in the
barrio. The efforts of the school in this direction tended to focus on peripheral
matters. Lamps on gate posts, flower gardens, the school lagoon-these projects
were pursued with an evanescent zeal that deflected attention from urgent needs
such as water supply.
The school taught survival behaviors rather than innovative ideas.
Traditional values and basic literacy skills facilitated survival within the local
culture, but they did not induce openness to change, whatever this might be.
Graduation from the barrio school was merely a first and remote way-station
toward entry into the world of employment and economic security.
For teacher and school heads, school was a place for teaching pupils the
three R’s and the basic values of the community. This work they acknowledged
as monotonous, but necessary. Despite its nominal commitment to community
education, the bureaucracy also concurred with this view of the importance of the
three R’s, for at the end of the school year the district supervisor came to test first
grade pupils on reading skills.
In any case, the three R’s and local values must be taught though rote,
hortatory lectures, drill and physical punishment, if need be. Both parents and
teachers agreed on the efficacy of physical punishment as a disciplinary
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measure, and as a way of developing those behavioral patterns considered
desirable in the culture.
As for the skill-academic subjects, neither parents nor teachers
questioned the mechanistic methods employed. On the contrary, the new math
was objectionable because it was such a recondite and circuituous way of
attaining results that had historically been achieved through a shorter, if less
logical, method. After all, the important thing was for pupils to learn the basic
arithmetical skills so that they could protect themselves in actual situation where
these skills were needed. But the logic of inquiry and alternative approaches
underlying the new math were for those who would continue to high school, and
this was not most unlikely for many barrio pupils. It was not only time-consuming;
it also tended to be taught as mechanistically as the old arithmetic. Almost
instinctively teachers objected to extending tedium fro the same results.
The new math illustrates the ironic of curricular innovations prescribed
from above. It was supposed to rescue instruction from tedium and indifference –
to stimulate intellectual curiosity and improve the quality of class activity. Yes it
ended up by being learned through routinized formula, no less deadening than
the old arithmetic. It seems probable that the continuing treatment of teachers as
ant-like workers carrying out curricular directives with docility and indifference
was related in some way to the failure of curricular change.
The implicit fate of parents and teachers in traditional methods was
validated by the fact that most children did learn to read, write and compute in
rudimentary fashion as long as they stayed in school up to the fourth grade. Most
of them turned out to be obedient, respectful of, and submissive to, age-authority.
If these were largely consequences of having live models in the persons of
teachers and other adults rather than of formal instruction, no one would have
been distressed by the thought.
Again, there was parental and teacher consensus on the proliferation of
subjects in the curriculum, but little agreement on which ones ought to be
discarded. Most parents thought that pedagogical efforts should concentrate on
the three R’s and the development of proper conduct, but a few believed that the
school should be more “realistic” in its subject matter. Practical knowledge of
farming, horticulture, fishing, mechanics, industrial arts, electricity, household
work and community life should be taught because they would be useful to
villagers. Such opinions comprised a minority, however significant. In general,
villagers saw the community and the school as separate entities, each with its
particular functions.
Nowhere was this separateness more clearly illustrated than in the
conflicts that arose in situations where cash contributions were involved.
Villagers complained in vain about the contributions and fees levied on them, and
sought to have the teachers share, or even assume, such expenses. Teachers,
however, have their own involuntary contributions extracted from them by the
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bureaucracy. Both groups felt they had legitimate grievances vis-à-vis
compulsory monetary contributions. In both cases the resistance was based on
the same principle: expenses for certain institutional needs should be financed
from sources other than one’s personal funds, even though one might
conceivably profit remotely or abstractly from such expenditures, viz., those for
the entertainments of important guests to keep us the image of collective
hospitality.
In such associations as the PTA, parents and teachers joined efforts to
raise donations from external sources through the exploitation of political
connections and a few, rare philanthropically inclined persons. Pride in concrete,
visible, physical improvements was sustained by vigorous campaigns for
donations from outside. Self-sustenance, at least as far as money for local
projects was concerned, was rejected.
This behavior pattern of the PTA was replicated in that of village
associations such as social and religious clubs and even in the barrio council.
The modus operandi was essentially the same. A proposed project, generally
something observable and concrete, such as stage or a basketball court was
approved and a campaign to finance it from external sources was launched. If
the campaign was successful, there was a great deal of self-congratulation and
usually a concluding ritual, such as the inauguration of the new barrio hall by an
important official.
It should be noted that parent-teacher conflicts over school contributions
and other matters, viz., those for graduation ceremonies never exploded open
confrontations. They took the form of gossip, innuendo and oblique remarks, the
meaning of which was lost on nobody.
To return to the curriculum, while they agreed on the priority of basic skills
and proper behavior, teachers and school heads were largely undecided on the
subjects which were unessential. All conceded that Good Manners and Right
Conduct or Character Education and the three R’s were of supreme importance,
but it was difficult to ascertain whether Work Education, Art, Music, Health or
Physical Education could be eliminated from the curriculum without depriving
pupils of some basic knowledge or skill. Although relatively new, Science was
already a sacrosanct subject, if the official messages from the bureaucracy and
the national leadership were to be believed. Under no circumstances combined
with Health, but this was merely to prevent the elimination of the latter. The
combination of two subjects, such as Art and music, was a favorite solution to the
nagging problem of curriculum overflow. Part of this overflow was caused by laws
passed under the pressure of vested interests. By reducing the time allocation of
subjects, combining evaded the issue of priorities and pacified ardent proponents
of particular courses.
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Language, which included reading, was indispensable, but it comprised an
area of special difficulty because pupils had to learn formal Pilipino and English.
Since the barrio was a Tagalog area, pupils presumably had less difficulty
with Pilipino. Teacher and school heads claimed that pupils learned content more
easily when they were taught in “Tagalog or Pilipino”. In fact, pupils were
encouraged to read tagalong comics to accelerate the development of reading
skills. While these materials were not exactly ideal, they served the purpose in a
situation where most households had neither books, magazines nor newspaper,
and where not even the school had a library.
One facet of the urban-centered surge of nationalism was the demand to
shift from English to Pilipino as the medium of teaching at all levels. Nationalism
was a favorite posture and slogan of the bureaucracy. It was implicit in the
community school idea, in the use of a vernacular to teach first and second
graders, in the increasing use of Pilipino in public speeches and messages, in
the number of subjects based on Philippine history and community life. This
stance was also a defense against the charge of neo-colonialism.
The response of the teachers, school heads and parent-informants to this
demand was equivocal. On the one hand, most conceded the inevitability and
appropriateness of using Pilipino as the language of instruction, especially in the
elementary schools. At the same time, they specified that teaching materials be
adequate before the change was made. For this, a program of translation over a
considerable period of time was envisioned. Unless, this was done, they
anticipated difficulties for everyone concerned, particularly the teachers. Not for
them the impulsive experimentation of radical-minded university students and
professors: there must be a gradual well-prepared program.
On the other hand, none among the key informants would willingly give up
English. In fact, those parents who had the least command of it were the most
insistent on its retention. It must remain part of the curriculum, because of its
international and prestige value, and its association with advanced economics.
Were not applicants to such lowly positions as janitor required to fill up forms in
English? There was no question about its economic value in general terms.
Indubitably, some ability to speak and write this language was so requisite to
employment. If this was part of the neo-colonialism so devoutly deplored by the
urban nationalists, it was regrettable. Again, survival was more important than
nationalism.
The uncertainly of responses vis-à-vis the pruning of the curriculum to
reasonable and manageable level suggested that the curriculum per se was not
a major concern of teachers or school heads, despite verbal acknowledgement of
its importance. The curriculum was the business of the bureaucracy: teachers
and school heads were merely implementing workers and officers. The unilateral
transmission of curricular directives from higher officers to the schools through
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memoranda and official meetings was one proof of this. Since curricular policy
and program were high-level decisions, perfunctory compliance with directives
was the complementary teacher-response.
If school activities were any gauge, then fund-raising, the maintenance
and improvement of physical plant and grounds, the preparation of reports and
other ritual activities were a major concern of teachers and school heads. There
being no regular sources of money for physical improvements and miscellaneous
expenses in the school, for the entertainment of visitors, official and otherwise, it
devolved on the staff to develop ways of raising money within the framework of
bureau regulation. This way accomplished ingeniously, by skirting thinly the edge
of formal laws and rules, with the tacit consent of school heads and
administrators, and possibly of the bureaucracy itself. Corollary to this emphasis
on physical improvement was the great care exercised to protect school property.
Everything was locked up during classes; and every item was carefully
inventoried at the end of the school year.
Teachers were spared from giving some personal contributions by the use
of sales proceeds to feed, entertain and give gifts to, official visitors, but there
was no total escape from them. The district office passed tickets for fund drives it
received from higher quarters to the teachers, who either shared the cost among
themselves, or, in some instances, persuaded pupils to contribute part of the
cost. What made such contributions so distasteful was that there were no
concrete returns from them: they were collected as part of public charity
campaigns, whose benefits were seldom felt in the school barrio.
For the mimeographing and duplication of test papers, the rental of the
amplifier and related equipment during Field Day, graduation band other school
celebrations, the repair of a classroom damaged by a typhoon, pupils and/or
their parents could always be persuaded or coerced into contributing small sums,
albeit with much grumbling. Final grades and graduation certificates could be
withheld, the small number of free textbooks would not be distributed, if these
requests were ejected. However, there seemed to be no relentless efforts
exerted to collect in the vent that genuine inability top pay was pleaded.
This unstated emphasis on money-raising within the system served as a
model for the teachers, reinforcing a fundamentally economic view of life learned
in the village culture.
As already mentioned, the bulk of expenses was for the maintenance and
improvement of physical plant and grounds, for this was the first thing noted on
official visits. Beauty, cleanliness, neatness of grounds and buildings were a
credit to the school administration, as were pupil and teacher performance in
official and readily graded tests, participation of the staff in in-service seminars
and training programs, in fund-raising projects such as beauty contests,
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involvement of the school in extra-curricular activities such as Boy and Girl Scout
ventures by reports on attendance.
Therefore reports on almost every aspect of the school, from enrollment to
the rating performance of teachers, occupied a great deal of the time and
energies of the staff. Not the least of these reports were those on sales and
collections. Some of these were required on short notice, others periodically, and
many mere at the end of the school year. In any event when reports were due, all
other activity was subordinated to their preparations in accordance with formats
prescribed by higher offices. Documents reporting adequate enrollment,
substantial collections, good attendance at extra-curricular activities and inservice training projects, good or acceptable grades in district, division or national
tests, or even those merely proposing action or academic programs were
symbols of accomplishments and highly valued. Statistics on community surveys
were proudly displayed on a bulletin board as evidence of the school’s
community improvement program. Reports in neatly arrange files constituted
proof that something was being done, that projects and activities assigned by
higher echelons in the bureaucracy were nor being neglected.
In this manner the bureaucracy itself was amply equipped with statistical
information which it could use to prove its worth to national goals and plans, and
to defend itself from its critics. Conceivably, documents and reports sometimes
became substitute for achievement, instead of merely symbolizing it. After all,
statistics, which most reports contained, were a part of the scientific or empirical,
no-nonsense approach publicly favored by government offices. They carried the
approval of scholars, academicians and national leaders. Statistics as a form of
evidence were therefore prestigious in a national government that was
increasingly oriented, at least verbally, to rational modes of operation.
The barrio council also showed this partiality for reports. Towards the end
of his term, the barrio captain took all the records of minutes of meetings so that
they could be polished into proper shape and left as a respectable legacy to
succeeding councils.
Another area of importance in the school was that of ritual activities, which
were related to fund-raising and the preparation of reports. Very often accounts
of them constituted the content of reports. They were financed largely from
money raised by the staff. Visit of school officials, teachers’ district meetings,
school staff meetings, school opening exercises, graduation ceremonies,
demonstration lessons, Field Day celebrations, were among the regular activities
in which virtually the entire staff was involved. School staff meetings were held to
prepare for these occasions with various tasks being assigned to the teachers by
the school head. As in the district meetings. these were primarily the occasions
for the transmission of instructions of directives. Great care went into the
planning of these activities, the staff taking minute details into account. Even the
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menu for the occasion was sometimes an item on the agenda, although usually
this was left to the discretion of the Home Economics Teacher.
Such activities tended to strengthen the sense of the school as part of t e
larger education system. They gave the staff and perhaps the pupils a feeling of
importance. At the same time, they were also under scrutiny on such occasions,
so that the feeling of being evaluated by officials who were present was palpable.
It was important that such activities be carried out smoothly and successfully, if
the school, meaning primarily the staff, was to maintain a respectable standing
among the schools in the district, the district office being its closest link to the
bureaucracy and its immediate supervisory agency.
As for conceptions of good leadership, is was clear that teachers
preferred the quietly authoritarian approach and forcefulness of the first principal
to the timid, if warm, style of her successor. Decisiveness without the
appearance of being aggressive, a soft, polite approach without loss of authority
were the qualities of the approved style of leadership. The teachers wanted
clear-cut directives given to them in a non-dictatorial manner. That the school
administrator generally succeeded in doing this suggested that this might be a
culturally defined style of leadership. Nor were the teacher alone in this choice.
Villagers, confronted with the official leadership of the barrio captain and the
informal one of a wealthy residents’ forceful, it somewhat dictatorial, ways, often
chose the latter. Male leaders were allowed more latitude vis-à-vis being
dictatorial.
An important factor in effective leadership, whether in the school or
community, was that of the ability to get things done, to meet requests and/or
demands, either through political shrewdness, adeptness at interpersonal
relations, or professional ability or all of these. Thus the successful leadership of
a new school administrator or barrio official was not confirmed until it had been
tested in this particular area. Did she or he have entry to the power structure and
the resources for obtaining concessions and/ or favors from it? The question of
whether such concessions or favors were a matter of right or law was irrelevant;
effectiveness in getting them was the crux of leadership. IT was right
(underscoring mine) to reciprocate what was conceived to be a favor received or
a debt incurred. Was this success in getting things done likely to extend over an
appreciable period of time or was it essentially ephemeral? What was the quid
pro quo for obtaining favors? What form of service, favors or concessions would
be required implicitly of the leader and/or his followers? If funds had been
released for the construction of a school building or execution of some projects,
the school leader might commit his vote in an election as well as those of his
subordinates whom he could persuade or pressure.
