UNESCO debate on re-engineering education linked to Jose Rizal

(Part I)

Our national hero Dr. Jose Rizal died prematurely by execution in 1896 at age 35. All his life he yearned for the Filipino’s deliverance from bondage: deliverance from enslavement to tyrannical Spain as well as deliverance from themselves – their lethargy, passivity, and general ignorance.      

The year Rizal died, Dr. Maria Montessori received her doctoral degree in medicine, the first Italian woman to dare enter a field traditionally reserved for men. Twelve years later, she would discover a system that revolutionized traditional education by conditioning children to become independent. It was the same discovery Dr. Rizal sought por la patria (for the motherland). He was convinced that a political or militant revolution was not necessary, but a social revolution – the character transformation of his countrymen.

UNESCO’s re-engineering education for the 21st century

In mid-December 1996, 400 educators convened at the Imperial Queen’s Park Hotel in Bangkok to heed UNESCO’s invitation to dialogue in the second Asian Conference on Education & International Development (ACEID). The theme was “Re-engineering Education for Change.” 

Then ACEID chief Rupert Maclean explained that the term “re-engineering” was coined by Michael Hammer, a former Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer service professor. In his book “Re-engineering the Corporation,” Hammer defined the word as “the fundamental re-thinking and radical redesigning of content and processes to bring about dramatic improvements in performance.”  What has UNESCO been doing to assist other countries in re-engineering?

Dr. Jose Rizal finally smiles

It took us 10 years (1975-1985) to buy by installment from Gen. Alfonso Arellano our 4,000 square-meter school lot in Greenhills. It is the corner lot of what was once the so-called “generals’ row” along Eisenhower and Annapolis streets. 

In 1986, Secretary of Education Dr. Lourdes Quisumbing was our special guest during the groundbreaking ceremonies for the construction of the first of two school buildings of Operation Brotherhood Montessori Center (OBMC) in Greenhills.  It was also the blessing of our Rizal monument. Six months prior, the design was mystically interlocuted to psychic sculptor Pempe Floriano through his work partner, artist-mystic Punay K. Fernandez. Dr. Rizal was to wear a navy blue European suit with a wine-red vest. Two school children carrying their books were to accompany him. I knew that many public schools had the statue of our national hero, but sad to say, he usually stood too forlorn and serious that children seldom look up and pay any attention to him. We have been unfair to Dr. Rizal for representing him devoid of the human warmth that filled his whole life. Think of it – isn’t it incredible that we literally imprisoned our hero and poet within a cold and impersonal stone for almost a century?

Finally Dr. Rizal smiles in our OBMC schoolyard, accompanied by smiling gradeschoolers. Mystically, his vibrant spirit has finally been released to give his encouragement to the fair hope of our Motherland: “Lift up your radiant brow this day, youth of my native land! Your abounding talents show resplendently the grand fair hope of my Motherland!” (from “A La Juventud Filipino”) ??

‘A La Juventud Filipino’ — ‘Unfold, Oh Timid Flowers!’??       

“To the Philippine Youth” was the first prize-winning poem Rizal wrote as a student at the University of Santo Tomas in 1879. The Spanish judges were so impressed that from then on the word “Filipino” included the natives of the country instead of only the Spaniards born in the island. Poetry, the language of the heart, was dear to Rizal for his mother nurtured it in him from his early childhood. Rizal believed that the other half of one’s education must come from the heart and should not focus only on the formation of the mind.

He wrote to his nephew Alfredo Hidalgo from Dapitan: “To live is to be among men and to be among men is to struggle. This struggle is not a brutal and material struggle with men alone; it is a struggle within, with one’s self, with passions, and one’s own errors and preoccupation. It is an eternal struggle with a smile on the lips and tears in the heart. On the battlefield, man has no better weapon than his intelligence, no other force but his heart. Sharpen, perfect, polish then your mind and fortify and educate your HEART.” (from “Epistolario Rizalino”)

‘Allianza Intima Entre La Religion Y La Buena Education’

The “Intimate Alliance Between Religion and Good Education” was another poem Rizal dedicated to education, which he believed would resolve the ignorance and exploitation of the masses. He said that religion serves as a guide and gives vigor to good education.

“Without religion, human education is like a ship buffeted by the wind that loses her rudder in horrible combat. The thundering impact and jolt of the terrible tempestuous North Wind fiercely battles her in the abysses of the angry sea…” He stressed that a working youth was the antidote to crime and vice, and lack of determination in government “… where wise education raises a throne, vigorous youth robustly grows. This subdues error with firm resolve and with noble ideas exalts itself. The cervix of vice she breaks, black crime before her pales, barbarous nations she tames and of savages, champions she makes.”

It is unfortunate that in our current educational system, the Filipino youth has been deprived of learning Spanish, as well as appreciating its poetry. Our students think that our national hero wrote only one poem, the beautiful “Ultimo Adios,” when he already wrote 22 poems just from his childhood to adolescence. 

Poetry has to be heard and seen with the third eye, the eye of imagery through words. This was something our hero excelled in. From Heidelberg, Germany, he expressed full longing for his Motherland in “A las Flores de Heidelberg.” Rizal enclosed the dried petals of blue forget-me-nots between the pages of the book. “It is there that we have to educate the people, it is there that we have to work,” he wrote to Jose Ma. Basa. “Go to my country exotic flow’rs sown by the traveler on his path, and ‘neath her cerulean skies that keep my loves in their bow’rs. Tell them about the faith for his nature land, the pilgrim sighs.”

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(Part II – “Re-Discovering Dr. Jose P. Rizal as Teacher”)