Shaped Mentality

When I was a kid, I knew that education is a great support in the foundations of human
development in which it is the process of passing on knowledge, experience and skills from older
generations to younger ones but when I grew older, I slowly realized that it is something more
significant than just a transfer of knowledge because education also unites and integrates people
around the country into one community, sharing the same values, history, knowledge and goals.

The article, “The Miseducation of the Filipino” written by Renato Constantino, changed
and added my knowledge prior to the educational system of our country. The reading increases
my perception about Filipino education because it was explained that its primary objective is to
produce a citizenry that appreciates and is conscious of its nationhood and has national goals for
the betterment of the community, and not an anarchic mass of people. It made me ask myself, are
these primary objectives are being accomplished?

I remembered when I was still in elementary, it was very hard for me to answer the question
“what is your favorite subject?” because I knew to myself that I don’t have one until I became a
grade six student, I encountered Philippines History in which it turned out to be my favorite subject
aside from reason that can easily understood it since it was written in a Filipino language, but I
was fascinated by the events that happened in our country. Back then, the type of learning was still
a spoon feeding so I just accept information and understand the different events without analyzing
it so all I thought was Americans are the best colonizers because they saved us from our greatest
enemy, the Spaniards, they help us to build our own government and guided us in educating
Filipinos. When I was in high school, I still love Philippine History but my love for it was gradually
weaken when I learned that not all the things that are in history books are genuine and there are a
lot of things that are not written in history books but are true. So I felt confused on what should I
believe that is true in our history. The article made me understand that the root cause of this, is the
educational system that was imposed by the Americans; they used educational system as a colonial
tool to capture and attract the Filipinos which this strategy made them defeat the Philippines since
they used an effective means of conquering people and that is to capture their minds. The
Philippine education was shaped by the major factor of preserving and expanding American
control in which they removed the nationalism in our hearts. That is the very reason why even
government services were Filipinized, the Department of Education was never trusted to any
Filipino. Philippine history books have portrayed America as a kind nation who came here only to
save us from Spain and to benefits us to gain liberty and democracy. That is why when I was in
elementary, I knew that the Spaniards are villain and the savior is the Americans. This made me
recall the saying “Keep your friends close and hold your enemies closer”.

Americans introduced the educational system that reshaped our thoughts and culture which
results to colonial mentality that we are now practicing. When I was young, the first language I
learned is Filipino in which I also understand our dialect but I am not that good in it while I
encountered English language in school. There are times when I am quarrelling with other kids on
our street, I speak in English language to look like elegant and to prove them that I am an intelligent
person unlike them. This made me recognize that this kind of attitude was imposed by the
Americans since they introduced the English language as the medium of instruction which serves
as a language barrier, a barrier of thought because we use language to express ourselves and the
thinking process is retarded since we are only able to get a general idea but not a deeper
understanding, and a barrier to other people because English became a status symbol in which the
native tongues are looked down. Because of this, most of Filipinos doesn’t have mastery of English
and doesn’t have mastery on the native language. I have watched a video on social media, an
interview about how fluent the Filipino people in Filipino language, and most of the people in the
video can’t translate English sentences in Filipino language correctly, while they can translate
Filipino language in English correctly.

Before, I have a mentality that any local products like clothing and shoes are not worth
buying because of its quality that is why I usually bought products that are not locally made. As I
grew up I realized that it was a very bad mistake to look down to our local products because I
experienced that there are lots of imported products that doesn’t have a good quality. In which this
is also the effect of colonial mentality that was imposed to the Filipinos that is why it is our habit
to patronize the products foreign people because we were practiced that the western nations are
superior beings who are capable of manufacturing things. This behavior is still observable until
now because a lot of Filipinos are into the different famous Europe brands of bags and shoes.

Americans also set standards like the standard of beauty. I have two siblings and they both
have whiter skin while I have a brown skin. A lot of people tease me when I was still a kid and
until now, because of my skin color; they would say that I am not as beautiful as them but this
situation didn’t push me to make my skin whiter because I embrace myself and I embrace the look
of a true Filipino. We can see that we, Filipinos, lack patriotism even in our race’s skin color
because we were taught that people with whiter skin are beautiful. Even in our entries in Miss
Universe, the contestant of the Philippines is mostly half Filipina and not a pure Filipina.

Our professor in Understanding the Self asked us “who we are as a Filipino or self in a
context of culture?”, actually it gave me a hard time to think about the answer because I don’t
really know what is a true Filipino in the context of our own (original) culture because most of the
information about it was in textbooks during pre-colonialism only and this made me form a
question that “What if the colonizers did not know about the country of Philippines? Then who we
are now as a Filipino?”. In my own opinion, ourselves can shape our lives but the major
contribution is the cultural context, because culture shapes the person. The moment we were born,
our culture shaped ourselves, we were born in the Philippines so we are Filipinos and we should
do this and we should believe in such things etc. in simpler words, the culture has impact in
constructing the self that is why when the Americans shaped our mentality and culture which
formed a new generation of “Filipino-American”. For me, Filipinos have mixed culture that was
imposed by the different colonizers in which we were gradually experimented and reshaped and
now we are the product of the reshaped culture. In my own opinion, we, Filipinos, can still
reshaped our culture or bad mentality that the colonizers were imposed to us but one things for
sure, we need a lot of time and effort in reshaping it to produce a better Filipino people with
nationalism in their hearts.