Republishing: What’s wrong with the study and teaching of Philippine history?

What’s wrong with the study and teaching of Philippine history?

Dr. Serafin D. Quiason and Prof. Fe B. Mangahas

AS in all former colonies in Asia, the history about the Filipino was written by the Spaniards and then by the Americans, resulting in the tragic alteration of the Filipino character and soul. To paraphrase Dr. Jose Rizal, the Filipino was reduced to a groveling, clinging and fawning creature without a sense of community.

For centuries our people have grievously suffered from racial slurs that our students must know about. The Spaniards called our people "Indios" and the friars often referred to them as chongos, or monkeys. Only through the correct teaching of Philippine history can we rectify these demeaning racial stereotypes.

With the advent of the Norte Americanos, the English writer Rudyard Kipling in his "White Man’s Burden" warned the new masters to be cautious in dealing with their new wards because "they are half-devil and half-child." Up to the 1980s, James Fallows wrote that the Filipino people were victims of a "damaged culture." What have our educators and historians done to redress these indictments of contemporary Filipinos?

In the postwar period, Philippine history at the university level was taught as a solid subject, but the textbooks remained written from the colonizers’ point of view. Only Teodoro Agoncillo became a staunch proponent of rewriting Philippine history from the Filipino viewpoint. He came out with a nationalist-oriented textbook entitled The History of the Filipino People. Renato Constantino followed with The Past Revisited. On the high-school level, commercialized Philippine history books were prescribed by the Bureau of Education.

The sad plight of the study and teaching of history continued up to the seventies and eighties when teachers recruited to teach history in high schools included physical education and home economics teachers. In today’s world, our educational planners have come out with a strange concoction in the form of a collected set of subjects called Makabayan, which is a misnorner.

Lamentably, Makabayan is the antithesis of patriotism, nationalism and one’s sense of national identity. Although the package is well intentioned, Makabayan presents Filipino culture and history in a hodgepodge fashion, void of the vital element of continuity in the study of our past.

ln the more highly industrialized countries in the West, such as Great Britain and the United States, the teaching of English history covers four years of the student’s life in college while in the US, irrespective of the student’s major or field, he or she is required to take four semesters of American history.

In the Philippines history merits one semester’s work. Just recently the University of the Philippines reduced Philippine history to an optional subject, among other social-science subjects. What a disservice to the young generation and to our students!

Philippine history is a potential tool to instill the spirit of nationalism and patriotism, especially at a time of political disunity and sluggish economic growth. What we need, to quote the economist Emmanuel Q. Yap, is "know the historical truth about what really happened to our country in how we have been exploited, divided and ruled and turned one against each other to the point of hating and killing each other for many generations."

This echoes Rizal’s earlier observation: "In order to read the destiny of the people, it is necessary to open the book of their past." But what sort of books shall our students open in the Makabayan class if these are bristling with half-truths and downright lies?

As a people we cannot develop or advance unless we have a clear image of ourselves, an honest understanding of our past and a collective will to resist foreign dictation and to rely on our capacity and resources to bring about social justice, peace and prosperity in our land.

Dr. Quiason is a member of the NHI Board and its former chairman.

Prof. Mangahas chairs the Department of History, St. Scholastica College.

Source: http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2006/sept/17/yehey/top_stories/20060917top2.html