Spain controlled us through religion. They got us to submit to their oppressive rule by instilling the fear of God and hell in the Filipino’s primitive psyche. Many of us still do things from fear of punishment like nonchalantly violating a traffic rule when no policeman is around to impose a fine.
America controlled us with education-for-employment. They needed skilled workers for the industries they planned to set up in the satellite economy they intended the Philippines to be. They taught us the three R’s so we could follow instructions of American political and economic bosses.
America did not educate us to become creators, innovators and entrepreneurs for our country’s development. They did not teach us to think for ourselves and be masters of our individual and national destinies. Thus, to this day we remain raw material and labor suppliers to foreign industries.
To our misfortune, fear of hell and education-for-employment still rule the day. The current system educates for skills, compliance and dependence mainly to avoid negative consequences. Thus, in our culture, a good child is one who complies with the instructions of parents, a good student with teachers, a good Catholic with priests, a good employee with managers, a good citizen with government officials. Compliance and dependence to avoid a sort of version of hell on earth.
A high-paying job is the dream of too many Filipino students. Master’s and doctoral degrees are sought not to deepen or broaden knowledge but to get to a higher pay grade. From basic to higher education, a diploma is the Holy Grail not the freedom that comes with intellectual maturity.
Yet, education is mainly the process of searching for answers to life’s questions and not the mere acceptance of other people’s answers. An educated person is one who has full control of her/his responses to all external ideas and events. An educated person is intellectually mature, thinks for her/himself and has the courage to live by what she/he is convinced is right.
Education-for-employment teaches skills but often neglects the human values of honesty, integrity and accountability. Our educated or skilled politicians, lacking those human values, make no bones about using their skill to acquire material wealth at the expense of constituents. Our uncritical compliance with their self-serving decisions is bringing us ever closer to the cliff’s edge.
The recent spate of shootings in high schools tells us that more than skills, our youth need education for independent, creative and authentic human living. More than ever parents should pay them loving and caring attention and take primary responsibility in educating them for human values and high morals. Teachers, priests and elders should only boost lessons learned at home and not substitute for what parents fail to teach.
One Education, the latest education program launched by DepEd, Ched and Tesda, misses the point by simply reinforcing education-for-employment. No wonder Filipino workers can now be found in almost every corner of the developed world to the benefit of foreign employers but to the neglect of our own development.