Teaching Philippine history

A tweet from a professor in UP Diliman  announced that the university is going back to the system of required General Education subjects. I understand that for several years, students were free to choose the General Education subjects that they wanted to take. I guess the idea was to let them choose according to their interests. I gather that what actually happened was that the students picked subjects or teachers that guaranteed them a 1.0 or the highest grade possible. Thus, the term “uno-able term” or a semester when a student got the highest grade possible in all subjects was created. About a year ago, I remember UP Diliman having a bumper crop of students who graduated with honors. If the information I got was correct, there were more magna cum laude and summa cum laude graduates that year than in any other year.

I’m glad that required General Education subjects have been re-introduced. When I was in college, this meant non-Science majors taking introductory courses in Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Geology. We had basic logic for Philosophy. We had literature and art appreciation for humanities. We were given a run-through of theories in psychology and political science in Social Science subjects. Most importantly, we had Philippine History and Asian History.

Coming from UP Cebu High School, I had been given an introduction to history as told by the colonized and marginalized. Still, as a 16-year-old college freshman, it was mind-blowing to read William Henry Scott’s “Cracks in the Parchment Curtain,” where the author describes pre-colonial Philippine society using early Spanish sources, and “Roots of Dependency: Political and Economic Revolution in 19th Century Philippines” by Jonathan Fast and Jim Richardson. This book is about the Philippine sugar industry and how our economic fortunes started to depend on the world market. In my Social Science class, we were also assigned to read William Pomeroy’s “The Forest: A Personal Record of the Huk Guerrilla Struggle in the Philippines” and Benjamin Pimentel’s “Edjop: The Unusual Journey of Edgar Jopson.” Jopson was the valedictorian of Chief Justice Renato Corona’s grade school and high school batch at the Ateneo de Manila. He was an activist during Martial Law who was killed by the military during that period. These were stories not found in history books I was assigned in grade school and high school, books I would describe as sanitized at best.

When GE subjects were not required, Philippine History could be skipped by UP college students. Not everyone cares about history and I remember that most of the teachers (at least in my time) liked assigning a lot of books for students to read and write a review of. While it was possible to get a 1.0, a student had to work harder than usual (4 books in a semester was the average, I think). For a student looking to get an easy 1.0, it was not the best choice of subject. This was sad considering that a UP student’s education is paid for by the Filipino taxpayer. I thought that at the very least, a UP student has a duty to have a good understanding of Philippine history. Being allowed to skip this subject meant one less chance for a student to learn about it.

As a parent, I realize that I cannot leave it up to their schools for my children to learn about Philippine history and love of country. I am lucky because my high school teachers taught me these when I was an impressionable twelve-year-old. That is probably why I have not forgotten.  And it is also why I will take every opportunity to talk to my children about pre-colonial society, colonialism, Martial Law, the EDSA Revolution, and other things I continue to read about. Geeky? Maybe. Hopefully, they will not be among the kids born after the EDSA Revolution who think that Martial Law was the Golden Age, Imelda Marcos was the Goddess of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, and that the EDSA Revolution was a mistake.

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