FROM THE COACH
I was not born to be a cultural and art worker of what I am at present. It is a contrary of my dream to build my own hospital to deliver basic services to the poor. It just comes in my journey. For one reason, I am proud of being a Filipino. Indeed, I have always been a martyr to it, since I discovered it in me. God destined me in a fellow, which I am in line with. The medicine of my own. My oxygen. My food and my master. Without it, my life will be in the "time of unsaturated". Culture and Arts, my religion, my faith in Him extends. I feel Holy with it.
My obsession with the juxtaposition of many things or a combination of binary opposition of events, situations, materials and other reflects on the way we move for a proof. I believe that Filipinos as a whole already behind from the origin because we are product of influential paradigm in all aspects of our life. I am Bicolano by blood only here that I was born in Mindanao when my grandparents looked for a greener pasture from San Miguel,Catanduanes and settled here in Lake Sebu. I was borne of "pasyon" before the Holy Week when I saw my families singing the life of Christ. It was then that I learned "Pantomina" when I attended National folk dance workshops which I enjoyed and studied. Where is me now as the real "Uragon". Where is me now as the real Filipino.
We must always remember that our existence in this world lies both in the subjective and objective realities of life. Sometimes, we fall to become negative. Some of us tend to become positive with our dispositions. Thus, the juxtaposition approach allows me to try the possibility of having this work for this purpose. This also makes me understand more about life and experiment on how to convey the contrast in it.
It is then through my initiative that I created and proposed cultural programs in the school for the young minds to be inculcated and saturated of Filipinism that despite of the influx of modern influences still their hearts and souls will truly say and work for the country.
In the Philippines, one of the more popular and common observation about the preset Western type of schooling introduced by colonizers in their colonies is that is not useful, relevant and responsive to the needs, problems and aspiration of the individual, community and country's development. "It is unresponsive to the needs of the people for schooling is perceived as a nuisance and unnecessary intrusion into their social lives" (Barsaga, 1990:129). This negative perception towards schooling is partly attributed to poorly designed curricula, culturally insensitive instructional approaches, methods, strategies and techniques and to the inability of school administrators and teachers to adopt the schooling system to the community's structures. Hinzen (1988) observed that the colonial schools did not fit the indigenous cultural background either in its general orientation or in details of content, methods and materials and institutional arrangements.
Likewise, Soriano (1981) traced back the problem thus, We have all these long years, under foreign influence and orientation, dismally failed to look inward and deep into our roots; our native learning styles, our resources, our value system on which to base what and how we are to learn. In short, we have allowed ourselves to be led into a denial of our cultural heritage on which should be anchored a system of education that would suit the temperament and the intellectual capacities of our people as well as their financial capabilities.
Indeed the problem of our present system of schooling appears to be its emphasis on acquiring knowledge and skills unrelated to the realities of life as lived by members of the society. Thus, even if many students have availed of schooling, they easily forget whatever is learned from school. This is because, Jocano (1969) aptly pointed out, of the discontinuity between what is taught in schools and the requirements of community life where these schools to operate. In other works, instruction in school does not have immediate, practical usefulness in terms of actual needs.
Thus, Hizzen (1988) said that there is an urgent need to ?push back the dominance of Western educational patterns and rehabilitate the principals, methods and institutional arrangements of traditional education. This is not, however, an endorsement that the colonized must reverse time and go back being primitive again. The idea is to revisit the culture of a people, its indigenous learning systems with the view of discovering the wealth of educational ideas imbedded in their cultural heritage and to make use of it today whenever appropriate. Certainly, there are other elements of indigenous learning systems. (e.g., contents, methods and techniques, materials, assessment practices, instructional arrangements, etc.) that would be useful because they dovetail with the particular needs of the learners. The challenge is how these can be integrated with the existing learning system in a fashion that they mutually enrich and reinforce each other. A mutually reinforcing integration of the native and new learning systems, a special type of rapprochement or co-existence, is likely to result in much more responsive and thus more acceptable and better quality of education. The integration of the two systems may very well lead to the organization of a truly community-based and culturally sensitive learning system.