IN addition to the acknowledged purposes of the school, pupils also
learned that it must be financed by activities such as selling bread and candy,
and holding beauty contests and benefit dances, if it was to survive as an
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institution. The notion of direct participation in fund-raising as an essential part of
school activity was instilled at an early stage of schooling.
If the activities of the school seemed to be focused less on instruction than
on matters pertaining to money-raising, physical improvements and ritual
activities, it was because the staff, the pupils and even the parents were
responding to a system that emphasized and rewarded such activities. This
system was the bureaucracy of which the school was an extension of the grass
roots level. There was a logic in the thematic selectiveness of school activity: it
was essential to the continuance of the bureaucracy. No less than the individual
school, money-raising for physical improvements, report and other paper work,
and other ritual activities gave the larger bureaucracy a reason for existing and a
justification for continuing its essentially self-maintaining functions. This
bureaucratic socialization of staff, and to a lesser degree, of pupils and parents,
proceeded apace once the individual was coopted into these activities.
That the schools continued to be perceived by some sectors as
institutional agencies for social change and community improvement, and more
recently, as organizations for manpower development was as much due to the
glib repetition of this aphorism over a long period of time as to blindness in
school people deriving from close identification with a system. The important
thing was that the school was successful in teaching survival behaviors rather
than innovative ideas.
It is also proposed that even as the school taught survival behaviors to
pupils, it insured its own survival as an institution and, to some degree, that of
higher bureaucracy beyond it.
It is therefore important to note that the staff of the school in particular
were responding to the demands imposed on them by a bureaucratic system
which was not necessarily opposed to the culture of the community. While there
were variations in the behavior of teachers and school heads, there was
sufficient similarity to justify the assumption that patterns of responding to these
demands had been developed.
Equally important is that it was in the school that two goals that do not tally
with that the people of a community want may be accepted verbally and
implemented in a perfunctory fashion, as in the experience of the community
school. On the other hand, what a community wants is not necessarily what it
needs from the point of view of national planners.
At this point it is important to intrude a dissenting note from the popular
notion that the Filipino resists change specially that which involves manual work
because he is by nature indolent, devoid of achievement orientation, etc. It would
be closer to the truth to say that our people eschew vocational training and
manual work because they have not found them adequately rewarding. Who
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wants to do back-breaking work in fields and factories when a clerical white-collar
job pays better and more regularly? But if such training and such work
culminates in ample rewards, we would probably witness the evolution of a
frenetically achieving society with all its concomitant ills.
These findings suggest some of the problems in regionalizing or localizing
educational response. There must be an effort to ascertain the prospective
clientele’s needs about the urgency of which they may need to be convinced
before starting innovative programs. Unilateral planning runs the risk of not being
effectively implemented. Research on the cultural adaptability of innovations
should logically precede action. But we are in a hurry to develop, and it is this
haste which accounts, in the long run, for unsatisfactory results.
What should be the objectives of elementary and secondary education?
The rhetorical answers are found in our legal documents and bureaucratic
directives. The real answers can be ascertained only at the classroom and in
what happens to students after they have leave school. Should we concentrate
on fundamental social literacy and employable skills? Should we teach values
separately, as in character education? Whose values shall we teach? If we
cannot be sure that they are the right values, why teach them at all?
Who should go to college? The NCEE is a further refinement of the sorting
and classificatory function of the schools, separating those who are likely to do
well in college and those who are not. Please note that I don not refer to
intelligence, because I.Q. test are misleading, atomistic instruments that cannot
indicate, let alone measure certain types of intelligence and other human
capabilities.
Should higher education emphasize preparation for professional practice
so that graduates do not join our growing pool of educated unemployed? What of
general or liberal education?
Because the technological and scientific professions are in demand at
present, practitioners of the liberal arts feel beleaguered, uncertain and
unimportant in a world of rapid change. Yet never before has the purpose of
liberal or general education been as valid, as necessary and as urgent than at
the present time. Liberal or general education is necessary for all members of a
society intent on striking a balance between specialization as an instrument of
development and the intelligent participation of its citizens in social and political
decisions. It is designed to enable the individual to understand the forces and
conflicts of the contemporary world, the ideas underlying such forces, the
ideological and economic assumptions of various types of social and political
organization.
For such understanding, it is necessary to have a sense of the past
history, an ability to criticize and judge (philosophy, logic and mathematics) and a
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comprehension of human relationships, values and problems which endure
through time in a context of accelerated change (metaphysics, axiology, literature
and the arts). The aim of liberal education is to free the mind from conventional
and narrow preconceptions so that an issue can be examined from every
conceivable perspective in order to render a judgment based on acceptable
evidence. In this sense the liberal arts are eminently practical, for they prevent us
from making rash judgments and decisions.
This is not the case in other disciplines and professions where knowledge
expands at a geometric rate and becomes obsolescent almost as rapidly. A
university can only stimulate or begin liberal education for it should be a lifetime
pursuit. Therefore we should reinterpret its purpose in contemporary terms: to
teach students how to learn so that they can continue to educate themselves as
adults in a rapidly changing world. This requires instructional skill of the highest
order; teaching that is challenging, dialect, imaginative. It is suggested that liberal
arts teachers take on this task of enduring value and leave the other disciplines
to empirical research. May I remind you that all the great theories have been
derived from hypothetico deductive reasoning, rather than applied research, viz.,
relativity.
With the increasing impersonalism of a technological managementoriented society, we must see to it that our students remain human. For merely to
survive as a species is not enough. Even surviving in comfort is not enough.
What is important is to survive as the human species.
14
The Role of Education in Social Transformation
Concepts, Issues and Prospects
By Josefina Cortes, Ph.D.
This paper discuss education as all kinds of learning covering knowledge,
attitudes and skills acquired from school and non-school sources leading to
desirable changes in the learner’s cognitive, affective and manipulative behavior.
There are certain kinds of learning that can be learned more expeditiously and
economically outside schools. In other words, schools are just one of society’s
educative agents. I(n fact, schools are social inventions which came much later
than the other agents of education in society, such as the family, church and
guild.
The story of education began with “a woman instructing a daughter or son
walking talking and working together. In the Stone Age, there were no
elementary classes in flint chipping; a boy learned to chip flints by watching
adults. When there was a little lore or skill to transmit, and the life of society was
lived out before the child’s eyes, education was blended with other activities”
(Calrk, 1916:22). However, as societies grew, education became more complex,
more dependent on highly abstract, scientific and technical knowledge, and as a
society’s function became more differentiated and highly specialized, the need
for more normal and systematic teaching-learning activities gave to the creation
of schools or a formal educational system.
Schooling or formal education ensures that learning deemed desirable
and useful to both the individual and society is not left to chance. In addition to
the school system, every society has other organized learning systems intended
for specific clienteles and for very specific learning objectives. Learning obtained
from these non-school organized learning activities is referred to as nonformal
education. Learning gained from one’s-day-to-day transactions with others and
the environment is informal education. The most important sources of informal
education are such social institutions as the family, the church, the mass media,
and the workplace. All education whether formal, non0formal and informal
involves learning. However, it is not education when learning is not consistent
with the shared values, aspirations and needs of people in a society.
Filipinos tend to equate education with schooling and this acquisition of
knowledge, attitudes and skills necessary for a person to succeed in life.
Although they agree that education can be obtained inside school and
elsewhere, schools are seen as the primary source of education. Filipinos also
believe that the higher a person goes up the formal education ladder, the more
knowledge he/she acquire and expectedly, the more wealth he or she produces.
This view is captured in a popular Tagalog proverb which says, “Ang sa taong
karunungan ay kayamanang di mananakaw”. It is therefore no wonder that the
supreme ambition of every Filipino family is to have every child earn a college
15
diploma regardless of the sacrifice it might require of the family (Cortes, 1981).
These views about education are reflected in the Constitutions adopted by the
Filipino people. In these Constitutions the importance of education to the
development of the individual and nation-building is explicitly recognized.
The 1935, 1973 and 1987 Constitutions are quite definite about the ideas
and values that education must promote and sustain. Common to the Preamble
of each of these Constitutions is a vision of a society that aspires for the values
of independence, justice, democracy, belief in God, conservation and
development of the patrimony of the nation. The 1973 and 1987 Constitutions
expanded these values to include peace, equality, truth, and love with the view of
attaining a just and humane society”.
All three Constitutions require that educational institutions shall aim to
teach the duties of citizenship, to develop moral character, personal discipline,
and vocational efficiency. The 1973 Constitution mandates that schools shall
inculcate love to country, while the 1987 Constitution stipulates that schools must
inculcate patriotism and nationalism, foster love of country, respect for human
rights, appreciation of the role of national heroes in the development of the
country, strengthen ethics and spiritual values and encourage critical thinking
and broaden scientific knowledge.
Implied in these Constitutions provisions is the idea that schools are
instruments for the attainment of social, economic and political goals of the polity
and individual. For this purpose, all three constitutions ordain that all educational
institutions shall be under the supervision and subject to the regulation of the
State; the Government shall establish and maintain a complete and adequate
system of free public education at the elementary and secondary levels.
Moreover, the 1987 Constitution mandates that “the Sate shall assign the highest
budgetary priority to education and ensure that teaching will attract and retain its
rightful share of the best available talents through adequate remuneration and
other means of job satisfaction and fulfillment” (Art. XV, Sec 5, par.5)
Underlying the foregoing Constitutional provisions is the assumption
explicitly stated in the 1987 Constitution, Article 11, and Section 17, that
education, along with science, technology, arts, culture and sports, is a means
“to foster patriotism and nationalism, accelerate social progress, and promote
total human liberation and development.
It is obvious that the Filipinos concept of education is consistent with the
functional and human capital theories of education’s role in social transformation.
These theories contend that:
1. Education is a great social and economic equalizer.
2. Education is the key to upward economic and social nobility
3. Education increases labor productivity
4. Education makes people more enlightened and less intolerant.
16
These assumptions and contentions are shown in more precise terms in
Figure 1. The general assumptions underlying Figure 1 are that education
develops in the individual the capacity to acquire cognitions, attitudes and skills
that influence his/her behavior as a social, economic and political being and that
the aggregate behavior of properly educated individuals in society, would
consequently contribute to their individual and collective well-being. These
assumptions are premised on the firm belief that schools, by bringing about
change in the people’ cognitions, attitudes, values and skills can effect social
transformation.
What are the roots of these assumptions and to what extent have these
assumptions influence the orientation development and structure of the present
school system?
Historical Roots and Colonial Legacy
The Philippine school system today is largely the product of the country’s
colonial experience. Undoubtedly, the school system introduced by the
Spaniards and later by the Americans was functional in its assumptions and
orientations. Schools were established by these colonial powers to socialize the
people into their colonial statuses and roles and to develop the knowledge,
attitudes and skills required of subservient and loyal subjects. Under Spain the
natives were taught literacy in order for them to read and learn the Christian
doctrines. There was no serious effort to educate the Filipinos beyond the 1863
which respectively ordered the establishment in the country of a public
elementary school system and a secondary school system. Political pressures
against the use of Spanish in the elementary and secondary schools by the
Spanish rulers themselves worked against the full implementation of both these
education decrees. Thus, education in the higher levels was available only to
children of the well-off and of Spanish descent. This led to the high social,
economic, and political value that Filipinos attach the college education. The
college degree became highly prestigious and covered.
A public school system patterned after that of the USA was established in
1901 by the Second US Commission in the Philippines along with the creation of
a Department of Instruction whose mandate was to “insure a system of free
primary instruction for the Filipinos People” (ACT No. 74). The school during the
American regime were used to implement the policy of “benevolent assimilation”.
The Department of Public Instruction was given the instruction that
So far as the state is concerned, the primary aim of
education is to prepare the individual to exercise the right
of suffrage intelligently and to perform the duties and
citizenship fully and honestly. Public education is primarily
an instrument of self-preservation. The individual is
educated at public expense not for his own sake primarily
but for the security of the State (Isidro, 1949:3)
17
Philippine Education under American rule provided a systematic and
thorough process of Americanizing the Filipino, English became the language of
instruction. American-authored textbooks found a flourishing market in a rapidly
expanding school system, Curricular patterns and educational innovations in
Philippine schools were faithful copies of those introduced in American schools.
In the words of O.D. Corpuz”
Filipino children learned to read from English-language primers, published
in America, about well-dressed and clean faced Billy and Sally and Dick and
Mary Ann, illustrated in color with American homes with smoke swirling out of
chimneys in winter. Their elder brothers and sisters were familiar with the farmers
of Lexington and Concord…they read the bibliographies of George Washington,
Thomas Alva Edison and Henry Ford. ..little of this had any genuine relevance to
the Filipinos’ tropical way of life, but the educational process conditioned the
Filipinos …whose classroom experience was reinforced by direct and daily
contact with American culture…
This conditioning was important because it rooted deep in the Filipino mind a
predisposition, in the resolution of political issues to appreciate and understand
the American point of view (Corpuz, 1965:70)
With English as a medium of instruction and one of two official languages
up to present, the cultural conditioning mentioned by Corpuz continues to shape
and control the Filipino mind and behavior.
Structure and Main Features of the Present Philippine School System
The Philippine school system today is a huge network of schools and a
gigantic enterprise. Its phenomenal growth and expansion over the years is
shown on the Table 1 and Table 2.The rate of increase in the number of public
and private schools on the elementary level was 111.8 percent from 1959-1960to
1984-1985. During the same period, the increase in the number of secondary
schools was 443.4 percent and on the tertiary level, college and universities
increase by 27502 percent.
The growth in school enrolment has been equally rapid. Elementary
school enro9lment rose from 4.1 million in 1960 to 8.2 million in 1980. During the
same period, secondary schools registered an increase in enrolment from
611,544 to a staggering 2.76 million. Tertiary enrolment grew from 300,572 in
1,127,968 in 1985.
Elementary education generally covers the age group 7 to 12 years.
Public schools take care of a little over 95 percent of the total enrolment in
elementary education.
