In the Name of Standardization

A young Ata girl approaches me and says, "Ate, wala ko kahibalo sa answer ani." (Older Sister, I don't know the answer to this question) She then proceeds to show me the item on a mock exam that was supposed to help her prepare for the  National Achievement Test (NAT).

I read the question, looked at her and said, "Kahibalo ka ani." (You know this)

The item had a table with two columns, one column listed four body parts and the other listed their corresponding levels of sensitivity to radiation. The question read, "Which is most vulnerable to radiation?" The young girl asked, "Unsa diay nang vulnerable?" (What does vulnerable mean?)

I explained to her the meaning of the word vulnerable. She read the question again, looked at the data in the given table, and triumphantly declared, "Letter C ang answer kay siya man ang pinaka-sensitive!" (The answer is letter C because it's the body part listed as most sensitive!")

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I worked with another Ata girl on drills on vocabulary. After the 10-item quiz I asked her which of the 10 words she encountered that night was the most "alien" to her. She said "obstinate." I encouraged her to think of a situation where she can use the word obstinate so that she will have better retention of the word. She was either too shy to share a situation or just couldn't think of any.

The following day, we were watching the news and there was a community by the river that would not evacuate even after multiple warnings from the National Disaster Coordinating Council that it was flood prone. It has been raining for a couple of days already and the river was starting to overflow. While watching the news, the same girl says, "Obstinate pud kaayo ang mga tao uy!" (The people are very obstinate!")

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This is me honestly asking if the Department of Education realizes how unfair standardized exams are.

1. Up in mountain communities I have been to, public school teachers arrive Monday afternoon, start classes on Tuesday and leave the area on Thursday afternoon or Friday morning. There is just not enough days to cover all the things that the curriculum dictates they cover.
2. The Mother Tongue-Based Multi-Lingual Education is not really implemented in the areas I have been to. Public school teachers just do not speak the indigenous people's language. Some teachers would even tell parents to teach their children to speak in Cebuano (the second language of most of these communities) so that the students will understand the lessons.
3. There is more to life than just getting high marks in standardized exams.

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I understand that the point of basic public education is to develop competencies that will make students functioning members of society. And so I am led to ask these questions:

1. What is our idea of "functioning members" of society? Is this limited to blue-collar jobs? Do we even believe that students who finish in public schools are capable of doing more than just manual labor for the rich and powerful members of our society? Or... do I dare ask this... Do we subconsciously think that children who get a public school education are only good for blue-collar jobs so why should the state invest in them any more than it already has? This TEDx video features a public school teacher who does amazing work with her students and yet she shares about how a former student had to work really hard to get admittance to a private high school.
2. What if the whole point of education was to make us better human beings and not just functioning members of society? This article talks about removing liberal arts from college because you don't need to waste months and months poring over Kant, Freud, and Comte or learning to read and appreciate poetry and other great literary works. You can learn all that from the internet. And although the article has a point about STEM courses needing expensive equipment that is available in college institutions... it is an article written by a person who has missed the meaning of what education is. Education that goes beyond getting a college diploma.

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In a couple of weeks thousands of students will take the NAT. A lot of students will think that they are stupid and/or are only good for "planting kamote" (a derogatory expression used to tell students that they have no future in education so they might as well just plant sweet potatoes) because they don't know what "vulnerable" or "obstinate" mean.

I hope that one day we'll get over standardized exams and intentionally work towards deschooling society.

Civilization and the Natives

I am often amused at people's reactions when they ask me about what I do. Here is what the conversation is generally like when I talk to people I meet for the first time:

Person X: What do you do?
Me: I do community and leadership development work in indigenous and tribal communities.
Person X: Aaah... You build schools to educate the natives?
Me: Oh no. The project implemented in the community largely depends on what they communicate is their priority and/or need.
Person X: So do you build roads for them?
Me: No. Our focus is on cultural preservation. We have never had an infrastructure project.
Person X: Oh so how will they become civilized?

