Angelo is Blind

I’ve been in the Philippines for a little under 2 weeks, been at UP for a full week, and have already seen more of the Philippines than I ever have before. I was born in the Philippines and moved to the U.S. when I was 5 years old ending up in Washington State. I am a Filipino-American and know more about American history than my own Filipino heritage. This is about to change as I spend the next month and a half here.

What does education look like in places like Batad Rice Terraces and how does it compare to education in metro manila? Being in Batad this past weekend I got to experience one of the greatest places on earth. Life there consists of rice farming and tourism. A simple life away from modern computer technology, cars, electronics, etc. and a life tending to farms, family, and foreigners is what defines Batad.

I saw one elementary school and a few day care centers, which makes me wonder if formal education in a classroom setting after grade school exists or is even necessary in villages like Batad. Most everyone there speaks English because of all the foreigners that visit there year round. In an article titled, “Learning in a Global Era” edited by Marcelo Suarez he speaks about formal vs. informal education. Formal education he says tends to focus more on teaching versus informal education where the focus is on learning hands on a skill or trade.

Since visiting Batad and driving through the Philippine countryside I’ve been wondering about what the values of the communities that live there are. Aside from basic necessities such as food, water, and shelter, what lessons get passed on from generation to generation? Batad Rice Terraces rely on farming, and the tourism trade. The positive outcome of tourism is that there is a constant flow of currency, and reading and writing is valued, among other things. Rice farming is obviously an important livelihood of the community in Batad. Dr. Jose gladly gave us an insight to some of the factors that may impact Batad and surrounding communities within the next generation. The biggest negative impact would be the disengaged youth. Rice farmers teach their children who in turn take care of the rice fields and pass their knowledge on to the next generation. But Dr. Jose stated that this generation of youth now are not interested in staying in Batad. They want to venture to the metropolis where the lure of business, jobs, and the potential for better living await. But this I already know is not the case for everyone. Simply walking or driving through Manila I see the barrio, slums, and squatters.

After dinner, which was pork sinigang (traditional Filipino dish), the owner of the Hillside Inn enticed some of the group to pay for massages. I’ve never had a massage before and being so inexpensive I decided to get one. The woman who gave me a massage was named Marta and as she was working I started to ask her questions (in tagalog). I asked, “So I’ve seen how great Batad is, but is life here hard?” She answered, “Yeah, there’s only farming and tourism here, and for the men that can work they go to Baguio to mine Gold”. Marta told me that she’s only been living there for about four years and that the only reason she moved there was because she had a debt to pay, which was the most in detail she got about why she moved there. She has two boys one was two and a half months and the other was three years old. Part of the very scarce income they get is from her job giving massages to tourists.

Back in Manila where my extended family live I have an eight year old cousin named Cholo who is in the third grade. Before I went to UP I stayed with him and his family for a few days during which I got to visit his school for picture day. When I went with him and my other cousin to Cholo’s school (which was a mansion compared to the elementary school in Batad) it was cool to watch him having fun on picture day. Cholo’s homework consisted of English reading and writing, Philippine geography, and art, which may be similar to what they teach in Batad elementary school.

But what happens after elementary school is what I’m interested in knowing. My other cousins who are in their teens and early adulthood are all pursuing something in the medical field. They have the opportunity to study more and are taking advantage of it. Our tour guide from Banaue named Anthony told me that after elementary school he started working. He comes from a poor family and couldn’t afford to pay for tuition or school supplies so he began working different jobs. Eventually he got into the tour industry, which is what he does currently. He’s only twenty-two, has only elementary education under his belt, but is thriving in his community because he discovered a skill he possesses and took advantage of it. He’s a hustler. He has to work differently than others from different backgrounds because that was the cards he was dealt with. I respect him and others like him for thriving in a society that hasn’t given him any opportunities for upward mobility in an economic sort of way.

Suarez states that there are three main failures of schooling in global terms. They are, that schools lack the ability to engage the youth, improperly educating immigrant students to ease the transition of immigration, and lastly the problem of under-enrollment in poorer countries creates a great educational gap between the wealthier nations. Unfortunately this is true in a lot of poor nations one of them being the Philippines. I see how this reading applies to the first week of classes here at UP because looking beyond the campus walls I can see the obvious income gap between the wealthy and the poor here in the Philippines.

