Polytechnic University of the Philippines

Sta. Mesa, Manila

A.Y 2022 – 2023 (1st Semester)

Miseducation of the
Filipinos
A reflection paper scrutinizing the key learnings on the Miseducation of the Filipinos by Renato
Constantino in partial fulfillment of the requirements of Readings in the Philippine History (GEED 002).

John Paul C. Belardo

BSME 1-2

January 2023
 Education was frequently employed as a means of social control throughout the colonial era.
European colonists felt they could produce a submissive and obedient populace by training the conquered
in Western values. Schools were frequently created to educate the languages, histories, and cultures of
Europe while repressing those of the conquered peoples. Many colonies only allowed a minority elite to
attend school, denying education to the vast bulk of the populace. By keeping the colonizers in power and
the colonized in subservient roles, this contributed to maintaining the status quo in terms of society and
the economy. However, as Renato Constantino discuss in his article “The Miseducation of the Filipinos,”
American Imperialist had a different strategy and approach in terms of Education during their
colonization of our country, Philippines. This is the start of us, Filipinos, being miseducated and once
again used for the foreign people’s own sake and power.

During the American occupation of the Philippines, which lasted from 1898 to 1946, American
colonial education was developed. American colonial education as described by Constantino has a main
objective to Americanize the Philippines and produce a submissive and obedient populace. But as
colonizers, they will never resort to having pure intention of educating our fellow countrymen, rather they
gave us what we crave for during the Spanish colonization that lasted for 333 years for their economic
and cultural agenda. Filipinos during the Spanish occupation was not able to attain education, there were
just a few that is in the higher class of the society that had the privilege to pursue their education in
Europe. In order for the Americans to capture the trust of the Filipinos, they gave us the Education that
we lacked for a very long time.

English was used as the instruction language when the Americans developed a public education
system that was based on the American system. They opened the school to everyone. They also
developed technical schools to instruct students in specialized trades and normal schools to prepare
teachers. Filipino history, culture, and customs received minimal attention in the curriculum, which
placed a strong emphasis on American history, culture, and values. They had implicitly asserted their
culture and making it as their advantage to write an image of being the pro-colony imperialists.

As a result, the educational system has become completely oblivious to the needs of the country;
it is now merely a means of ensuring that students remain in school, pass exams, and memorize facts; it
has little bearing on their development as citizens or on the development of their nationalism. In addition,
we have not yet reached the level of mastery either in our native tongues or in the English language. The
way in which concepts are presented has gotten so hazy that at one point, they hardly qualify as intelligent
arguments. Despite our inability to fully grasp some of its profound significance, we got attracted by this
strange language and still regard it as being better to our own.

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 On the Philippines' language and cultural identity, the American colonial school system had a
considerable influence. Indigenous languages and traditions were shunned when English overtook them
as the language of choice. The Americans forced the Filipino natives to embrace their education system
although they had become more confused since it was a sudden change especially that they targeted to use
English in educating the people. Due to this, the Philippines now suffer from a history of linguistic and
cultural erasure, with many Filipinos being unable to speak their original mother tongues and without a
thorough grasp of their own culture. And sad to say that with all the unfortunate happenings in our history
with regard to our disregarded language during the American occupation, a proposal of removing Filipino
as a subject in college completely broke many Filipino nationalist’s hearts. Given the fact that our
national language had been stagnant for several years due to the colonial era of our country, our fellow
countrymen didn’t even bother to think about the impact of this proposal to the development of our own
language. Once again, it may sound tiring, but Filipinos tend to sabotage themselves since then. A self-
sabotage that may cost their own identity and culture.

One may argue that the Americans' attempts to establish colonial education in the Philippines
were only partially effective. On the one hand, they were successful in creating a vast public school
system, which aided in raising literacy rates and giving education to a wider percentage of the populace.
The promotion of English usage in the Philippines, where it is still a vital language today, was further
aided by its use as the primary language of teaching. But does this drastic change completely favor the
Philippine culture? The answer is no because with the education system that they have left us, Filipinos
tend to choose to be fluent in English than to be fluent in their native language because the Americans
instilled to us that being good at English means being more intelligent. This became a standard in the
Philippine society which is a bad thing since Filipinos strive more to know a foreign language than their
own.