Secondary education corresponds to the age group 13 to 16 years old. Of
the total enrolment of 3.323 million enrolled in secondary schools in 1984-85, 59
percent were in the public sector.
18
Tertiary level education covers the age bracket 17 to 20 years old or over.
Approximately, 85 percent of the annual enrolments on this level are in private
schools.
Current Concerns About Philippine Education
The rapid and unsystematic expansion of the system of education in the
Philippines has created interlocking problems. The general indictment is that the
formal school system has over-expanded at the expense of quality education; the
school system has been wasteful, elitist, reactive, neo-colonial, irrelevant and
unable to anticipate future developments and needs of the country and people.
1. Overexpansion and dwindling resources for education:
The Philippine formal educational system appears to be one of the most
expand in the world. Participation rates among the relevant school age
group are relatively higher than the other countries in the ASEAN region.
At the tertiary level, the participation rate surpasses that of the United
Kingdom and the USSR. (Table 3).
The growth in enrolment and increases in participation rates, however
have not been matched by a corresponding increase in the budget for
education as a percentage of the total national budget. On the contrary,
the share of education in the national budget consistently dropped from
30.8 percent in 1955 to 7.6 in 1981. There has been a slight increase in
the national budget allocation for education after 1981 but it has remained
below 20percent of the total annual national budget in spite of the 1987
Constitutions provisions to assign highest priority to education (Table 4).
Prior to the current school year, 1988, 1989, approximately 67 percent of
the total annual national budget for education went to elementary
education, leaving less than 30 percent for secondary and tertiary
education. Thus public secondary schools had to depend on the local
government for funding. Being largely in the hands of the private sector,
education at the tertiary level depends on private funds for financial
support, mainly tuition fee collections. As a result, secondary and tertiary
schools vary greatly in quality and resources. Moreover, the high social
and economic values that Filipinos attach to a college degree have
resulted in the proliferation of tertiary institutions offering four-year degree
programs that require the least cost to operate, e.g. teacher, education,
business, and commerce.
2. A Wasteful and Ineffective School System
The Philippine school system has been criticized for being wasteful and
ineffective. From the first national survey of education 1925 (Monroe
19
Survey) to the present, the academic achievement of pupils have always
fallen below set standards. The Survey of Outcomes of Elementary
Education (SOUTELE) found that “on average, the graduates of
elementary schools across the nation can only answer 50 items of the
items correctly. If one is to use the standard passing mark for the test of
75 percent, then the average elementary school graduate has learned
only 2/3 of what he should have learned” (DEC-EDPITAF,1976:88). The
same study noted that the difference in scores between elementary school
graduates and fifth graders is too small to be of any educational
significance. This suggests that the sixth grade could be a tremendous
waste of time and resources.
The low level academic achievement of pupils is further aggravated by the
high incidence of dropouts among elementary school pupils, Available
statistics on the cohort survival rate of every 100pupils that entered Grade
1 in 1963-64, and show that only 57.56 percent reached Grade VI. In other
words, 42.44 percent had dropped out before reaching the sixth grade.
The average cohort survival rate has gone up to 64.1 percent after five
years of elementary schooling according to the official reports in 1986. But
in some regions of Mindanao and the Visayas, the average cohort survival
rate by Grade VI is as low as 45.8 percent meaning that 54.2 percent of
every 100 student’s entering first grade drops out before reaching the sixth
grade (DECS Statistical Bulletin., SY 1985-86:24)
High School graduates are observed to be ill-prepared for any gainful
occupation and for college education. This observation finds support in the
poor performance of high school graduates who take the National College
Entrance Examination (NCEE) and by the rate of unemployment among
the labor force with secondary schooling. Likewise, the wasteful and
ineffectiveness of the school system is manifested by the high percentage
of failures reaching as high as 80-90 percent of examinees in Professional
Board Examinations. For example, among the examinees that took the
Board examination for Chemists in 1987, only 44 or 11 percent of the 399
examinees passed (Manila Bulletin., Nov. 21, 1987:1).
3. Imbalances in the Quantity and Quality of College Graduates and Brain
Drain
Colleges and universities in the Philippines continue to register an
extremely disproportionate distribution of enrolment in the different
disciplines. In 1968-69, teacher training, business and commerce, law,
arts and humanities accounted for about 80 percent of the total collegiate
enrolment. In 1980-81, three degree programs namely, business and
commerce, engineering and technology, medicine and the related fields
absorbed 66.7 percent of the total enrolment in this educational level. The
physical sciences and life sciences continue to be the least attractive
20
disciplines notwithstanding the availability of government: scholarships in
these areas (Table 5):
Since private colleges and universities depend mainly on tuition fee
collections for their operations, most of them concentrate on low-cost
courses or academic degree programs that do not require heavy capital
investments in terms of laboratories, scientific apparatus and equipment
and the payment of competitive salaries for qualified faculty that are in
short supply. It is no wonder that the most commonly offered four-year
academic programs by these institutions are in these fields: teacher
education, business and commerce, and “others” or programs not
classified under the well-known disciplines. Furthermore, a large
percentage of the collegiate faculty in 70 percent of the private colleges
and universities had not studied beyond the bachelor’s degree (FAPE,
1975). This situation has resulted in surpluses of graduates in some fields
and shortages of graduates in other fields of specialization which in turn
have led to the problem of educated unemployed and “brain drain”.
The term “brain drain” refers to the gross outflow or emigration of
those who belong to the categories of professional, technical and skilled
manpower such as engineer, natural scientist, physicians and professional
nurse from their home country to other countries. Official reports from the
US Office of Immigration and Naturalization revealed that Filipino
professional and technical workers immigrating to the USA increased from
.95 percent in 19.69 percent in 1970.
While it may be said that the Philippines is producing college
graduates who cannot be absorbed by the economy, a close examination
of those who migrate are in the professions that account for the smallest
proportion of graduates in the country, such as graduates in the natural
sciences, medicine and allied fields and engineering. These are also the
graduates badly needed by the country for development.
4. Irrelevance and Neo-colonial Orientation of Philippine Education
The Monroe Survey of Philippine Education of 1925 recommended a
radical change in the school curriculum because courses were found to
reflect American culture rather than that of the Philippine culture (The
Board of Educational Survey, 1925).
Today, forty-two years after gaining independence from the USA,
Philippine education continues to be a clone of the American school
system. English remains as the dominant medium of instruction. As the
sole medium of instruction in the Philippines schools until the adoption of
the Bilingual Policy in 1976, Filipinos learned to be literate in the English
21
language rather than in their mother tongue or in the national language.
This greatly influence their thinking, preference, lifestyle and world view.
The irrelevance and alienation of the products of the educational system
from the needs and realities of Philippine society reached the peak of
national consciousness during the 1960s. This period also witnessed
throngs of young adults, marching out into the streets demanding the
reorientation of Philippine education. In response, to the clamor for
educational relevance, the Presidential Commission to Survey Philippine
Education (PCSPE) was created in 1969 to 1) analyze the performance of
the educational system with reference to national development goals, 2)
recommend specific ways of improving the system, and 3) identify critiscal
areas for more detailed research. PCSPE found that “Philippine education
was plagued imbalances between popular expectations and educational
standards, facilities and enrollment; the supply of graduates and demands
for specific manpower skills; location of educational facilities and actual
regional development needs; and national investments in economic
enterprise” (1970s:8-9).
Based on the recommendations of PCSPE, Presidential decree 6-A or the
educational development Decree of 1972 was issued stipulating that “it is
the policy of the government to ensure, within the context of a free
democratic system, maximum contribution of the educational system to
the attainment of national development goals”. The decree provided the
basis for reforms intended to evolve a more relevant educational system.
However, it also served as a justification for the negotiations of an
educational loans from the IMF-World Bank.
Consistent with the functionalist approach to education, the reforms
identified by the PCSPE were addressed to flaws in the educational
system itself such as it goals, structure, resources and management
rather than to constraints that originate from the larger society. The closest
that the PCSPE touched on thid aspect was its observation that
…the present objective of the Philippines education are goals of the
entire system, and are unachievable aims for the educational system
alone (PCSPE, 1970:7-9).
The PCSPE Survey Report hardly discussed the possible root causes of
the problems of education such as in the lack of role models for the values
and ideas taught in schools, unjust social structures, and the heavy
dependence on Western education, many others. Like the Educational
Development Decree of 1972, Batas Pambansa Bilang 232, also called
Education Act of 1982, is premised on the assumption that the problems
of education in the Philippines are basically educational and technical,
therefore these problems can be solved by working toward the attainment
22
of, according to the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports at that time,
the “four Es in Education”, namely, effectiveness, efficiency, excellence
and equity.
Issues and Policy Implications
This section examines the extent to which the Philippine school system
has fulfilled the educational aspirations and expectations of Filipinos. It
also points out the relevant educational issues and policy implications
indicated by the observed gaps in school system performance.
1. Mass education and literacy
Has the expansion of the Philippine school system improved the
literacy level and education of the masses? The data shown in Table 6
reveal the illiteracy has dramatically declined from 79 percent in 1903
to 19.6 percent in 1980. However, a closer examination of the data
indicates some disturbing facts, namely: 1) Although the percentage
decrease of illiteracy has been very substantial since 1903, the
absolute value of illiterates has not decreased. In fact, in 1980,
illiteracy among the age group 10 years old and over exceeded the
total number of 5.5 million in 1903 by 2.5 million in 1980, 2) the rate of
increase in literacy over the previous census year has been declining
and 3) a large percentage of these illiterates are in the depressed
regions, i.e., Regions II, VII, IX, and XII (Table 6&7). Participation rates
or enrolment ratios among the relevant school age population in the
country have been increasing during the years 1961-1981 (Table 8).
The 1981 figures show that participation rates have reached 111.06
percent, 69 percent and 24 percent in the elementary, secondary and
tertiary level, respectively. Ironically the Philippines is still a nation of
on the average, 5th graders (Figure 2). This can be explained by the
high dropout rates, particularly in the depressed regions.
It may be concluded from the discussion that while the Philippine
school system had been quite successful in providing access to first
grade elementary education, it has failed to foster literacy and basic
education (initially defined as six years of schooling, now ten years of
schooling with the provision of free secondary education) among large
percentage of the population especially in the less developed
communities of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.
2. Literacy, Education and Economic Growth:
Development scholars have noted a positive link between levels of
literacy and economic growth in most countries. Anderson and
Bowman (1965: found that countries with less than 40 percent literacy
23
were among the least economically developed (less than $300 per
capita) while those with over 90 percent literacy were the richest (over
$500 per capita). In the Philippines, this relationships seems to be
negative as shown in Table 9.
Harbison and Myers in their study of 75 nations concluded that
educational development and economic development are positively
correlated. Thus they underscored the importance of education in
these words:
Not capital, nor income, nor material resources constitute the
ultimate bases for the wealth of nations. Capital and natural resources
are passive factors of production; human beings are the active agents,
who accumulate capital, exploit natural resources, build social,
economic and political organizations and carry forward national
development. Cleary, a country which is unable to develop the skills
and knowledge of its people and to utilize them effectively will be
unable to develop anything else (Harbison & Myers, 1964:3).
Using the Harbison & Myers’ indicators of human resource
development, the data in Table 10 shows that the Philippines appears
to deviate from the general observation that countries that have
attained high levels of human resource development are also likely to
have reached high levels of economic growth. It will be noted that on
the measures of human resource development, the Philippines falls
between Level III – Semi – Advanced Countries and Level IV –
Advanced Countries. But on the measures of economic development
such as GNP per capita, the Philippines lies between Level I –
Undeveloped Countries and Level II – Partially Developed Countries.
In 1975, the Development Academy of the Philippines noted that the
‘‘rate of investment in human capital has been faster than the rate of
investment in physical capital’’ (DAP, 1975:9). Based on the notion of
human capital, it would be reasonable to expect that the economic
conditions of the Filipinos would improve, yet the same study found
that
Poverty clearly worsened. In Greater Manila, the proportion
of families below the food threshold grew from 17 percent in
1965 to 25 percent in 1971, in rural areas, it grew from 39 to
48 percent. The number of persons below the food threshold
grew from about 11.6 million in 1965 to 16.6 million in 1971
(DAP, 1975: 11).
Increased investment in educational programs without improvement in
the quality of teachers, curricular content, use of resources, and
24
students’ attitudes does not always result in education. In the words of
R.P.; Dore:
Not all schooling is education. Much of it is mere
qualifications – earning…ritualistic, tedious, suffused with
anxiety and boredom, destructive; in short, anti-educational
(Dore, 16976: 1x)
3. Educational, Employment and Productivity
Education, especially formal schooling, is expected to make a person
more employable and productive. To what extent is it true in the
Philippines? The empirical evidence produced by research studies on
this matter in the Philippines indicate that the effects of education on
employment and productivity do not fully support the aforesaid
expectation. For example, Table 114 shows that the relationship
between rates of employment and years of schooling does not follow a
strictly linear and positive relationship. The highest rates of
unemployment occur among those with high school and some college
education. Those without schooling and with 4 years or more of college
education exhibit the lowest rates of unemployment. Similarly, the effect
of schooling on productivity seems to produce mixed results.
In a study of workers in the shoe industry in Metro Manila, Alicias (1981)
found that ten years of schooling tend to contribute P 0.51 per hour to a
worker’s productivity. On the other hand, one to three years of college
schooling or more than ten years of schooling or more than ten years of
schooling was noted to reduce the typical male worker’s productivity by P
1.02 per hour but contribute P 0.52 per hour to a typical female worker’s
productivity. Encarnacion (1977) studied income distribution in Manila,
Luzon, the Visayas, and the Mindanao focusing on such factor as
schooling, age, occupation, sex, and hours worked during the week as
possible explanation for income inequality. He found that years of
schooling is the strongest factor determining income distribution in each
region, except Visayas. In the Visayas, schooling is a close second to the
amount of time spent at work. Encarnacion (1977:10) concluded that ‘‘over
the long stretch, raising the general level of education would reduce
income differentials…thus the best single variable to work with seems to
be the amount of time spent at work’’. Miñoza, however, found that among
Filipino farmers, education and productivity and education is arguable. It
appears that education may be a necessary but not a sufficient condition
for employment and productivity.