Driving through poor regions from our trip to Banaue, Batad, and Baguio there were make-shift houses made of scrap metal, outdoor showers, countless stray animals and trash laying in the most inconceivable places, then out of nowhere a beautiful house that doesn’t seem to belong there emerges out of the blue. The rich and the poor live in the same place, but what are the rich doing that the poor aren’t? I saw a few nice houses behind gas stations, which I am guessing belong to the owners of the gas stations. What does it take to gain wealth or even just gain a living in the Philippines?

I feel wealthy coming here and being able to buy things that I wouldn’t normally buy back home. When the currency rate is 1:43 or 44 you feel like you can afford whatever you please. I had a part time job back home and didn’t really have the chance to save all that much money to come here, but was able to bring about six hundred bucks to last me for two months. Money is hard to come by anywhere, but when you come to the Philippines with U.S. dollars it’s as if you could buy anything. I wonder what it would take and how much work it would be for the Philippine pesos to raise in value. I have no idea, but it’s food for thought after thinking about the education system between the poor and the poorer within the Philippines.

The first week of class with Dr. Jose was very enlightening as well. I could have explored Philippine history on my own being that I am Filipino, but I was too disconnected and busy with daily superficial things to realize that this stuff is important to my story. In Ileto’s “Philippine-American War: Friendship and Forgetting” it really hit me hard that the history of the Philippines is unknown to me. How can I not know about the massacres of Filipino men, women, and children? Oh that’s right it was a nonevent. Ileto stated that the Philippine-American war “began the process of becoming a nonevent after the official end of the war on July 4^th 1902”. American colonial schools in the Philippines disregarded the events completely and pretty soon a generation or two later the war was out of sight out of mind.

This reading really gave me an insight to the historical timeline of the Philippines in the Filipino’s perspective. The integration of American in Filipino culture is evident in daily life. The jeepney’s are a reminder of the time of American occupation as well as Philippine ingenuity. There is a mesh of cultural influence from the Spanish, American and Filipino in all facets of life here. Spanish influenced homes, names, buildings are some examples of the mesh of culture. There are also roads and monuments that pay homage to American soldiers most evident in Baguio. It’s hard to identify Filipino culture from others because there really is a hint of some form of cultural influence from everywhere.

Overall my stay here so far has taught me much about Filipino-American history in the Filipino’s perspective, allowed me to experience places I would not have otherwise experienced, bonded with a group of people I have not previously known, and has immersed me in a culture that has somehow been previously lost to me.

We visited the Office of the Commission of Filipino's Overseas today, and it literally was an overwhelming experience. I don't know how they felt, but I completely saw myself in their shoes. My mom and sister were once there doing what they're doing now. I was too young to be in an orientation, but I feel for the youth who are going through the motions of being oriented on a foreign country. They are about to embark on a chapter of their lives that is utterly unknown to them. It's going to be one of the biggest challenges of their young lives, and all I could do was give them my two cents and wish them well. CFO seems to be providing a great service to Filipino immigrants which is to help ease the transition of moving to a foreign world. Suarez touches on this in his article as being a problematic factor in the fallout of education for immigrants in foreign countries. CFO provides a helpful transition and I know that there must be other groups in other nations that provide programs for immigrants. This is definitely something that captures my heart, and it pains me to see and hear horror stories of human trafficking, suicide attempts, etc. I want to be involved in work that provides transition services to immigrants because I was once an immigrant of the US and in a lot of ways I realize that I still am.

Identity is just a word to me right now. I thought I was a Filipino-American, but what in the world does that mean? I am full blooded Filipino with American culture and customs engrained in my mannerisms. I am inspired to search for an answer to the question of identity after visiting the countryside, being in a city where most of the roads are named after American soldiers, learning Pilipino history, re-learning tagalog, and seeing the eyes, and faces of the youth and adults of the orientation classes in the Office of Filipino's Overseas.