Moreover, a great amount of harm was also caused by the American colonial school system in the
Philippines. A legacy of cultural erasure exists in the Philippines as a result of the system's strong
emphasis on American history, culture, and values and the repression of Filipino history, culture, and
customs. The development of a highly educated and competent workforce in the Philippines was further
hampered by the concentration on vocational education and the lack of emphasis on higher education and
critical thinking abilities. In short, American colonial education tainted the fact that education should be
simultaneously achieved with a goal to have cultural development and nationalistic advocacies. They
completely ruined the main essence of having education in our country. Education in our country is just
for the sake of having a career in the future but not having the sense of advancing our cultural growth
especially our language.

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 “With American education, the Filipinos were not only learning a new language; they were not
only forgetting their own language; they were starting to become a new type of American. American
ways were slowly being adopted. Our consumption habits were molded by the influx of cheap American
goods that came in duty-free.”

– Renato Constantino

As Constantino discussed this part in his article, a slap of reality started to sink in. A lot of
Filipinos show a tendency to patronage foreign products. This had been a stereotype in our society that if
we consume and use products from other countries, this equates to having a higher quality of products. As
a result, local products are being disregarded. Just like in shoes, Filipinos use more international branded
shoes such as Nike and Adidas. The fact that our country has its own shoe capital, Marikina, it is a sad
reality that the Marikina shoe industry is having a hard time coping in the market because of these foreign
brands. This type of lifestyle is very Americanized.

Aside from the aforementioned sectors that are affected by the colonial policies of the Americans,
they greatly influenced the political aspect of our country. The establishment of a new political system
that was based on the American system was one of the most important consequences of American
colonialism on Philippine politics. This includes establishing a bicameral legislature, a presidential
system of government, and an independent judiciary. But because the Philippines remained an American
colony and did not receive complete independence, the local government's actual power was constrained.
This had been the start where puppet regime in the country kickstarted. The colonizers had injected their
American method of politics into the creation of political institutions in the Philippines. The U.S. colonial
system developed its Americanized puppet that will serve their colonial interests in the nation. Another
upshot was the formation of a central government, which took the place of the conventional local
governance structure based on regional and ethnic connections. Local governments were weakened as a
result of this power-centering, and conventional political involvement was also lost.

In conclusion, the goal of Americanizing the Philippines and producing a submissive and
obedient populace heavily influenced American colonial education in the Philippines. The school system
suppressed Filipino history, culture, and customs in favor of emphasizing American history, culture, and
ideals. The system also discouraged higher education and placed a significant emphasis on vocational
education, which hampered the creation of a low educated and competent workforce in the Philippines.
Additionally, it had a profound effect on the Philippines' language and cultural identity, leaving a legacy

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of linguistic and cultural erasure. Subsequently, the colonizers built a centralized government, a new
political system fashioned after the one in the United States, crushed political parties and opposition, and
limited civil freedoms and human rights. This colonial experience had a long-lasting effect on the
Philippines and still has an influence on the current political climate of the nation.

As a generation who wants a change and craves for the betterment of our country, we should
always bare in mind that our privilege to have this education, although it may be a product of oppression,
we should have the mindset that this is not the end of us, we should take advantage of it and make it as
our motivation to impel the birth of our own education system as well as our own governance that will
protect the rights and desires of every Filipino people. It is a challenge for us to take action and make our
country completely decolonize and rebuild our nation by reenforcing nationalistic advocacies and goals.
With this, we can now say that we, as the song Rosas goes, are Filipinos who are wholeheartedly willing
answer the call of our motherland, Filipinos who are brave enough stand up and be resilient despite the
oppression given to us by the colonizers, Filipinos with conviction, and Filipinos that know the right and
just (“Pilipinong may pusong sagutin ang tugon. Pilipinong may tapang na muling bumangon. Pilipinong
buo ang paninindigan. Alam ang tama at totoo.” – Nica del Rosario). May this be a wakeup call not just
for the younger generation but to all the Filipinos, to stand for their rights and be the citizens that are not
blinded by colonial imprints.

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