4. Education, Social Mobility and Equity
25
Does the Philippine school system foster social mobility and equity?
Research studies on the academic performance of students in the
elementary grades in the NCEE including other college entrance
examinations such as UP College Admission Test (UPCAT) have
consistently shown that academic achievement is positively correlated
with the socio-economic background of students (SOUTELE, 1976; Tan,
1975; Manlapaz, 1976; Ibe, 1985, Cortes & Soegiarto, 1986). All these
studies points out that student who belong to well-off families, who reside
in relatively affluent and urban communities, and who attend high quality
schools tend to score high in academic achievement tests. A parallel
situation is observed on the tertiary level of formal education where 85
percent of the enrolments are in private colleges and universities which
offer widely varied resources and quality instruction. Sectarian private
institutions are generally of better quality, and are charging higher tuition
fees. On the other hand, proprietary and non-sectarian or profit-oriented
colleges/ universities charge lower tuition fees but are relatively poorer
quality. Accordingly, students of the lower socioeconomic classes go to
the latter schools. In effect, quality tertiary education becomes accessible
only on the rich. Even the University of the Philippines is accessible mainly
to the middle and upper classes because of its college admission policy
which is based on the student’s performance in the UPCAT.
Tan noted that “schooling more than age determines the incidence of
poverty…the incidence declines almost monotomically from 82 percent for
those with Grade I-III years of schooling to 40 percent for those with 4
years of high school, to 20 percent for those with four years of college.
The incidence further drops to 14 percent ad the heads of the families
achieve more than 4 years of college “(Tan in J. Encarnacion Jr.,et
al.,1976:232). However, it is important to stress in this regard that those
who remain in school succeed in reaching the higher grade levels are the
children of the upper classes in the society.
A study of school dropouts in the country revealed that pupils who drop
out of school are generally those whose parents have little schooling, on
the average 5.7 years of schooling for fathers and 5.2 years for mothers,
who belong to large families, earning very low-paying occupations (Dery,
1977). The poor who succeed in finishing high school are likely to be
channeled to vocational and crafts training for entry to semi-skilled, lower
level, low-paying occupations.
The studies cited here show that in spite of the tremendous growth and
expansion of the Philippine school system, it has not made much
difference in the economic and social advancement of the poor. The
dynamics of educational processing involving retention, promotion and
sorting for higher levels of schooling is obviously biased in favor of
students belonging to the upper socioeconomic classes and from urban
26
and affluent communities. The strong attraction of these communities to
better qualified teachers and school administrators tend to concentrate the
opportunities for quality education in these areas, leaving the rural and
economically-depressed communities with low quality schools. Thus our
school system is actually fostering quality education for the well-to-do and
mediocre education for the poor.
5. Education, Political Opportunity National Integration and National
Identity.
Education through the formal school system is expected to develop in
students a set of values, aspirations, personality characteristics and
motivations that are in harmony with the nation’s political system, and
which in turn should instill in the students a sense of national identity and
as certain degree or political competence. To what extend had Philippine
schooling met these expectations?
In her study of political opportunities and political welfare in the
Philippines, Jurado (1976) found that regardless of educational
attainment, the subjects of her study scored low on political mobility,
political information and political awareness. However, on a participation
scale of 1 to 8, the subjects obtained overall average score of 4.46 which
indicates a general willingness to participate, moderate schools of 3.2 on
political dissent and 3.15 on political efficacy. In another study, the general
voting participation was found to have increased over time, with 2.3
percent in 1909, 14.4 percent in 1946, 21.48 percent in 1957 and 25.44
percent in 1971. This consistent increase in voting participation was
attributed partly to the rise in literacy rates (Jurado & Lava, 1976).
A survey of Filipino perceptions of schooling (Cortes, 1981), revealed that
schools have been quite successful as instruments of political
socialization. Students, teachers, parents, white-collar and blue-collar
workers from central and non-central communities generally agreed that
among the ten most important things that they learned from school are
“appreciation of Philippine culture” and “loyalty and love of country”.
Doronilla (1983) also found that among the elementary students in a
school in Quezon City, the highest ranking orientation is “valuing special
qualities of the people.” However, the same study reported that among the
lowest ranking finding is corroborated by another study conducted in
Mindanao, which noted that pupils prefer to live in a foreign country
(Batara, 1983).
A study of the “brain drain” in the Philippines found that emigrants are
likely to exhibit a relatively weak “anchorage” in the country, meaning that
their psychological, social and economic ties in the homeland are few and
rather loose. Furthermore, the same study observed that the propensity to
27
emigrate is positively associated with the person’s negative valuations of
the social, economic and political conditions in the Philippines. As
interesting insight provided by this study is that those educated in public
schools tend to have a slightly stronger anchorage in the Philippines than
those who attended private schools (Cortes, 1970). Is private education
more alienating? This question needs further study.
6. Language and Learning
Some members of the 1986 Constitutional Convention averred that the
use of English as medium of instruction in Philippine schools has stifled
creative, analytical and abstract thinking, and encouraged rote learning
among Filipinos. The few research studies done by graduate students on
this subject provide some empirical support for this contention.
Specifically, studies on the effect of the language of instruction on pupil
learning show that Pilipino, compared to English, as a medium of
instruction, appears to produce more gains in pupil learning (Russel, 1967;
Villanueva-Logan, 1977; Esclabanan, Mogol, Santos, and Tuy, 1977).
Furthermore, pupils exhibit more enthusiasm and find learning easier
when Filipino is used as the language of instruction (PCSPE, Special area
Group for Curriculum, 1970; Cortes & Soegiarto, 1986).
A study of the UP Institute of science and Mathematics education (1987)
revealed that the level of comprehension in the English language of a
sample of elementary school teachers was equivalent to only grade VII by
UP norms. The present Bilingual policy of DECS requires that science and
math be taught in English. In this connection, the same study pointed out
that
…most of these science teachers do not have a
science degree. If the science teachers have not
mastered the very medium of instruction, English
language, and they are unfamiliar with the science
content, how can science education be improved?
(p.14).
These research studies do indicate that the continued use of English as
medium of instruction is partly the explanation for the pervasively low
levels of academic achievement among our students and the inability of
our schools to develop a strong sense of nationhood. Furthermore, the
use of English as medium of instruction in our schools may also be the
explanation for the following problems.
1. The lapse to illiteracy among dropouts since they do not have
much use of English in their-day-to-day activities.
28
2. Rote memory learning among those who have a poor command
of the English language.
3. Slow development of the national language, and
4. A process of schooling which is biased in favor of the upper and
the modern sectors of the Philippine society for whom
opportunities in the use of English abound both at home and in
the community.
A national language is admittedly a key factor in attaining national unity
and identity. Unfortunately the Republic of the Philippines has wavered
and remains irresolute its language policy. The national language has
always been pitted against the English language as official language and
language of instruction.
This paper is not arguing against the English language for there is no
doubt that English is the key to world understanding modern science and
technology.
But, does learning the English language require that it be used as an
official language of instruction ion Philippine schools?
Perspective and prospect for educational Reforms
It is clear from the foregoing discussion that education is a
necessary but not a sufficient condition for social transformation. Certainly,
the problems of education are manifestations and reflections of the
conditions that obtain in Philippine society. This paper is not meant to
erode our people’s faith in education as a means of attaining socioeconomic progress and transforming our country into a “just and humane
society” rather it is intended to heighten our awareness of the limits to
what our schools can do considering the social economic as well as
political structures and value systems within which our schools operate.
What then are the prospects for enhancing the contribution that schools
can make to bring about genuine social transformation in a democratic
capitalist Philippines?
First, our people are very much afflicted y the “diploma disease” or
the inordinate drive for educational qualifications earning against obtaining
an education. One way of curing ourselves of this disease is to demand of
our schools quality education and educated individuals with demonstrated
capabilities for self-development and creative participation in our
economic, political and cultural life. We must give importance to the
substance or to added value that a person can demonstrate as a result of
schooling, rather than the shibboleths of schooling such as the certificates
or diploma.
29
Second, we must recognize and develop the potential of nonformal
education for developing certain talents and abilities more expeditiously,
effectively and economically than the formal school system.
Third, the traditional response to accommodating the increasing
social demand for education by “linear expansion” should be replaced by a
strategy of innovation in the modes of delivering education, management
of educational resources and in the content of education. A proactive or
anticipatory orientation is needed if schools are to serve as effective
partners of national progress.
Fourth, tolerating unequal access to educational opportunities by
condoning mediocre education for the poor in the face of quality education
for the well-off must be stopped. The root causes of these inequalities,
among which are the uneven access to quality education is due to
geography, natural resource endowments and educational practices must
be addressed by policy. A concrete step in this direction is the
identification and development of Centers of Excellence in strategic places
throughout the country particularly in the pre-service and in-service
training of teachers and in other fields of specialization and professions. A
national Accrediting Agency may also be considered to maintain
standards, quality and prevent proliferation of tertiary level programs.
Similarly, elementary and secondary
schools
demonstrated
leadership qualities should be designated and sustained to serve as
laboratory schools and demonstration centers from which other schools in
the area can draw assistance for upgrading their capabilities.
Fifth, the formal education system must be restructured in
recognition of the existence and distinctive strengths of the formal and
nonformal education sub-systems. It may be worthwhile to consider en
educational structure where the formal school sub-system, serving as the
core of the country’s educational system, will leave the function of specific
gainful skills training to non-school agencies. The school system can then
concentrate on basic education for citizenship and functional literacy to
enable the individual to continue learning on his own. This means that the
formal school system must nurture and develop the questioning mind, the
scientific and/ or creative approach to problem solving and generating
knowledge. Moreover, the formal school system must be responsible for
education in professions and highly specialized skills derived form a body
of complex and abstract knowledge that need the mediating role of
specialist.
Sixth, with the implementation this year of a free secondary
education, a thorough revamp of the curriculum of secondary education is
needed to make it both terminal and college preparatory so as to provide
secondary school graduates the option to either proceed to college of join
the labor force.
Seventh, consistent with the Filipino’s believe that college
education is an economic and social investment only those who are likely
to benefit the most from a college education should be admitted to college,
30
with the government providing financial assistance to deserving but poor
students.
Eight, the hearth of education reform in the Philippines calls for a
bold policy that will minimize the dependence of the Philippine school
system on American and Western education. The first important step in
this direction is to shorten the transition from bilingualism, i.e., using
English and Pilipino as language of instruction to the use of Filipino as the
sole medium of instruction in our elementary and secondary schools with
the vernacular or regional language as auxiliary language of instruction.
This does not rule out the learning of English and other foreign languages
in Philippine schools. The need for instructional materials in the national
language must be met without further delay. Unless the first step in using
the school system as the instrument for the development and use of the
national language is taken now, Philippine education will continue to be
plagued with the same problems of poor quality, incompetent teachers,
inequality in educational opportunities, elitism, educational alienation and
failure to foster national unity and national identity.
The Challenge to the University of the Philippines
The University of the Philippines has the reputation of being the
premier university in the country. As such, Filipinos expect the U.P. to
provide leadership in educational reforms addressed to problems and
issues germane to the role expected of higher education in transforming
the Philippines into a “just and humane society.” It would be presumptuous
for this writer to chart and define the specific areas in which the University
of the Philippines may take the lead. However, these general questions
may be raised to trigger discussion on this subject:
1. How can the University of the Philippines operating within her
legitimate concerns of teaching, research and community extension
service and without necessarily endangering the University’s right to
academic freedom and autonomy.
a. design educational programs that will encourage and help
students to be more thoughtful and discerning of social
problems;
b. discover ways of stimulating and nurturing creativity in the
sciences, arts and professions;
c. create and3 provide opportunities to students and faculty to
make available their services to the community, especially to the
depressed areas;
d. minimize the dependence of our colleges and universities on
foreign-authored textbooks;
31
e. help raise the quality of teaching in all levels of the educational
system, particularly on the undergraduate and graduate levels;
f. prepare individuals to perform more ably and integrity in public
life;
g. develop in students and faculty members the desire and
appreciation for authentic education in lieu of working for grades
and earning qualifications or diplomas; and
h. improve our moral fiber?
2. What immediate steps may the University of the Philippines take
to implement the educational mandate of the 1987 Constitution
that all schools “shall inculcate patriotism and nationalism, foster
love of humanity, respect for human rights, appreciation of the
role of national heroes in the historical development of the
country, teach the right s and duties of citizenship, strengthen
ethical and spiritual values, develop moral character and
personal discipline, encourage critical
thinking, broaden
scientific and technological knowledge, and promote vocational
efficiency?”
THE MISEDUCATION OF THE FILIPINO
Education is a vital weapon of a people striving fro economic emancipation,
political independence, and cultural renascence. We are such a people,
Philippine education; therefore, must produce Filipinos who are aware of their
country’s problems, who understand the basic solution to these problems, and
who have courage enough to work and sacrifice for their country’s salvation.
Nationalism in Education
In recent years, in various sectors of our society, there have been nationalist
stinings which are crystallized and articulated by the late Claro M. Recto. There
were jealous demands for the recognition of Philippine sovereignty on the bases
question. There were appeals for the correction of the iniquitous economic
relations between the Philippines and the united Sates. For a time, Filipino
businessmen and industrialists rallied around the banner of the Filipino First
policy, and various scholars and economists proposed economic emancipation
as an immediate goal for our nation. In the filed of art, there have been signs of a
new appreciation for our own culture. Indeed, there has been much nationalist
activity in many areas of endeavor, but we have yet to hear of a well organized
campaign on the part of our educational leaders for nationalism in education.
32
Although most of our educators are engaged in a lively debate on
techniques and tools for improved instruction, not one major educational leader
has come out for a truly nationalist education. Of course, some pedagogical
experts have written on some aspects of nationalism in education. However, no
comprehensive educational program has been advanced as a corollary to the
programs for political and economic emancipation. This is a tragic situation
because of our basic ills and is apathetic to our national welfare.