Whether this kind of indigenization of the present learning system translates to better student learning performance remains to be proven. Whether it improves the holding power of the school system, indicated by lower dropout rate and high cohort survival rate, also remain to be discovered. And whether learning becomes a process of living because individuals learn what they live, rather than academic disciplines, and the learner is an active participant in the everyday activities of the home, the family and the community is yet to be known.
The need to go beyond the sentimental and romantic rationale for the adoptions or adaptations of certain elements with the existing education or learning system makes sense. While there is already collected evidence of the integration of both the old and new learning systems, these are relatively few and far between. A more focused study on curriculum localization and indigenization, highlighting the cultural forms or elements to be integrated with the existing learning system and to be tested for their effectiveness in bring about learning achievement should be given due course. The study should pay particular attention to the process of integration to be mindful about the possibility of coming up with a successful outcome.
Localizing or indigenizing the school curriculum by integrating promising cultural elements (e.g., traditional communication system and indigenous knowledge) requires thorough understanding of a community's enculturation and socializing processes. It carries with it the responsibility to sort out the functional indigenous elements and to determine the teaching-learning situations and processes through which the introduction of such elements can contribute to improving the process of cognition and learning.
If only if what is stated above is real, I think no more question of identity. For me, integration is not enough in the mainstream curriculum of culture especially of the indigenous people. This is just a half-baked pizza. It was so shocking that the revealing results of my thesis proved that there is a contrary result of the integration of T'boli culture in the curriculum to the lack of knowledge and disliking attitude of the T'boli students towards their own culture. Actually, the issue of cultural gap of the T'boli students enrolled in Lake Sebu National High School was presented in the General Assembly of the Lake Sebu Culture and Arts Council that there was a common reaction especially from the T'boli professionals why this things happened. It was then a great desire that this issue will be proven if it is true to all T'boli students enrolled in the different high schools both public and private including the out of school youth. This triggerred me to do research and surprisingly came timely and echoed with the Doon Po sa Amin Learning Challenge.
With the integration in the curriculum of the different schools in the Municipality of Lake Sebu both in public and private, why it came out that there is already a gap towards their own culture. "A CULTURE GENERATION GAP."
The worst thing is to hear and know that the tribes themselves dislike already this culture which other people especially international tourists like most. What we need is SKILLS DEVELOPMENT TRAINING to this young minds that will teach them how to make this crafts and to perform and play this dances and musical instruments that out of it they can earn money out of developing their skills compare to making this young T'bolis as servants and home maids and house boys in the cities and sad to say, most of them are already sexual prostitutes in the booming cities in Mindanao.
It is then that I am begging to the following:
A. CURRICULUM PLANNERS
It is with strong desire that this research we have conducted will serve as a reference on the implementation or integration of the Indigenous People culture in the curriculum providing you the inspiration and psyche about the importance of this struggle for the young generation of the Indigenous People to be proud of their identity. Furthermore, we believed that we already provided you statistical data that will help you in conceptualizing a plan for a baseline to be considered in the implementation of the program.
B. TEACHERS AND SCHOOL ADMINISTATORS
In our own little ways and through this, we contributed an in-depth understanding and deep appreciation of culture and will be the basis of teachers to incorporate the T'boli way of life in the curriculum with emphasis on the beliefs and customs and most importantly the skills training. This will also help discover the T'boli skills, talents, abilities and interests which could be a tool for integration with the mainstream society. Thus, delivering the educational services needed by the tribal students effectively and efficiently.
D. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND OTHER GOVERNMENT AGENCIES (NCCA, CCP, NCIP)
This research already proves a GAP of the indigenous peoples specifically the T'bolis in their own culture. It really needs an immediate action and support.
E. INDIGENOUS PEOPLE
You have really the struggle for self-determination in the ever-changing terrain goes on amidst the new global order imposed by globalization. This research as valuable resource as awakening instrument. Let us stand out at par excellence in terms of performance without being marginalized and alienating from our own culture and let us strengthen our link to our indigenous traditions. Let us be proud of what we are and do well for our land.
I have already shared by thrusts to inculcate the young minds proud of being born here. Unless, you are proud of what you are, you are doing something good for it.
JENNIFER B. TUPAS, Coach
DPSA Culture and Arts Category
