Perturbing the Comforted: On the Philippine Education System
Carrying the brandished hope of an unassailable force, the circle continues in its mindless cycle — traversing the same path, and leading to the same point from where it started: an imprisonment within the system that only seeks to continuously perpetuate itself rather than pave way for the birth of a new resolution. The chains that persist in their regressive purpose of molding dilemmas within the Philippine educational system converges in three grips — colonization, commercialization, and fascism.
Back when I was in primary school, I remember loving the color orange in a strange manner I could not comprehend. It would always be my go-to whenever we were made to pick our crayons to paint our coloring books with our desired touches. Even when the alphabet was first taught to us, the example used for words starting with letter “o” was the word orange. Growing up, the realization slowly starts to dawn on me: through the process of being socialized in my first years of education, there is always something foreign with how examples and lenses are taught to us. Something out of touch.
The enslavement of the Filipino people, ever since time immemorial, is reproduced in the way the culture they are a part of creates a machinery of impunity by molding itself to justify superficial ideals imposed by those who hold our economy, ensuring that it will be maintained through their ceaseless hold in our social conditions. As Renato Constantino put it, the most effective means of subjugating a people is to capture their minds.
After all, what better way is there to capture the people’s mind than controlling the very institution tasked with the responsibility of indoctrinating the people in the society they operate from, taking form in education?
The system of education that exists within the Philippines could not be analyzed without properly tracing its roots. Myopic analysis devoid of its own historical context is one of the major setbacks that hinder the progression of a refined discourse in this topic. It is only through dissecting the material conditions of the society will the understanding of the educational system’s orientation come in its true essence.
The domination of the English language as the medium of instruction, as well as the implementation of Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Memorandum 20 which eliminates Filipino at Panitikan as one of the core subjects in college, is one of the many proofs that the colonial orientation of education persists in its stronghold upon the system.
Philippine education was once shaped in the purpose of preserving American control. In order to attain this, it was of paramount importance that any separatist ideas are decimated. This goes hand-in-hand with the colonizers’ interest of maintaining their control on the nation’s mode of production. The ideological apparatus they have consolidated, taking root in education, ensures that they will mold generations of Filipinos who shall view themselves as obedient little colonials, free of any genuine nationalistic notions of liberating themselves, and putting American culture in superior heights in order to turn back on their identity.
According to Joseph Hayden in his study, it has been the English language and the very struggles necessary to acquire it that molded American culture to be instilled in the country, to which its usage brought the Filipinos to Americans and their culture. In 1925, the Monroe Survery Report criticized the system of education that the colonial administration imposed on their first decade of colonization. They said that the very curriculum instills American culture through organized and systemic means.
The English language as the medium of instruction is the strongest grip, in our time, of colonial chain in our educational system. The machinery of power in this society is held by the people who believe that it is only through English shall the Filipinos acquire real education.
Alienation presents yet another peril brought by the colonization of education. It ensures that bourgeois-liberal tendencies will be championed to nurture individualism within the students, separating them from the society they are a part of. It glorifies suffering and masks them as necessary pain from where their consciousness must be submerged in instead of troubles that require transformation — it encourages the submission to the status quo, a defeatist approach, in order to quell any attempt of transforming it which is against the interest of those whose power lie on the succession of the inequality within the system.
It glamorizes the Philippines as an agricultural country, but it pries away from awakening the students from the fact that the backbones of the sector that makes this country agricultural are suffering and are subjected to inhumane societal conditions. It vilifies any hope for national industrialization, ensuring that our economy will remain dependent on foreign hold. The preservation of backward culture is systematic, creating ideological conditions that promotes colonial assimilation.
The struggle of the Filipino people, however, does not stop there — the chains only continue to expand, clawing even deeper upon their already decaying flesh.