Some of our economic and political leaders have gained a new perception
of our relations with the United States as a result of their second look at
Philippine American relations since the turn of the century. The reaction which
has emerged as economic and political nationalism is an attempt on their part to
revise the iniquities of the past and to complete the movement stated by our
revolutionary leaders in 1896. The majority of our educational leaders, however,
still continue to trace then direct lineal descend to the first soldier teachers of the
American invasion army. They seem oblivious of the fact that the educational
system and the philosophy of which they are the proud inheritors were valid only
within the framework of American colonialism. The educational system
introduced by the Americans had to correspond and was designed to correspond
to the economic and political of American conquest.
Capturing Minds
The most effective means of subjugating a people is to capture their minds.
Military victory does not necessarily signify conquest. As long as feelings of
resistance remain in the hearts of the vanquished, no conqueror is secure. This
is best illustrated by the occupation of the Philippines by the Japanese militarists
during the second Word War. Despite the terroristic regime imposed by the
Japanese warlords, the Filipinos were never conquered. Hatred for the Japanese
was endangered by the oppressive techniques which in turn were intensified by
the stubborn resistance of the Filipino people. Japanese propagandists and
psychological warfare experts, however, saw the necessity of winning the minds
of the people. Had the Japanese stayed a little longer, Filipino children who were
being schooled under the auspices of the new dispensation would have grown
into strong pillars of the Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Their minds
would have been conditioned to suit the policies of the Japanese imperialists.
The molding of men’s minds is the best means of conquest. Education,
therefore, serves as a weapon in wars of colonial conquest. This singular fact
well appreciated by the American military commander in the Philippines during
the Filipino-American War. According to the census of 1903:
General Otis urged and furthered reopening of schools, himself selecting and ordering
the text books. Many officers, among them chaplains, were detailed as superintendents of
schools, and many enlisted men, as teachers
The American military authorities had a job to do. They had to employ all means
of pacify a people whose hopes for independence were being frustrated by the
presence of another conqueror. The primary reason for the rapid introduction, on
33
a large scale, of the American public school system in the Philippines was the
conviction of the military leaders that no measure could so quickly promote the
pacification of the islands as education. General, Arthur Mc Arthur, in
recommending a large appropriation fro school purposes, said:
This appropriation is recommended primarily and exclusively as an adjunct to military
operations calculated to pacify the people and to procure and expedite the restoration of
tranquility throughout the archipelago.
Beginnings of Colonial Education
Thus, from its inception, the educational system of the Philippines was a means
of pacifying a people who were depending their newly-won freedom from an
invader who had posed as an ally. The education of the Filipino under American
sovereignty was an instrument of colonial policy. The Filipino had to be educated
as a good colonial. Young minds had to be shaped to conform to American
ideas. Indigenous Filipino ideas were slowly eroded in order to remove the last
vestiges of resistance. Education served to attract the people tyo the new
masters and at the same time to dilute their nationalism which had just
succeeded in overthrowing a foreign power. The introduction of the American
educational system was a subtle means of defeating a triumphant nationalism.
As Charles Burke Eliott said in his book, the Philippines:
To most Americans it seemed absurd to propose that any other language than English
should be used in schools over which their flag floated. But in the schools of India and other
British dependencies and colonies and, generally, in all colonies. It was and still is customary to
use the vernacular in th elementary schools, and the immediate adoption of English in the
Philippine schools subjected America to the charge of forcing the language of the conquerors
upon a defenseless people.
Of course such a system of education as the Americans contemplated could be
successful only under the direction of American teachers, as the Filipino teachers who had been
trained in Spanish methods were ignorant of the English language…
Arrangements were promptly made for enlisting a small army of teachers in the United
States. At first they came in companies, but soon in battalions. The transport Thomas was fitted
for their accommodation and in July, 1901, it sailed from San Francisco with six hundred teachers
– a second army of occupation - surely the most remarkable cargo ever carried to an Oriental
colony.
The American Vice Governor
The importance of Education as a colonial tool was never under estimated by the
Americans. This may be clearly seen in the provision of the Jones Act which
granted the Filipinos more autonomy. Although the government services were
Filipinized, although the Filipinos were being prepared for self-government, the
department of education was never entrusted to any Filipino. Americans always
headed this department. This was ass2ured by Article 23 of the Jones Act which
provided:
That there shall be appointed by the President, by and which the advice
and consent of the State of the United States, a vice-governor of the Philippine
34
Islands, who shall have all the powers of the governor-general in the case of a
vacancy or temporary removal, resignation or disability of the Governor-General,
or in case of his temporary absence; and the said vice governor shall be the
head of the executive department known as the department of Public Instruction,
which shall include the bureau of education and the bureau of health, and may
be assigned such other executive duties as the governor-General may designate.
Up to 1935, therefore, the head of this department was an American. An when a
Filipino took over under the Commonwealth, a new generation of “FilipinoAmericans” had already been produced. There was no longer any need for
American overseers in this field because a captive generation had already come
of age, thinking and acting like little Americans.
This does not mean, however, that nothing that was taught was of any value. We
become literate in English to a certain extent. We were able to produce more
men and women who could read and write. We became more conversant with
the outside world, especially the American world. A more widespread education
such as the Americans desisted would have been a real blessing had their
educational program not been the handmaiden of their colonial policy.
Unfortunately for us, the success of education as a colonial weapon was
complete and permanent. In exchange for a smattering of English, we yielded our
souls. The stories of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln made us forget
our own nationalism. The American view of our history turned our heroes into
brigands in our own eyes, distorted our vision of our future. The surrender of the
Katipuneros was nothing. compared to the final surrender , this leveling down of
our last defenses ,Dr. Chester Hunt characterizes this surrender well in these
words:
The Programme of cultural assimilation combined with a fairly rapid yielding of control
resulted in the fairly general acceptance of American Culture as the goal of Filipino society with
the corollary that individual Americans were given a status of respect.
This, is a nutshell, was (and to a great extend still is) the happy result of early
educational policy because, within the framework of American colonialism,
whenever there was a conflict between American and Filipino goals and
interests, the schools guided us toward action and thought which could forward
American interests.
Goals of American Education
The educational system was not established by the Americans for the sole
purpose of saving the Filipinos from illiteracy and ignorance. Given the economic
and political objectives of American occupation, education had to be consistent
with these broad purposes of American colonial policy. The Filipinos had to be
trained as citizens of an American colony. The Benevolent Assimilation
Proclamation of President McKinley on December 21, 1898, betrays the intention
of the colonizers. Judge Blount in his book, The American Occupation of the
Philippines, properly comments:
35
Clearly from the Filipino point of view, the United States was now determined: to spare
them from the dangers of premature independence,” using such force as might be necessary for
the accomplishment of their pious purpose.
Despite the noble aims announced by the American authorities that the
Philippines was theirs to protect and to guide, the fact still remained that the
Filipino people were a conquered nation whose national life had to be woven into
the pattern of American dominace. Philippine education was shaped by the
overriding objective of preserving and expanding American control. To achieve
this, all separatist tendencies as the pervasive factor in the grand design of
conquering a people, the pattern of education, consciously or unconsciously,
fostered and established certain attitudes ion the part of the governed. These
attitudes conformed to the purpose of American occupation.
An Uprooted Race
The first and perhaps the master stroke in the plan to use education as an
instrument of colonial policy was the decision to use English as the medium of
instruction. English became the wedge that separated the Filipinos from their
past and later was to separate educated Filipinos from the masses of their
countrymen. English introduced the Filipinos to a strange, new world. With
American textbooks, Filipinos started learning not only a new language but also a
new way of life, alien to their traditions and yet a caricature of their model. This
was the beginning of their education. AT the same time, it was the beginning of
their education. At the same time, it was the beginning of their miseducation, for
they learned no longer as Filipinos but as colonials. They had to be disoriented
from their nationalist goals because they had to become good colonials. The
ideal colonial was the carbon copy of his conqueror, the conformist follower of
the new dispensation. He had to forget his past and unlearn the nationalist
virtues in order to live peacefully, if not comfortably, under the colonial order. The
new Filipino generation learned of the lives of American heroes, sang American
songs, and dreamt of snow and Santa Claus. Nationalist resistance leaders like
Macario Sakay were regarded as brigands and outlaws. The lives of Philippines
heroes were taught but their nationalist teachings were glossed over. Spain was
the villain, America was the savior. To this day, our histories still glossed over the
atrocities committed by American occupation troops such as the water cure and
the reconcentration camps. Truly, a genuinely Filipino education could have been
devised within the new framework, for to draw from the well springs of all Filipino
ethos would only have led to a distinct Philippine identity with interest at variance
with that of the ruling power.
Thus, the Filipino past which had already been quite obliterated by these
centuries of Spanish tyranny did not enjoy a revival under American colonialism.
On the contrary, the history of your ancestors was taken up as if they were
strange and foreign peoples who had settled on these shores, with whom we had
the most tentious of lies. We read about them as if we were tourists in a foreign
land.
36
Economic Attitudes
Control of the economic life of colony is basic to colonial control. Some imperial
nations do it harsh, but the United States could be cited for the subltery and
uniqueness of its approach. Foe example, free trade was offered as generous
gifts of American altruism. Concomitantly, the educational policy had to support
this view and to soften the effects of the slowly tightening noose around the
necks of the Filipinos. The economic motivations of the Americans in coming to
the Philippines were not at all admitted to the Filipinos. As a matter of fact, from
the first school days under the soldier teachers to the present, Philippine history
books have portrayed America as a benevolent nation who came here only to
save us from Spain and to spread amongst us the boons of liberty and
democracy. The almost complete lack of understanding at present of those
economic motivations and of the presence of American interests in the
Philippines are the most eloquent testimony of the success of the education for
colonials which we have undergone,. What economic attitudes were fostered by
Americans education?
It is interesting to note that during the times that the school attempts t
indicate an appreciation for things Philippine, the picture that is presented for the
child’s admiration is an idealized picture of a rural Philippines, as pretty and as
unreal was an Amorsolo painting with its carabao, its smiling, healthy farmer, the
winsome barrio has in the bright clean patadyong, and the sweet little nipa hut.
That is the portrait of the Filipino that our education leaves in the minds of the
young and it hurts the country in two ways.
First, it strengthens the belief (and we see this is adults) that the
Philippines is essentially meant to be an agricultural country and we cannot and
should not change that. The result is an apathy toward industrialization. It is an
idea they have not met in school. There is further, a fear, born out of that early
stereotype of this country as an agricultural heaven, that industrialization is not
good for us, that our national environment is not suited for an industrial economy,
and that it will only brings social evils which will destroy the idyllic farm life.
Second, this idealized picture of farm life overlooks the poverty, the
disease the cultural vacuum, the sheer boredom, the superstition and ignorance
of backward farm communities. Those who pursue higher education think of the
farms as quaint places, good for an occasional vacation. Their life is rooted in the
big towns and cities and there is no interest in revamping ritual life because there
is no understanding of its economic problems. Interest is limited to artesian wells
and handicraft projects. Present efforts to uplift conditions of the rural masses
merely attack the peripheral problems without admitting the urgent need for basic
agrarian reform.
With American education, the Filipinos were not only learning a new
language, they were not only forgetting their own language; they were starting to
become a new type of American. American ways were slowly being adopted. Our
consumption habits were molded by the influx of cheap American goods hat
came in duty free. The agricultural economy was extolled because this
37
conformed with the colonial economy that was being fostered. Our book pictured
the western nations as peopled by superior beings because they were capable of
manufacturing things that we never thought we were capable of producing. We
were pleased that our raw material exports could pay for the American
consumption goods that we had to import. Now we are used to these types of
goods, and it is a habit we find hard to break, to the detriment of our own
economy. We never thought that we, too, could industrialize because in school
we were taught that we were primarily an agricultural country by geographical
location and by the inmate potentiality of our people. We were one with our
fellow. Asians in believing that we were not cut out for an industrialized economy.
That is why before the war, we looked down upon goods made in Japan despite
the fact that Japan was already producing commodities on par with the West. We
could never believe that Japan, an Asian country, could attain the industrial
development of the United States, Germany or England. And yet, it was “made in
Japan” airplanes, battleships, and armaments that dislodged the Americans and
the British from their positions of dominance during the Second World War. This
is the same attitude that has put us out of step with our Asian neighbors who
already realize that colonialism has to be extirpated from their lives if they are to
be free, prosperous, and happy.
Transplantation of Political Institutions
American education in effect transplanted American political institutions
and ideas into the Philippines. Senator Recto, in his last major address at the
University of the Philippines, explained the treason for this. Speaking of political
parties, Recto said:
It is to be deplored that our major political parties were born and nurtured before we have
attained the status of free democracy. The result was that they have come to be caricatures of
their foreign model with its known characteristics – patronage, division of spoils, political bossism,
partisan treatment of vital national issues. I say caricatures because of their chronic
shortsightedness respecting those ultimate objectives the attainment of which was essential to a
true and lasting national independence. All throughout the period of American colonization, they
allowed themselves to become more and more the tools of colonial rule and less and less the
interpreters of the people’s will and ideas. Through their complacency, the new colonizer was
able to fashion, in exchange for sufferance of oratorical plaints for independence, and for
patronage, rank, and sinecure, a regime of his own choosing, for his own aims, and in his own
self interest.
The American were confronted with the dilemma of transplanting heir
political institutions and yet luring the Filipinos into a state of captivity. It was
understandable for American authorities to think that democracy can only mean
the American type for democracy, and thus they foisted on the Filipinos the
institutions that were valid for their own people. Indigenous institutions which
could have led to the evolution of native democratic ideas and structures were
disregard. No wonder we, too, look with hostility upon countries who try to
develop their own political institutions according to the needs of their people
without being bound by Western political procedures. We have been made to
38
believe in certain political doctrines as absolute and the same for all peoples. An
example of this is the belief in freedom of the press. Here, the consensus is that
we cannot Filipinize the press because it would be depriving foreigners of the
exercise of freedom of the press. This may be valid for strong countries like the
United States where there is no threat of foreign domination, but certainly, this is
dangerous for an emergent nation like the Philippines where foreign control has
yet to be weakened.
Re-examination demanded
The new demands for economic emancipation and the assertions of our
political sovereignty leave out educators no other choice but to re-examine their
philosophy, their values and their general approach to the making of the Filipino
who will institute, support, and preserve nationalist aims, to persist in maintaining
a system which was born under the exigencies of colonial rule, ti be timid in the
face of traditional opposition, would only result in the perpetuation of an
educational system which lags behind the urgent economic and political changes
that the nation is experiencing. What then are the nationalist tasks for Philippine
education?
