Rizal and People Power --Eugenia Duran-Apostol

COMMENTARY

Rizal and People Power


By Eugenia Duran-Apostol

Inquirer


Last updated 02:50am (Mla time) 11/27/2006


Published on page A15 of the November 27, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer



(The following are excerpts from a lecture before the members of PEN, a worldwide association of writers with 144 centers in 101 countries. Francisco Sionil Jose is the founder of PEN Philippines.)

I GREW UP IN CATHOLIC SCHOOLS WHERE JOSE RIZAL was often described as a non-believer in Christian tenets and as someone who should be avoided if one wanted to go to heaven after death.

In Alfredo Roces and Gilda Cordero-Fernando’s “Filipino Heritage” encyclopedia, I found out from the Jesuit scholar John Schumacher that Jose Rizal is really my kind of guy.

He was so quarrelsome … going all the way to Germany, Paris and Barcelona with all those Filipino propagandists, trying to impress upon the Spanish Cortes that the Filipinos were ready for independence … and that the Spanish colonizers were abusers, persecutors and power-hungry.

I quote from the book: “Rizal also looked forward to eventual independence but he had little faith in political journalism, lobbying and strategy. For Rizal, the preparation needed for independence was education in its broadest sense—the formation of a people who would be worthy of their freedom and would protect it from its new tyrants.”

Rizal later broke away from the other propagandists. He wanted to focus on education reform. But a firing squad ended his life at 35 years.

Rizal did not see the changes in Philippine society during the American occupation, especially the public school system the Americans set up. He would have been quite pleased, only to be disappointed later with the education system’s decline that accelerated during the martial law years. The exploding population would exert tremendous pressure on the system itself. Overcrowded schools, substandard facilities and too few really good teachers and school administrators became endemic problems of post-Marcos era administrations, from Cory Aquino, to Fidel Ramos, to Joseph “Erap” Estrada and now to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

After my own disillusionment with the aftermath of Edsa 1986 and Edsa II, we at the Foundation for Worldwide People Power revisited our mandate sometime in 2002. We saw that all that we had reclaimed through People Power—our democratic institutions, our freedom of expression, and our dignity as Filipinos—could be easily lost again if our youth had no opportunity to discover, nurture and protect these freedoms “from its new tyrants.”

Making our education system relevant would directly meet this need. But under present circumstances, wouldn’t this be a quixotic adventure at best?

The average Grade 6 pupil can only answer half of the National Achievement Test questions correctly. Only a little over 3,000 elementary schools out of the 29,000 that took the NAT this year managed to score 75 percent or higher.

High school students who can barely comprehend written lesson materials—whether in English or Filipino—are not uncommon.

How can you expect these young men and women to enjoy literary masterpieces? How can they “discuss, debate and communicate,” when they have to struggle through the simple act of reading?

In his essay simply titled “Instruction,” Rizal declared that the mission of education is “to elevate the country to the highest seat of glory and to develop the people’s mentality.” Rizal further argued, “Since education is the foundation of society and a prerequisite for social progress, only through education could the country be saved from domination.”

The FWWPP launched the Education Revolution in 2002 for two reasons. First, because education is the best vehicle for social transformation, we must make it ready to meet this enormous challenge. Second, every Philippine Constitution says that the national government is primarily responsible for equitable access to quality education.

But that responsibility is not exclusive. Those who will reap the immeasurable benefits that a good education brings—and that is just about everyone—must share this responsibility. This makes Education Revolution a People Power movement. It calls on us to focus our energies toward helping move every school community toward excellence.

After four years of research and field experience, the FWWPP now has templates to help communities address their respective education needs. We have started using a performance-based framework that enables the school, the community and the resource holders to enter into sustainable partnerships premised on realistic achievement goals, such as consistently better NAT scores. Rather than asking for donations, the school community organizes itself into a working group that drafts a strategic plan for education quality. Such plan could have, for instance, a community-based reading and math tutoring program, or a workbook development and production activity. With a plan like this, resource holders will know that their help is being used to directly improve learning outcomes.

Meanwhile, the educators on the FWWPP board—namely Dr. Jose Abueva, Dr. Edilberto de Jesus, Dr. Maria Lim Ayuyao, Mr. Panfilo Domingo and the late Dr. Doreen Fernandez—have stressed that meaningful education reform cannot take place if no measures were made to improve the teacher’s professional capacity, values and motivation.

The FWWPP’s Mentoring the Mentors program does exactly this. It combines teacher formation activities with active teaching and learning strategies. Participating teachers learn to soberly assess their skills. Expert resource persons suggest improvement avenues and guide them on a journey of self-discovery, reinforcing in them what being a teacher truly means.

Our 2003 Mentoring the Mentors session for the Iloilo city schools division has rapidly blossomed into implementations for all DepEd regions.

Likewise, the League of Corporate Foundations and the Philippine Business for Education have integrated the FWWPP’s Education Revolution Community Participation framework into their “57-75” and “No School Below 60” campaigns. The members of these two very influential organizations have found the framework realistic and doable.

Rizal said “It is a useless life that is not consecrated to a great ideal. It is like a stone wasted on the field, without becoming a part of any edifice.”

Our motherland is the edifice, and her glory is our great ideal. Education is the key to our deliverance.

What a happy meeting of minds—Rizal and ours!


Eugenia Duran Apostol is the board chair of the Foundation for Worldwide People Power.



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