Why PILAR?

9/25/2022

Introducing ‘Pilar en Pepe.'

A week ago, on September 17, 2022, Senior Citi Kwentuhan weekly webinar hosted by my friend Ed Dela Torr and Girlie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzWEk0b9Ukc&t=3319s introduced “Tsoktok ni MC” to the cyberspace. “This is a global debut,” as Ed proclaims to their webinar followers in the Philippines as well those Filipinos who are living abroad.

Hosts Ed and Girlie and I have agreed that an hour webinar is not enough. There are many things to talk about Philippine education and history. The challenges are enormous. That there are many Filipinos, including the teachers, who are in dire need and looking for approaches to understand the situation.

In me Tsok Tok module on Education, Tradition and Culture, I mentioned that the home, the school, the church, and the neighborhood/ surrounding environment are the principal sources of a child’s education, tradition, and culture (ETC). In my metaphor (drawing) of bulaklak or the flower of growing up or in raising a child, the fifth petal is the media.

Unlike the first four where three elements provide directly and indirectly the ETC of a child, which are the person, the spaces and structures, and the dynamics and rituals, the media, at this point in time in our history with the advancement in the information and communication technology, is undeniably the most dominant and overtaking the four carriers and generators of education, tradition, and culture.

It was in 1980, six years after the imposition of Martial Law regime, when Education Forum came up with national conference on teaching teachers, mostly from Catholic schools, on how to teach history and socio-economics. A wholistic approach in teaching was introduced and promoted. Later this approach was developed into a pedagogical tool, a variation of group process and inductive method, among community educators. It was named ADIDAS for Activity-Discussion-Input-Discussion-Analysis-Synthesis.

In 1986 after the ousting of the Marcos regime, two national conferences of people’s movement and community educators were held and came up with the term popular education with the framework of Context-Content-Method (CCM). A project was also established under the banner of, aptly named, PEPE for Popular Education for People’s Empowerment.

Why PEPE? Although the EDSA uprising that ousted Marcos and his authoritarian and a repressive martial law regime brought about the restoration of elite democracy and freedom, the people’s initiative also blossomed into non-government and people’s organizations, which later on, flourished as civil society to differentiate to the State (government) and Market (business). There was then a momentum of translating the political gain of people’s power in EDSA into people’s empowerment, not only for the elite and traditional pollical and economic clan, through popular education. Hence, PEPE, Popular Education for People’s Empowerment.

One of the programs of PEPE as an NGO is named PILAR for Popular Initiative in Learning and Accessing Resources. Among the many accomplishments of PEPE and its mother agency the Institute for Popular Democracy (IPD) in the 1990s, including the formation of the Education for Life Foundation, the project PILAR was the most challenging that did not thrive. And me, reading the situation from a far (US), there are many reasons why PILAR failed to grow.

From my point of view, language is a battle ground in people’s empowerment and nation building.

How do you promote PILAR – Popular Initiative in Learning and Accessing Resources – if English is still the most dominant language of communication.

As historian Vicente Rafael on his book Mother Tongues (2016) puts it with quotes from Renato Constantino’s Miseducation of Filipinos:

As the “master stroke” of colonial education, the use of English as the sole medium of instruction has had the effect of “separat(ing) the Filipinos from their past” while dividing the educated Filipinos from their countrymen.” Thanks to English, native students were turned into “carbon copies” of (their) conqueror.” Rather than unify native societies by providing a common language, English intensified social divisions while promoting historical amnesia. An alien language, it could produce only alienating effects.”

How do Filipinos learn their Sikolohiyang Pilipino, Pantayong Pananaw, and Pagkataong Pilipino in English? How do you pursue the understanding of Sarili, Kapwa, at Bayan, and Sarili (Pilipinas), Kapwa (Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian), and iba (Western, Chinese)?

The Constantino’s essay miseducation of the Filipinos was written in 1959, got only published in 1966, and became a required reading and popular among the 1970s activists.

Sad to say, the mainstream media is still predominantly in English, English is still the medium instruction, discouraging the use of the national language, regional languages, and vernaculars, and in College and Universities the teaching of history and liberal education. I have just read that for 16 years now the LGUs were not allowed to build community libraries in the Philippines.

Now there is more. The Internet. Is it a tool a tool to promote democracy as in access to information and sharing of information or a weapon of authoritarianism as in the use of trolls, fake news, historical fallacies, and the so-called “big brother watching over you” by those in power.

In 2022, the Marcos returned to power. The campaign “Never Again, Never Forget,” on the one hand, it may be seen as effective with proliferation of martial law information and educational materials, from films, books, essays, documents, testimonies, and memoirs, that are made accessible through the internet. The aim fore mostly is to debunk that Martial Law is “a golden age.” Perhaps, it was for the Marcoses and cronies but not to the majority of the Filipino people.

On the other hand, “Never Again, Never Forget” is limiting if the focus is only the Marcos and Martial Law regime. How about the Philippine revolution of 1896 and the Philippine-American War and annexation of the Philippines, where the elite (economic and educated) took advantage of the critical period in our nation’s history to keep themselves above the rest in terms of economic and political power, privileges, and benefits.

“Never Again, Never Forget” is not forward looking. The campaign “Tama Na, Sobra Na, Palitan Na” in the mid-1980s is more powerful and effective during that time. The people from all walks of life can relate to it. It is in their own language and vernaculars.

Why PILAR? Popular Initiative in Learning and Accessing Resources requires the investigation on how Filipinos learns (ETC), and how they access resources, and which resources are accessible to them and which are not.

The trend in the Philippines, the females are leading the way to challenge and change the status quo, and the bulok na sistema.

I invite you to support PILAR.