The K-12 program has embarked as yet another weapon of colonial spite. The issue here isn’t as simplistic as whether the Philippines is ready for this change, but its core orientation that urged its implementation. Its design conformed to the Bologna Accords of European Union and Washington Accord of USA. It mentioned how those who shall work in other countries must finish 12 years in accordance to the needs of foreign multinational companies.
In short, it is another path for foreign interests to use our education as breeding grounds for a bulk of cheap laborers. According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, the number of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) who worked abroad at any time during the period April to September 2018 was estimated at 2.3 million. This accounts to more than 6,000 Filipinos migrating every day to work outside the country. The objective of the K-12 centering on readying its completers for jobs entails the underlying consequence of further satisfying foreign avarice at the expense of the Filipinos.
The dilemma of colonization in education brings forth the second ordeal — commercialization. It lies on the principle of marketization that the capitalist foreign forces have shaped in the educational system. A principle that equips the students to be coerced in submerging themselves within market demands, rather than studying as means of changing the social conditions that make it unbearable to begin with.
According to a Department of Education report back in 2012, in every 100 students that enroll in elementary, only less than 14 of those are able to finish college. The significant amount of the youth who have been incapable of finishing their education can’t be isolated cases — they are manifestations of the ills within the system.
Once brought upon the slums, would one really still have the opportunity to persist in their studies when their churning stomachs are already driving them on the edge?
It is, yet again, social conditions that hinder the progression of the majority of those driven out of their schools to settle in clamoring for jobs. This is strengthened with commercializing education, treating it as means of gaining profit rather than a right for the people.
In present times, public institutions are seen as inferior compared to their private counterparts. Only those who can’t afford private schools send their children to public schools. Those who can afford it, however, send their children to private institutions. Its outcome led to over-glorification of private education which has unfortunately resulted to the proliferation of diploma mills.
This dilemma is further exacerbated with the education’s deregulation. This is when the government frees themselves from tenets of their responsibility to ensure free education for all, and allow power for private sectors to enter the educational realms. The MTHEDIP mentioned a case study that illustrates the collaboration of transnational corporations like IBM with the Far Eastern University (FEU) in setting up the East-Asia College.
The government argues that the educational system ought to be internationalized in the case of our curriculum in order to attract as many foreign enrollees as possible as in the case of the Asian Institute of Management (AIM). In order to further justify decreased budgetary allocation for education, the MTHEDIP makes no pretense at advocating the commercialization and corporatization of the tertiary public school system.
Finally, it comes at a full circle — the form of fascism is instilled within the educational system, functioning in their earnest objective of preserving the structures mentioned earlier.
Constantino described how nationalism is taught at schools in a very narrow-sighted way. It merely raises patriotism in the sense that it could be fully achieved through its symbolic means of respect in the flag, appreciation for our national symbols, and obeying to authorities without question. It creates a culture of compulsory subservience — one that is needed in maintaining power structures.
True nationalism, however, lies on the desire to cultivate national survival, which is what education should be made for in the first place. Fascism derails this — it simply generates a nonscientific culture of imposing ‘discipline’ by having powers remaining unquestioned, shunning criticality, and alienating the students from the broad masses where they can channel their true nationalism to. After all, it is the people who make up the nation.
It is only warranted that these three rots be vanquished, for as history itself has shown, nothing is subject for permanence. The call for a genuine nationalistic, scientific, and mass-oriented education waits to be heeded. It is only through that should education finally come in its full terms of providing an avenue for the people to mold a society that leans on itself, liberated from ideas that only oppress the people, and addresses the struggles that have long been untapped in the community.
Given these, what’s left for the Filipino youth is their collective will to stand for their democratic rights. History already proved how their united action could bring upon societal change. The youth of tomorrow leave their hope on the youth of today to topple regressive forms and destroy whatever illusion the people still cling into as means of justifying the exploitation of the Filipinos — the path to liberation is never comforting, for the comforted ought to be disturbed, and from there on, the disturbed will rise to spring comfort upon everyone.
