The Filipino student and cultural values

Title

Creator

Orteza, Evelina M.

Language

English

Year

1966

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Abstract

From The Education Quarterly, Oct. 1965.

A discussion of values and verities of knowledge.

Fulltext

■ A discussion of values and verities of knowledge. THE FILIPINO STUDENT AND CULTURAL VALUES There is nothing “sacred” or “natural” about cultural values that they cannot be questioned, examined, or in telligently tampered with. On the contrary, once they are encrusted with a sanctity, a reality, sui generis, all their own there is the danger that cultural values, rightly or wrongly, will begin to con trol and condition thorough ly the individual. A Filipina student, for example, ill and handicapped, after a serious operation, refused to ask help from and to be helped by other Filipinos because to do so would expose her phy* sicaliy to them. And this was agaihst the cultural value of modesty, the sacredness of which could not be violated, even in near — death! Here, man was made for cultural values not cultural values for man! Man becomes a subject, a subordinate to his creation. That such think ing cofild be countenanced by teachers involved in the situation and justified on the basis of Filipino culture .makes one doubt the effica cy of knowledge to penetrate into the lives of people, caus ing a changed behavior marked with rationality and intelligibility. (The non integration of knowledge with actual practice was pre viously noted.) This is not to say that one must not respect his cultural values and heedlessly throw them all away in the name of scientific knowledge! As it is, the world is “over debunked,” as Romain Gary puts it, and its brokenness, fragmentedness, and empti ness is felt everywhere. Sure ly, one cannot help empty it anymore! Rather, the idea I covet with Philippine edu cators is to examine our cul tural values lest they have a crippling influence and pa ralyzing effect upon us, mak ing us all impotent to act upon an idea, a suggestion, a notion which is practical, 10 Panorama rational, humanistic, and from the point of view of scientific knowledge, indeed, desirable. Societal values, unless they are to wither away and lost their potency and vibrancy, through years of imbreeding and lack of empirical justifiability, must be continuously analyzed, assessed, and criticized. This is the task of an educator. If, as found out, cultural discontinuities are necessary factors for the development of original and critical think ing, independent and selfreliant traits, tnen, perhaps, imaginative educators can find out effective ways and means to introduce discon tinuities in society through the schools so that the youth may profit from them. As of now, the foreign values in the educational system have not been manifestly success ful in inducing discontinuity patters in society. As already stated, the societal life in the Philippines has basically re mained indifferent to the concerns and professes values of the educational system. As in other cultural practices, changes with regard the rear ing of the young can be ef fectively introduced in a so ciety. if the schools believe that the individual who is truly a human being can think, decide, for himself, and is responsible for his de cision, then, perhaps, some inquiry into the Filipino fa mily system may be made. Its strengths and weaknesses must be located and sugges tions for possibilities toward restructing it may be studied. The idea is not to disinte grate or destroy the family concept thus inviting societal and personal problems relat ed to the Western atomic family system. Rather, the idea is to develop the indi vidual and to allow him a life of his own at the same time to maintain group so lidarity. It is a relation that neither exploits one nor the other, but allows both to draw support from each other. The Filipino family, perhaps, may be taught that it needs to be cruel, some times, in order to be kind, so Shakespeare counselled. In terms of learning, cri tical mindedness, not simple memory work, must be stress ed. Grounds on which claims to knowledge, or to a type of knowledge, are made must be analyzed and assessed. Or March 1966 11 else, biased opinions or inter pretations of facts can be mistaken for knowledge and presented as truths. This can be a dangerous indul gence! Empirical facts, often obscured by a welter of interpretational theories and ideas, must be located, isolat ed, and presented in their purity to the students. Facts and judgements of facts must be differentiated. In this way, opinion, information, belief, and knowledge are distinguished from one an other. The student then be comes acquainted with the ways in which knowledge is formed. And more impor tant, he learns whether or not to trust the prevailing ideas of his time and, if he does, how far he may trust them. This involves a com prehension of the present li mitations of knowledge as dis crepancies and inadequacies in different types of asser tions are discerned. This, of course, does not mean that opinion, informa tion, and belief be altogether adjured in favor of know ledge. There is little of knowledge, if it is defined in a rigorous and exacting man ner, such that one can know only when one knows why or on what grounds and evi dences. If everyone were forbidden to say anything or to act on any proposition that could not be proved or verified empirically or through the rules and lan guage of logic and mathema tics, very few things indeed would be done and most of life stopped. Moreover, to the important problems of life, for example, religion, even politics, certainty of conclusions is hard to come by. It does not begin to compare with certainty of knowledge that “my umbrella is on the desk.” Even so, the student must be taught to reach sound conclusions, to distinguish between wellgrounded and ungrounded assertions by a close regard for evidence and proof. This cannot result when learning is construed as primarily one of memory work. — By Evelina M. Orteza, From The Education Quarterly, Oct. 1965. 12 Panorama

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