Education must be seen not as an acquisition of information but as the
making of man so that he may function most effectively and usefully within his
own society. Therefore, education can not divorced from the society of a definite
country at a definite time. It is a fallacy to think that education goals should be the
same everywhere and that therefore what goes into the making of a welleducated American is the same as what should go into the making of the welleducated Filipino. This would be true only if the two societies were at the same
political, cultural and economic level and had the same political, cultural, and
economic goals.
But what has happened in this country? Not only do we imitate Western
Education, we have patterned our education after the most technologically
advanced Western nation. He gap between the two societies is very large. In
fact, they are two entirely different societies with different goals.
Adoption of Western Values
Economically, the U.S. is an industrial nation. It is a fully developed nation,
economically speaking. Our country has a colonial economy with a tiny industrial
base in other words, we are backward and underdeveloped. Politically, the U.S.
is not only master of its own house; its control and influence extend to many
other countries all over the world. The Philippine has only lately emerged from
formal colonial status and it still must complete its political economic
independence.
Culturally, the U.S. has a vigorous and distinctively American culture. It is
a nation whose cultural institutions have developed freely, indigenously, without
control on direction from foreign sources, whose ties to its cultural past are clean
39
and proudly celebrated because no foreign power has imposed upon its people a
wholesale inferiority complex, because no foreign culture had been
superimposed upon it destroying, distorting its own past and alienating the
people from their own cultural heritage.
What are the characteristics of American education today which spring
form its economic, political, and cultural status? What should be the
characteristics of our own education as dictated by our own economic, political
and cultural conditions? To contrast both is to realize how inimical to our best
interest and progress is out adoption of some of the basic characteristics and
values of American education.
By virtue of its world leadership and its economic interest in many parts of
the worlds, the United States has an internationalist orientation based securely
on a well-grounded, long held nationalistic viewpoint. U.S education has no
urgent need to stress the development of American nationalism in its young
people. Economically, politically and culturally, the U.S. is master of its own
house. American, education, therefore, understandably lays little emphasis on
the kind of nationalism we Filipinos need. Instead, it stresses internationalism
and underplays nationalism. This sentiment is noble and good but when it is
inculcate in the people who have either forgotten nationalism or never imbibed it,
it can cause untold harm. The emphasis on world brotherhood, on friendship for
other nations, without the firm foundation of nationalism which would give our
people the feeling of pride in our own products and vigilance over our natural
resources, has had very harmful results. Chief among these is the transformation
of our national virtue of hospitality into a stupid vice which hurts us and makes us
willing to dupes of predatory foreigners.
Un Filipino Filipinos
Thus, we complacently allow aliens to gain control of our economy. WE
are even proud of those who a mass wealth in our country, publishing laudatory
articles about their financial success. We have to hear foreigners call our country
a paradise on earth, and we never stop to think that it is paradise only for them
but not for millions of our countrymen. When some of our more intellectually
emancipated countrymen spearhead moves for nationalism, for nationalism of
this or that endeavor, do the majority of Filipinos support such moves? No, there
is apathy because there is no nationalism in our hearts which will spur us to
protect and help our own countrymen first. Worse, some Filipinos will even worry
about the sensibilities of foreigners lest they think ill of us fir supposedly
discriminating against them. And worst of all, many Filipinos will even opposed
nationalistic legislation either because they have become the willing servants of
foreign interests or because, in their distorted view, we Filipinos cannot progress
without the help of foreign entrepreneurs.
In this part of the world, we are well high unique in our generally nonnationalistic outlook. What is the source of this shameful characteristic of ours?
One important source is surely the schools. There is little emphasis on
40
nationalism. Patriotism has been taught us, yes, but in general terms of love of
country, respect for the flag, appreciation of the beauty of our countryside, and
other similarly innocuous manifestations of our nationality.
The pathetic result of this failure of Philippine education is a citizenry
amazingly naïve and trusting I its relations with foreigners, devoid of the capacity
to feel indignation even in the face of insults to the nation, ready to acquiesce
and even to help aliens in the despoliation of our natural wealth. Why re the great
majority of our people so complaisant about alien economic control? Much of the
blame must be laid at the door of colonial education. Colonial education has not
provided us with a realistic attitude toward other nations, especially Spain and
the United States. The emphasis In our study of history has been on the great
gfits that our conquerors have bestowed upon us . A mark of benevolence was
used to hide the cruelties and deceit of early American occupation. The noble
sentiments expressed by McKinley were emphasized rather than the ulterior
motives of conquest. The myth of friendship and special relations is even now
continually invoked to camouflage the continuing iniquities in our relationship.
Nurtured with this kind of education, the Filipino mind has come to regard
centuries of colonial status as a grace from above rather than as a scourge. Is it
any wonder then that having regained our independence we have forgotten how
to defend it? Is it any wonder that when leaders like Claro M. Recto try to teach
us how to be free, the great majority of the people find it difficult to grasp those
nationalistic principles that are the staple food of other Asian minds? The
American architect of our colonial education really labored shrewdly and well.
The Language Problem
The most vital problem that has plagued Philippine education has been
the question of language. Today, experiments are still going on to find out
whether it would be more effective to use the native language. This is indeed
ridiculous since an individual cannot be more at home in any other language than
his own. In every sovereign country, the use of its own language in education is
so natural no one thinks it could be otherwise. But here, so great has been our
disorientation caused by our colonial education that the use of our own language
is a controversial issue, with more Filipinos against than in favor! Again, as in the
economic field Filipinos believe they cannot survive without America, so in
education we believe no education can be true education unless it is based on
proficiency in English.
Rizal already foresaw the tragic effects of a colonial education when,
speaking through Simoun, he said:
You ask for equal rights, the hIspanizations of your customs, and you don’t see that
what you are begging for is suicide, the destruction of your nationality, and annihilation of your
fatherlands, the consecration of tyranny,! What will you be in the future? A people without
character, a nation without liberty - everything you have will be borrowed, even your very
defects!...What are you going to do with Castilian, the few of you who will speak it? Kill off your
own originality, subordinate your thoughts to other brains, and instead of freeing yourselves,
make yourselves slave indeed! Nine tenths of those of you who pretend to be enlightened are
renegades to your country! He among you who talks that language neglects his own in such a
41
way that he neither writes it nor understand it, and how many have I seen who pretended not to
know a single word of it!
It is indeed unfortunate the teaching in the native language is given up to
second grade only, and the question of whether beyond this it would be English
of Filipino is still unsettled. Many of our educational experts have written on the
language problem, but there is an apparent timidity o n the part of these experts
to come out openly for the urgent need of discarding the foreign language as the
medium of instruction in spite of remarkable results shown by the use of native
language. Yet, the deleterious effects of using English as the medium of
instruction are many and serious. What Rizal said about Spanish has been
proven to be equally true for English.
Barrier to Democracy
Under the system maintained by the Spain in the Philippines, educational
opportunities were so limited that learning became the possession of a chosen
few. This enlightened groups was called ilustrados. They constituted the elite.
Most of them came from the wealthy class because this was the only class that
could afford to send its sons abroad to pursue higher learning. Learning,
therefore, became a badge of privilege. There was a wide gap between the
ilustrados and the masses. Of course many ilustrados led the propaganda
movement, but they were mostly reformers who wanted reforms within the
framework of Spanish colonialism. In their way, they were also captives of
Spanish. Many of them were the first to capitulate to the Americans, and the first
leaders of . Later there were supplanted by the products of American education.
the Filipinos during the early years of the American regime came from this class.
Later they were supplanted by the products of American education.
One of the ostensible reasons for imposing English as a medium of
instruction was the fact that English was the language of democracy that through
this tongue the Filipinos would imbibe the American way of life which makes no
distinction between rich and poor and which gives everyone equal opportunities.
Under this thesis, the existence of an ilustrado class would not long endure
because all Filipinos would be enlightened and educated. There would be no
privileged class. In the long run, however, English perpetuated the existence of
the ilustrados – Americanized ilustrados who, like their hispanized counterparts,
were strong supporters of the way of life of the new motherland.
Now we have a small group of men who can articulate their thoughts in
English, a wider group who can read and speak in fairly comprehensible English
and a great mass that hardly express itself in this language. All of these groups
are hardly articulate in their native tongues because of the neglect of our native
dialects, if not the deliberate attempts to prevent their growth.
The result is a leadership that fails to understand the needs of the
masses because it is leadership that can communicate with the masses only in
the general and vague terms. This is one reason why political leadership remains
in a vacuum. This is the reason why issues are never fully discussed. This is the
reason why orators with the best inflections, demagogues who rant and rave, are
42
th eons that flourish in the political arena. English has created a barrier between
the monopolists of power and the people; English has become a status symbo9l,
while the native tongues are looked down upon. English has given rise to a
bifurcated society of fairly educated men and the masses who are easily swayed
by them. A clear evidence of the failure of English education is the fact that
politicians address the masses in their dialects. Lacking mystery of the dialect,
the politicians merely deal in generalities.
Because of their lack of command of English, the masses have gotten
used to only half understanding what is said to them in English. They appreciate
the sounds without knowing the sense. This is a barrier to democracy. People
don’t even think it is their duty to know, or that they are capable of understanding
national problems. Because of the language barrier, therefore, they are content
to leave everything to their leaders. This is one of the root causes of their apathy,
then regionalism or parochialism. Thus, English which was supposedly
envisioned as the language of democracy is in our country a barrier to the full
flowering of democracy.
In 1924 the eminent scholar, Najib Saleeby, wrote on the language of
education in the Philippines. He deplored the attempt to impose English as the
medium of instruction. Salleby, who was an expert on the Malayo-Polynesian
languages , pointed out that Tagalog, VIsayan, Ilokano, and other Philippine
dialects belong to the same linguistic tree. He said:
The relation the Tagalog helds to the Bisaya or to the Sulu is very
much like or closer than that of the Spanish to the Italian. An educated Tagalog
from the Batangas, and an educated Bisayan from Cebu can learn to
understand each other in a short space of time and without much effort. A
Cebu student living in Manila can acquire practical use and good
understanding of Tagalog in less than three months. The relation between
Tagalog nd Malay is very much the same as that of Spanish and French.
This was said 42 years ago when Tagalog movies, periodicals, radio programs
had not yet attained the popularity that they today all over the country.
Saleby further states:
Empirically neither the Spanish nor the English could be a suitable
medium for public instruction in the Philippine Islands. T does not seem possible
that either of them can become the common or national language of the
Archipelago. Three histories of Spanish rules and education failed to check use
of the vernacular. A very small minority of Filipinos could speak Spanish in 1898,
but the great mass of the people could neither use nor understand it. Twenty five
years of intensive English education has produced no radical change. More
people at present speak English than Spanish, but the great majority hold on to
the local dialect. The Spanish policy might be partially justified on colonial and
financial grounds, but the American policy cannot be so defended. It should
receive popular free choice, or give proof of its practicability but showing actual
and satisfactory results. The people have as yet had no occasion to declare their
free will, and the present policy must be judged on its own merits and on
conclusive evidence…But teaching English broadcast and enforcing its official
use is one thing, and its adoption as the basis of education and as the sole
medium of public instruction is a completely different matter. This point cannot be
43
fully grasped or comprehended without special attention and experience in
colonial education and administration. Such policy is exalted and ambitious to an
extreme degree. It aims at something unknown before in human affairs. It is
attempting to do what ancient Persia, Rome, Alexander the Great and Napoleon
failed to accomplish. It aims at nothing less than the obliteration of the tribal
differences of the Filipinos, the substitution of English for the vernacular dialects
as a home tongue, and making English the national, common language of the
Archipelago.
This is more true today. Very few college students can speak except in mixed
English and the dialect. Our Congress has compounded their confusion by a
completely unwarranted imposition of 24 units of Spanish.
Impediments to Thought
A foreign language is an impediment to instruction. Instead of learning
directly through the native tongue, a child has first to master a foreign tongue,
memorize its vocabulary, get accustomed to its sounds, intonations, accents, just
to discard the language later when he is out of school. This does not mean that
foreign languages should not be taught. Foreign languages should be taught and
can be taught more easily after one has mastered his own tongue.
Even if the Americans were motivated by the sineeje desire of unifying the
country through the means of a common tongue; the abject results of instruction
in English through the six decades of American education should have awakened
our educators to the fact that the learning process has been disrupted by the
imposition of a foreign language. From 1935, when the Institute of National
Language was organized, very feeble attempts have been made to abandon the
use of English as a medium of instruction. Our educators seem constantly to
avoid the subject of language, in spite of the clear evidence of rampant ignorance
among the products of the present educational system. This has resulted in the
denial of education to a vast number of children who after the primary grades no
longer continue schooling. In spite of the fact that the national language today is
understood all over the country, no one is brave enough to advocate its use as
the medium of instruction. There is the constant argument that new expenditures,
new efforts in the publication of new textbooks will be required. There are
arguments about the dearth of materials in the national language, but these are
feeble arguments that merely disguise the basic opposition of our educational
leaders to the use of what is native. Thus the products of the Philippine
educational system, barring very few exceptions, are Filipinos who do not have a
mastery of English because it is foreign, and who do not have a mastery of their
native tongue because of the deliberate neglect of those responsible for the
education of the citizens of the nation.
A foreign tongue as a medium of instruction constitutes an impediment to
learning and to thinking because a student first has to master new sounds, new
inflections, and new sentence constructions. His innermost thoughts find difficulty
of expression, and lack of expression in turn prevents the further development of
thought. Thus we find in our society a deplorable lack of serious thinking among
great sections of the population. We half understand books and periodicals
44
written in English. We find it an ordeal to communicate with each other through a
foreign-medium, and yet we have so neglected our native language that we find
ourselves at a loss in expressing ourselves in this language.
Language is a tool of the thinking process. Through language, thought
develops, and the development of thought leads to the further development `of
language. But when a language becomes a barrier to thought, the thinking
process is impeded or retarded and we have the resultant cultural stagnation.
