A miseducation on indigenous peoples

By Vincent Cabreza |Philippine Daily Inquirer

January 15, 2013

Its not a confession one would expect from an education

secretary.
Addressing a conference on indigenous education in Benguet
last week, Education Secretary Armin Luistro said he belonged
to a generation that was taught to believe that some
indigenous groups, like those in the Cordillera, are
uneducated, courtesy of a Western-oriented, Englishdominated curriculum.
CIRCLE OF THE WISE Education
Secretary Armin Luistro (inset)
urges
local
governments
to
include indigenous knowledge
and culture in the classroom
subjects of grade school pupils,
through ordinances, to pass down
the wisdom of Cordillera elders to
the next generation. RICHARD
BALONGLONG

I come from an educational system that made me memorize

from my grade school years the fact that the Philippines was
discovered by [Ferdinand] Magellan on March 16, 1521 and
that Lapu-lapu is a nice fish, Luistro said, adding that this
was one of the many lessons that fostered prejudice.

Little did I know that this singular memorized date had

colored negatively my own view of the Philippines, my sense of self and how I have
engaged the world even up to today, he said at the conference organized to solicit
ideas for the enforcement of Department of Education (DepEd) Order No. 62, the
national indigenous peoples education policy framework.
This is what education does. It teaches us a perspective. It teaches us how to think.
But if we are not critical, education miseducates rather than brings us to another level
of understanding, knowledge and wisdom, he said.
Luistro said local governments could enact ordinances that would compel teachers to
use indigenous knowledge and culture when they teach science, math and other
subjects, in order to correct the miseducation suffered by his generation. According to
DepEd records, 26,219 private elementary pupils and 215,480 public grade school
pupils are enrolled for school year 2012-13 in the Cordillera.
The DepEd and other agencies should find a way of absorbing elders who know how to
weave or build rice terraces as part of the official teaching staff, Luistro also said.
It is our hope and dream our elders will be part of the education system. There is
indigenous wisdom that will have to be transmitted [by elders] to students in our
schools, he said.
Luistro, however, said the bureaucracy only absorbs teachers who pass government
licensure examinations.
I dont have the answers. We have to work this out. Do we need an equivalency [test]
so a recognized elder can be absorbed [by DepEd] and knowledge is not lost? he
asked.
He said the reformed basic education program, popularly known as K+12 that is now
being implemented, is grounded on a conviction that indigenous peoples carry with
them a wisdom that is largely misunderstood, maybe undocumented, and therefore
unappreciated.

We are an educational system that has been a productsometimes unwittinglyof a

Western understanding of what we should know. I was taught that [Igorots] were
uneducated. That was ingrained in my memory for some reason or another. I dont
think it was in the textbook, but maybe that was the stereotype passed on to me,
Luistro said.

He said he assumed that the Ifugao rice terraces had no other name until he
discovered the term payew.
A recent incident shattered all his prejudices. Luistro said: I go to this rice paddy and
I meet an old woman in Lagawe, [Ifugao]. It took me 30 minutes to cross a hundred
meters [of a payew]. Several meters away I saw a woman with a basket on her head
and walking like Miss Universe gracefully on that pilapil (paddy) and I thought to
myself, Uh-oh, what will happen, this is a one-way street.
He said he was ashamed when the woman stepped off the paddy but when he offered
to also step away, she replied, in impeccable English, Thats alright. Im
accustomed to this.
Do you realize what kind of mental framework that shattered in that one
engagement? I realized that I have been miseducated by a system that perpetuates a
cultural oppression and one that we have to change, he said.
According to Luistro, it is now a DepEd policy to heed ordinances that compel the
integration of indigenous information into classroom subjects.
We cannot come out with a K+12 curriculum that is like a McDonalds menu. We
cant teach what an Ifugao knows to a Batanes pupil. It is not [about] uniformity, it is
about standards, he said.
He said educators wont be starting from scratch.
In December last year, public school teachers in the Cordillera began designing
courses that would teach students about climate science using the myths and folklore
taught them by their elders.
The project was discussed at a Dec. 6 forum aimed at popularizing a DepEd mandate
to include climate change and disaster risk management subjects in grade school.
Many schools in Benguet, which suffered from Typhoon Pepeng in 2009, have not
integrated extreme weather changes in classroom discussions in part because of the
trauma children have experienced from calamities, said Marivic Patawaran, officer-incharge of the Peoples Initiative for Learning and Community Development.
More than 100 people in Benguet died when Pepeng triggered landslides.
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