Creative thinking, analytical thinking, abstract thinking are not fostered because
the foreign language makes the student prone to memorization. Because of the
mechanical process of learning, he is able to get only a general idea but not a
deeper understanding. So, the tendency of students is to study in order to be
able to answer correctly and to pass the examinations and thereby earn the
required credits. Independent thinking is smothered because the language of
learning ceases to be the language of communication outside the classroom. A
student is mainly concerned with the acquisition of information. He is seldom able
to utilize this information for deepening his understanding of his society’s
problem.
Our Institute of National language is practically neglected. It should be one
of the main pillars of An independent country. Our educators are wary about
proposing the immediate adoption of the national language as the medium of
instruction because of what they consider as opposition of other language
groups. This is indicative of our colonial mentality. Our educators do not see any
opposition to the use of foreign language but fear opposition to the use of
national language just because it is based on one of the main dialects. The fact
that one can be understood in any part of the Philippines through the national
language, the fact that periodicals in the national language and local movies
have a mass following all over the islands, shows that, given the right support,
the national language would take its proper place.
Language is the main problem, therefore. Experience has shown that
children who are taught in their native tongue learn more easily and better than
those taught in English. Records of the bureau of Public Schools will support this.
But mere teaching in the national language is not enough. There are other areas
that demand immediate attention.
Philippine history must be rewritten from the point of view of the Filipino.
Our economic problems must be presented in the light of nationalism and
independence. These are only some of the problems that confront a nationalist
approach to education. Government leadership and supervision are essential.
Our educators need the support of legislators in this regard. In this connection,
private schools must also be strictly supervised.
The Private Sector
Before the Second World War, product of the Philippine public school
system looked down on their counterparts in the private schools. It is generally
accepted that graduates of the public schools at that time were superior to the
products of the private institutions in point of learning. There were exclusive
45
private institutions but these were reserved for the well-to-do. Theses schools did
not necessarily reflect superiority of instruction. But they reflected superiority of
social status.
Among students of the public schools, there was still some manifestation
of concern for national problems. Vestiges of the nationalistic tradition of our
revolution remained in the consciousness of those parents who had been caught
in the mainstream of the rebellion, and these were passed on to the young. On
the other hand, apathy to national problems was marked among the more
affluent private school students whose families had already accepted American
rule.
Today, public schools are looked down upon. Only the poor send their
children to these schools. Those who can afford it, or those who have social
pretensions, send their children to private institutions. The result has been a
boom in private education, a boom that unfortunately has seen the proliferation of
diploma mills. Two concomitant tendencies went with this trend. First was the
commercialization of education. A lowering of standards resulted because of the
inadequate facilities of the public schools and the commercialization in the
private sector. It is a well known fact that classes in many private schools are
packed and teachers are overloaded in order to maximize profits. Second, some
private schools which are owned and operated by foreigners whose social
science courses are handled by aliens flourished. While foreigners may not be
anti-Filipino, they definitely cannot be nationalistic in orientation. They think as
foreigners and as private interests. Thus the proliferation of private schools and
the simultaneous deterioration of public schools have resulted not only in lower
standards but also in a definitely un-Filipino education.
Some years ago, there was a move to grant curricular freedom to certain
qualified private institutions as well as wider leeway of self-regulation. This was a
retrograde step. It is true that this move was in answer to charges that state
supervision would enhance regimentation. But in a country that is just awakening
to nationalist endeavors, it is the duty of a nationalist administration to see to it
that the molding of minds is safely channeled along nationalist lines. The
autonomy of private institutions may be used to subvert nationalist sentiments
are not yet Filipinized. Autonomy of private institutions would only dilute
sentiments either by foreign subversion or by commercialization.
Other Educational Media
While basic defects in the educational system have been responsible for
the lack of nationalist ideals, mass media and cultural facilities negate whatever
gains are made in some sectors of the educational fields. The almost unilateral
source of news, films, and other cultural materials tends to distort our
perspective. American films and comics, American press services, fellowships in
America, have all contributed to the almost total Americanization of our attitudes.
A distinct Filipino culture cannot prevail if an avalanche of western cultural
materials suffocates our relatively puny efforts in this direction.
46
Needed: Filipinos
The education of the Filipino must be a Filipino education. It must be
based on the needs of the nation and the goals of the nation. The object is not
merely to produce men and women who can read and write or who can add and
subtract. The primary object is to produce citizenry that appreciates and is
conscious of its nationhood and has national goals for the betterment of the
community and not an anarchic mass of people who know how to take care of
themselves only. Our students heart of Rizal and Bonifacio but are their teaching
related to our present problems or do they merely learn of anecdotes and
incidents that prove interesting o the child’s imagination?
We have learn to use American criteria for our problems and we look at
our prehistory and our past with the eyes of a visitor. Much information us
learned but attitudes are not developed. A proper regard for things Philippine, a
patriotic concern over the national fate—theses are not all imbedded in the
consciousness of students. Children and adolescents go to school to get a
certificate or diploma. They try to learn facts but the patriotic attitude is not
acquired because of too much emphasis on forms.
What should be the basic objective of education in the Philippines? It is
merely to produce men and women who can read and write? If this is the only
purpose, then education is directionless. Education should first of all assure
national survival. No amount of economic and political policy can be successful if
the education program does not imbue prospective citizens with the proper
attitudes that will ensure the implementation of these goals and policies.
Philippine educational policies should be geared to the making of Filipinos.
These policies should se to it that schools produce man and women with minds
and attitudes that are attuned to the needs of the country.
Under previous colonial regimes, education saw to it that the Filipino mind
was subservient to that of the master. The foreign overlords were esteemed. We
were not taught to view them objectively, seeing their virtues as well as their
faults. This led to our citizens to form a distorted opinion of the foreign masters
and also of themselves. The function of education now is to correct this
distortion. We must now think of ourselves, of our salvation, of our future. And
unless we prepare the minds of the young for this endeavor, we will always be a
pathetic people with mo definite goals and no assurance of preservation.
47
PEDAGOGY
OF THE
OPPRESSED
PAULO FRAIRE
48
TRANSLATED BY
MYRA BERGMAN RAMOS
CONTINUUM: New York
Chapter 2
A careful analysis of the teacher-student relationship at any level, inside or
outside the school, reveals its fundamentally narrative character the relationship
involves a narrating Subject (the teacher) and patient listening objects (the
students). The contents, whether values or empirical dimensions of reality, tend
in the process of being narrated to become lifeless and petrified. Education is
suffering from narration sickness.
The teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static,
compartmentalized, and predictable. Or else, he expounds on a topic completely
alien to the existential experience of the students. His task is to “fill” the students
with the contents of his narration – contents which are detached from reality,
disconnected form the totality that endangered then and could give them
significance. Words are emptied of their concreteness and become a hollow,
alienated, and alienating verbosity.
The outstanding characteristic of this narrative education then is the
sonority of words, not their transforming power. “Four times four is sixteen; the
capital of Para is Belem.” The student records, memorizes, and repeats these
phrases without perceiving what four times four really means, or realizing the true
significance of “capital” in the affirmation “the capital of Para is Belem,” that is,
what Belem means for Para, and what Para means for Brazil.
Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize
mechanically the narrated content. Worse yet, it turns them into “containers,” into
“receptacles,” to be “tilled” by the teacher. The more completely he fill the
receptacles, the better a teacher he is. The more meekly the receptacles permit
themselves to9 be filled, the better students they are.
49
Education thus becomes an act of depositing in which the students are the
depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the
teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which are students patiently
receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the “banking” concept of education, in
which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as
receiving, filing and storing the deposits. They do, it is true, the opportunity to
become the collectors or cataloguers of the things they store. But in the last
analysis, it is men themselves who are filed away through the lack of creativity,
transformation, and knowledge in this (at best) misguided system. For apart from
inquiry, apart from the praxis, men cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges
only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient,
continuing, hopeful inquiry men pursue in the world, with the world, and with the
other.
In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by
those who consider to know nothing. Projecting an absolute ignorance onto
others, a characteristic of the ideology of oppression, negates education and
knowledge as process of inquiry. The teacher presents himself to his students as
their necessary opposite; by considering the ignorance absolute, he justifies his
own existence. The students, alienated like the slave in the Hegelian dialectic,
accept their ignorance as justifying the teacher’s existence – but, unlike the
slave, they never discover that they educate the teacher.
The raison d’ etre of libertarian education, on the other hand, lies in its
drive towards reconciliation. Education must begin with the solution of the
teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that
both are simultaneously teachers and students.
This solution is not (or can it be) found in the banking concept. on the
contrary, banking education maintains and even stimulates the contradiction
through the following attitudes and practices, which mirror oppressive society as
a whole:
(a) the teacher teaches and the students taught;
(b) the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing;
(c) the teacher thinks and the students are thought about;
(d) the teacher talks and the students listen – meekly;
(e) the teacher disciplines and the students disciplined;
(f) the teacher chooses end enforces his choice, and the students comply;
(g) the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through
the action of the teacher;
(h) the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were
consulted) adapt to it;
(i) the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with this own
professional authority, which he sets in opposition to the freedom of
the students;
(j) the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the pupils are
mere objects.
50
It is not surprising that the banking concept of education regards men as a
adaptable, manageable beings. The more students work at storing the deposits
entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would
result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world. The more
completely they accept the passive role they imposed on them, the more they
tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality
deposited in them.
The capacity of banking education to minimize or annul the students’
creative power and to stimulate their credulity serves the interests of the
oppressors, who care neither to have the world revealed nor to see it
transformed. The oppressors use their “humanitarianism” to preserve a profitable
situation. Thus they react almost instinctively against any experiment in
education which stimulates the critical facilities and is not content with a partial
view of reality but always seeks out the ties which link one point to another and
one problem to another.
Indeed, the interests of the oppressors lie in “changing the consciousness
of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them”, for the more the
oppressed can be led to adapt to that situation, the more easily they can be
dominated. To achieve this end, the oppressors use the banking concept of
education in conjunction with a paternalistic social action apparatus, within which
the oppressed receive the euphemistic title of “welfare recipients”. They are
treated as individual cases, as marginal men who deviate from the general
configuration of a “good, organized, and just” society. The oppressed are
regarded as the pathology of the healthy, society, which must therefore adjust
these “incompetent and lazy” folk to its own patterns by changing their mentality.
These marginals need to be “integrated” “incorporated” into the healthy society
that they have “forsaken”.
The truth is, however, that the oppressed are not “marginals,” are not men
living “outside” society. They have always been “inside” – inside the structure
which made them “beings for others”. The solution is not to “integrate” them, into
the structure so that they can become “beings of themselves”. Such
transformation, of course, would undermine the oppressor’s purposes; hence
their utilization of the banking concept of education to avoid the threat of students
conscientizagao.
The banking approach to adult education, for example, will never propose
to students that they critically consider reality. It will deal instead with such vital
questions as whether Roger gave green grass to the goat, and insist upon the
importance of learning that, on the contrary, Roger gave green grass to the
rabbit. The “humanistic” of the banking approach masks the effort to turn men to
automatons – the very negation of their ontological vocation to be more fully
human.
Those who use he banking approach, knowingly or unknowingly (for there
are innumerable well-intentioned bank-clerk teachers who do not realize that they
are serving only dehumanize), fail to perceive that the deposits themselves
contain contradictions about reality. But, sooner or later, these contradictions
may lead formerly passive students to turn against their domestication and the
51
attempt to domesticate reality. They may discover through existential experience
that their present way of life is irreconcilable with they vocation to become fully
human. They may perceive through their relations with reality that reality is really
a process, undergoing constant transformation. If men are searchers and their
ontological vocation is humanization, sooner or later they may perceive the
contradiction in which banking education seeks to maintain them, and then
engage themselves in the struggle for their liberation.
But the humanist, revolutionary educator cannot wait for this possibility to
materialize. From the outset, his efforts must coincide with those of the students
to engage in critical thinking and the quest for mutual humanization. His efforts
must be imbued with a profound trust in men and their creative power. To
achieve this, he must be a partner of the students in his relations with them.
The banking concept does not admit to such partnership- and a necessary
so. To resolve the teacher-student contradiction, to exchange the role of
depositor, prescriber, domesticator, for the role of student among students would
be to undermine the power of oppression and serve the cause of liberation.
Implicit in the banking concept is the assumption of a dichotomy between
man and the world: man is merely in the world, not with the world or with the
others; man is spectator, not re-creator. In this view, man is not a conscious
being (corpo consciente); he is rather the possessor of a consciousness: an
empty “mind” passively open to the reception of deposits of reality from the world
outside. For example, my desk, my books, my coffee cup, all the objects before
me – as bits of the world which surrounds me – would be “inside” me, exactly as I
am inside my study right now. This view makes no distinction between being
accessible to consciousness and entering consciousness. The distinction,
however, is essential: the objects which surround me are simply accessible to me
consciousness, not located within it. I am aware of them, but them are not inside
me.
It follows logically from the banking notion of consciousness that the
educator’s role is to regulate the way the world “enters into” the students. His
task is o organize a process which already occurs spontaneously, to “fill”
students by making deposits of information which he considers to constitute true
knowledge. And since men “receive” the world as passive entities, education
should make them more passive still, and adapt them to the world. The educated
man is the adapted man, because he is better “fit” for the world. Translated into
practice, this concept is well suited to the purposes of the oppressors, whose
tranquility rests on how well men fit the world the oppressors have created, and
how little they question it.
The more completely the majority adapt to the purposes which the
dominant minority prescribe for them (thereby depriving them of the right to their
own purposes), the more easily the minority can continue to prescribe. The
theory and practice of banking education serve this end quite efficiently.
Verbalistic lessons, reading requirements, the methods for evaluating
“knowledge,” the distance between the teacher and the taught, the criteria for
promotion: everything in this ready-to-wear approach serves to obviate thinking.
52
The bank-clerk educator does not realize that there is not true security in
his hypertropical role that one must seek to live with others in solidarity. One
cannot impose oneself, not even merely co-exist with one’s students. Solidarity
requires true communication, and the concept by which such as educator is
guided fears and proscribes communication.
Yet through communication can human life hold meaning. The teacher’s
thinking is authenticated only by the authenticity of the students thinking. The
teacher cannot think for his students, nor can he impose his thought on them.
Authentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in
ivory tower isolation, but only in communication. If it is true that thought has
meaning only when generated by action upon the world, the subordination of
students to teachers becomes impossible.
Because banking education begins with a false understanding of men
as objects, it cannot promote the development of what Fromma calls “biophily,”
but instead produces its opposite: necrophily.
While life is characterized byu growth in a structured functional manner, the necrophilous
loves all that does not grow, all that is mecyanical. The necrophilous person is driven by
the desire to transform the organic into the inorganic, to approach life mechanically, as if
all living persons were things… Memory, rather than experience, having, rather than
being, is what counts. The necrophilous person can relate to an object – a flower or a
person – only if he possesses it; hence to his possession is a threat to himself; if he
loses possession he loses contact with the world… He loves control, and in the act of
controlling he kills life.
Oppression – overwhelming control – is necrophilic; it is nourished by love
of death, not life. The banking concept of education, which serves the interests of
oppression, is also necroliphic. Based on a mechanistic, static, naturalistic,
spatialized view of consciousness, it transforms students into receiving objects. It
attempts to control thinking and action, leads men to adjust to the world, and
inhibits their creative power.
When their efforts to act are frustrated, when they finds themselves unable
to use their faculties, men suffer. “This suffering due to impotence is rooted in the
very fact that the human equilibrium has been disturbed. But the inability to act
which causes men’s anguish also causes to reject their impotence, by attempting
…to restore [their] capacity to act. But can [they], and how? One way is to submit to and
identify with a person or group having power. By this symbolic participation in another
person’s life, [men have] the illusion of acting, which in reality [they] only submit to and
become a part of those who act.
Populist manifestations perhaps best exemplify this type of behavior by
the oppressed, who, by identifying with characteristic leaders, come to feel that
they themselves are active and effective. The rebellion they express as they
emerge in the historical process is motivated by that desire to act effectively. The
dominant elites consider the remedy to be more domination and repression,
carried out in the name of freedom, order, and social peace (that is, the peace of
the elites). Thus they can condemn – logically, from their point of view – “the
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violence of a strike by workers and [can] call upon the state in the same breath to
use violence in putting down the strike.”
Education is the exercise of domination stimulates the credulity of
students, with the ideological intent (often not perceived by the educators) of
indoctrinating them to adapt to the world of oppression. This accusation is not
made in the naïve hope that the dominant elites will thereby simply abandon the
practice. Their objective is to call the attention of true humanists to the fact they
cannot use banking education methods in the pursuit of liberation for they would
only negate that very pursuit. Nor may a revolutionary society inherit these
methods from an oppressor society. The revolutionary society which practices
banking education is either misguided by the specter of reaction.
Unfortunately, those who are espouse the cause of liberation are
themselves surrounded and influenced by the climate which generates the
banking concept, and often do not perceive its true significance or its
dehumanizing power. Paradoxically, then, they utilize this same instrument of
alienation of what they considers an effort to liberate. Indeed, some
“revolutionaries” brand as “innocents,” “dreamers,” or even “reactionaries” those
who would challenge this educational practice. But one does not liberate men by
alienating them. Authentic liberation – the process of humanization – is not
another deposit to be made in men. Liberation is a praxis: the action and
reflection of men upon their world in order to transform it. Those truly committed
to the cause of liberation can accept neither the mechanistic concept of
consciousness as an empty vessel to be filled, nor the use of banking methods of
domination (propaganda, slogans – deposits) in the name of liberation.
Those truly committed to liberation must reject the banking concept in its
entirely, adopting instead a concept of men as conscious beings, and
consciousness as consciousness intent upon the world. They must abandon the
educational goal of deposit-making and replace it with the posing of the problems
of men in their relations to the essence of consciousness – intentionality – rejects
communiqués and embodies communication. It epitomizes the special
characteristic of consciousness: being conscious of, not only as intent on objects
but as turned in upon itself in a Jasperian “split” – consciousness as
consciousness of consciousness.
Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferals of
information. it is a learning situation in which the cognizable object (far from
being the end of the cognitive act) intermediates the cognitive actors – teacher
on the one hand and students on the other. Accordingly, the practice of problemposing education entails at the outset that the teacher-student contradiction be
resolved. Dialogical relations – indispensable to the capacity of cognitive actors
to cooperate in perceiving the same cognizable object – are otherwise
impossible.
Indeed, problem-posing education, which breaks with vertical patterns
characteristics of banking education, can fulfill its function as the practice of
freedom only if it can overcome the above contradiction. Through dialogue, the
teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new
team emerges: teacher-student with students-teachers. The teacher is no longer
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merely the one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught also teach. They
become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow. In this process,
arguments based on “authority” are no longer valid; in order to function, authority
must be on the slide of freedom, not against it. Here, no one teaches another,
nor is anyone self-taught. Men teach each other, mediated by the world, by the
cognizable objects which in banking education are “owned” by the teacher.
The banking concept (with its tendency to dichotomize everything)
distinguishes two stages in the action of the educator. During the first, he
cognizes a cognizable object while he prepares his lessons in his study or his
laboratory; during the second, he expounds to his students About that object.
The students are not called upon to know, but to memorize the contents narrated
by the teacher. Nor do the students practice any act of cognition, since the object
towards which that act should be directed is the property of the teacher rather
than a medium evolving the critical reflection of both teacher and students.
Hence in the name of the “preservation of culture and knowledge” we have a
system which achieves neither true knowledge nor true culture.
The problem-causing method does not dichotomize the activity of the
teacher-student: he is not “cognitive” at one point and “narrative” at another. He
is always “cognitive,” whether preparing a project or engaging in dialogue with
the students. He does not regard cognizable objects as his private property, but
as the object of reflection by himself and the students. In this way, the problempausing educator constantly re-forms his reflections in the reflection of the
students. The students – no longer docile listeners – are now critical coinvestigators in dialogue with the teacher. The teacher presents the material to
the students for their consideration, and re-considers his earlier considerations
as the students express their own. The role of the problem-pausing educator is to
create, together with the students, the conditions under which knowledge at the
level of the doxa is superseded by true knowledge, at the level of the logos.
Whereas a banking education anesthetizes and inhibits creative power,
problem-pausing education involves a constant unveiling of reality. The former
attempts to maintain the submersion of consciousness; the later strives for the
emergence of consciousness and critical intervention in reality.
Students as they are increasingly posed with problems relating to
themselves in the world and with the world will feel increasingly challenged and
obliged to respond to that challenge. Because they apprehend the challenge as
interrelated to other problems within a total context, not as a theoretical question,
the resulting comprehension tends to be increasingly critical and thus constantly
less alienated. Their response to the challenge evokes new challenges, followed
by new understandings; and gradually the students come to regard themselves
as committed.
Education is a practice of freedom – as opposed to education as the
practice of domination – denies that man is abstract, isolated, independent, and
unattached to the world; it also denies that the world exists as a reality apart form
men. Authentic reflection considers neither abstract man nor the world without
men, in their relations with the world. In these relations consciousness and world
are simultaneous: consciousness neither precedes the world nor follows it.
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La conscience et le monac sont dormes d’un coup: exterieue par essence a la
conscience, le monde est, par essence relative a elle.
In one of our culture circles in Chile, the group was discussing (based on a
codification) the anthropological concept of culture. in the midst of the discussion,
a peasant who by banking standards was completely ignorant said: “Now I see
that without man there is no world.” When the educator responded: “Let’s say, for
the sake of argument, that all the men earth were to die, but that the earth itself
remained, together with trees, birds, animals, rivers, seas, the stars… wouldn’t all
this be world?” “Oh no.” the peasant replied emphatically. “There would be no
one to say: ‘This is a world.”
The peasant wished to express the idea that there would be lacking the
consciousness of the world which necessarily implies the world of
consciousness. I cannot exist without a not – I. in turn, the not – I depends on
that existence. The world which brings consciousness into existence becomes
the world of that consciousness. Hence, the previously cited affirmation of Satre”
“ La conscience at le monde sont dorme’s d’un meme coup.”
As men, simultaneously reflecting on themselves and on the world,
increase the scope of their perception, they begin to direct their observations
towards previously inconspicuous phenomena:
In perception properly called, as an explicit awareness [Gewahren], I an
turned towards the object, to the paper, for instance. I apprehend it as being this
here and now. The apprehension is a singling out, every object having a
background in experience. Around and about the paper lie book books, pencils,
ink-well, and so forth, and these in a certain sense are also “perceived”,
perceptually there, in the “field of intuition”; but whilst I was turned towards the
paper there was no turning in their direction, nor any apprehending of the, not
even in secondary sense. They appeared and yet well not singled out, were not
posited in their own account. Every perception of a thing has such a zone of
backgrounds intuitions or background awareness, if “intuiting” already includes
the state of being turned towards,, and this also is “conscious experience”, or
more briefly a “consciousness of” all indeed that in point of fact lies in the coperceived objective background.10
That which has existed objectively but had not been perceived in its deeper
implications (if needed it was perceived at all) begins to “standout,” assuming the
character of a problem and therefore of challenge. Thus, men begin to single out
elements from their “background awareness” and to reflect upon them. These
elements are now objects of men’s consideration, and, as such, object their
action and cognition.
In problem posing education, men develop their power to perceive
critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find
themselves.; they come to see the world not as static reality, but as a reality in
process, in transformation. Although the dialectical relations of men with the
world exist independently of how these relations are perceived (or whether or
not they are perceived at all), it also true that the form of action men adopt is to
large extent a function of how they perceive themselves in the world. Hence, the
teacher-student and the students-teachers reflect simultaneously on themselves
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and the world without dichotomizing this reflection from action, and thus establish
an authentic form of thought and action.
Once again, the two educational concepts and practices under analysis
come into conflict. Banking education (for obvious reasons) attempts, by
mythicising reality, to conceal certain facts while explain the way men exist in the
world; problem posing education sets itself the task of demythologizing. Banking
education resists dialogue; problem posing education regards dialogue as
indispensable to the act of cognition which unveils reality, banking education
inhibits creativity and domesticates (although it cannot completely destroy) the
intentionality of consciousness by isolating consciousness from the world,
thereby denying men their ontological and historical vocation of men as beings
who are authentic only when engaged in inquiry and creative transformation. In
sum: banking theory and practice, as immobilizing and fixating forces, fail to
acknowledge men as historical beings; problem-posing theory and practice take
man’s historicity as their starting point.
Problem-posing education affirms men as being in the process of
becoming—as unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished
reality. Indeed, in contrast to other animals who are unfinished, but not historical,
men know themselves to be unfinished; they are aware of their incompletion. In
this incompletion and this awareness lie the every roots of education as an
exclusively human manifestation. The unfinished character of men and the
transformational character of reality necessitate that education be an ongoing
activity.
Education is thus constantly remade in the praxis. In order to be, it must
become. Its “duration” (in the Bergsonian meaning of the word) is found in the
interplay of the opposite’s permanence and change. The banking method
emphasizes permanence and becomes reactionary; problem-posing education—
which accepts neither a “well-behaved” present nor a predetermined future—
roots itself in the dynamic present and becomes revolutionary.
Problem-posing education is revolutionary futurity. Hence it is prophetic
(and, as such, hopeful). Hence, it corresponds to the historical nature of man.
Hence, it affirms men as beings who transcend themselves, who move forward
and look ahead, for whom immobility represents a fatal threat, for whom looking
at the past must only be a means of understanding more clearly what and who
they are so that they can move wisely build the future. Hence, it identifies with
the movement which engages men as begins aware of their incompletion—an
historical movement which has its point of departure, its subjects and its
objective.
The point of departure of the movement lies in men themselves. But since
men do not exist apart from the world, apart from reality, the movement must
begin with the men-world relationships. Accordingly, the point of departure must
always be with men in the “:here and now,” which constitutes the situation within
which they are submerged, from which they emerge, and in which they intervene.
Only by starting from this situation—which determines their perception of it—can
they begin to move. To do this authentically they must perceive their state not as
fated and unalterable, but merely as limiting—and therefore challenging.
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Whereas the banking method directly or indirectly reinforces men’s
fatalistic perception of their situation, the problem-posing method presents his
very situation to them as a problem. As the situation becomes the object of their
cognition, the naïve or magical perception which produced their fatalism gives
way to perception which is able to perceive itself even as it perceives reality, and
can thus be ethically objective about the reality.
A deepened consciousness of their situation leads men to apprehend that
situation as an historical reality susceptible of transformation. Resignation gives
way to the drive for transformation and inquiry, over which men feel themselves
to be in control. If men, as historical beings necessarily engaged with other men
in a movement of inquiry, did not control that movement, it would be (and is) a
violation of men’s humanity. Any situation in which some men prevent others
from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence. The means used are
not important; to alienate men from their own decision-making is to change them
into objects.
This movement of inquiry must be directed towards humanization—
man’s historical vocation. The pursuit of full humanity, however, cannot be
carried out in isolation or individualism, but only in fellowship and solidarity;
therefore it cannot unfold in the antagonistic relations between oppressors and
oppressed. No one can be authentically human while he prevents others from
being so. Attempting to be more human, individualistically, leads to having more,
egotistically: a form of dehumanization. That not it is not fundamental to have in
order to be human. Precisely because it is necessary, some men’s having must
not consolidate the power of the former to crush the latter.
Problem-posing education, as a humanist and liberating praxis, posits as
fundamental that men subjected to domination must tight for their emancipation.
To that end, it enables teachers and students to become Subjects of the
educational process by overcoming authorization and an alienating
intellectualism; it also enables men to overcome their false perception of reality.
The world—no longer something to be described with deceptive words—
becomes the object of the transforming action by men which results in their
humanization.
Problem-posing education does not and cannot serve the interests of the
oppressor. No oppressive order could permit the oppressed to begin to question:
Why? While only a revolutionary society can carry out this education in
systematic terms, the revolutionary leaders need not take full power before they
can employ the method. In the revolutionary process, the leaders cannot utilize
the banking method as an interim measure, justified on grounds of expediency,
which the intention of later behaving in a genuinely revolutionary fashion. They
must be revolutionary—that is to say, dialogical—from the outset.
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