Some conversations would end with Person X commending me for what I was doing, saying, "It's good that you're doing that so you can help the natives and they can be civilized."


Let's "civilize" these natives. Yeah.

The mountains of Paquibato District, Davao City
I ride the bus for a couple of hours, get off at Santo Tomas and then ride the habal habal to Panaga

I was in Panaga, a remote mountain community of the Ata people, for a couple of days to facilitate discussion and planning around an indigenous gathering they are doing in March. When I left the city at 10AM the skies were cloudy and the latest weather report was on a low pressure area east of Mindanao. When I got to the town of Santo Tomas (where I get off the bus and ride a habal habal to get to the area), it wasn't even raining. Magwawa, the first river I had to cross (I cross two) was not flooded but the waters were already murky. The driver said, "ulan na jud ni ngadto sa taas." (It's definitely raining up in the mountains now.) I got to the area and it was raining, we had the discussion and planning until late in the evening, and then it started to pour hard. It rained the whole night. 

When I got up the following morning, it was still raining and the river around 30 meters from the house I was staying at was already flooded. I instantly knew I wasn't going back to the city that day as tropical storm Crising had already made landfall in Mindanao. 

On the third day, the flood waters have subsided and I was told that I could now go back to the city. When we got to Magwawa, there were eight habal habal, one truck, one horse, and thirty men trying to cross the river which was knee deep at its shallowest and chest deep at its deepest.


Uncivilized?

There were five habal habal on our side carrying produce from the mountains to be sold in the town/city. Each habal habal either had sacks of squash or sweet potatoes or a bukag (big wide wicker basket) of bananas. On the other side there were three habal habal with passengers who needed to go into the village--public school teachers and small store owners carrying supplies they have purchased from the town.

Our side of the river
The guy who is smiling is Lolong, my habal habal driver for the day

A few enterprising men who lived near the river have decided to make some money. Individuals can get on a horse to cross the river and pay 10 or 20 pesos, sacks of produce can be carried to the other side by one of the men for 25 pesos per sack, and the habal habal can be lifted by a team of four to six men for 70 pesos.

I was riding with four Ata men on my habal habal with a bukag of bananas and a sack of sweet potatoes. And this was the conversation:

Man 1: Magpa tabok ta sa ila? (Are we going to ask them to help us cross to the other side?)
Driver: Ah! Ka mahal ana! (Oh! That's too expensive!)
Man 2: Didto na lang ta sa ubos tabok. (Let's go downstream and cross the river from there.)
Man 3: Ka-ulaw pud nga dili ta mag pa tabok sa ila. (But wouldn't it look bad if we don't ask them to help us cross?)
Driver: Aw. Wala man tay ika-bayad. (Ah. We don't have money to pay.)
Man 2: Dayungan gud nato ni. (Let's work together to lift the habal habal.)
Man 3: 'Ta! Sige! (Let's do it! Okay!)
Man 1: Ah! Kana! (Ah! That's it!)

We got off the habal habal, walked downstream, and proceeded to cross the river. The men took turns helping each other in lifting the sacks of squash and sweet potatoes, the bukag of bananas, and the habal habal until all five habal habal on our side of the river have crossed over. It took an hour or so.

Who's more civilized now?

I silently watched these men sweating as they waded in the flooded river multiple times to help each other cross to the other side. I couldn't help but smile at the irony of it all.

I come from the big city where people laugh and make fun of other people whose cars stall and float after attempting to cross a flooded street. We even make memes about it and they go viral. Yes. We have nice concrete roads. We have electricity and running water and computers and the internet.

And here I was, in a remote mountain village. Narrow and unpaved roads accesible only by modified motor bikes. Without tap water (oh, there aren't even taps *smile*) and electricity. And I get a front row seat to one of the most awesome displays of the height of human social development.

Where men help each other because it is the "human" thing to do.

Stopping

There is a remote mountain community I regularly visit a few hours north of Davao City in Mindanao, Philippines. To get to the community one has to ride a motorbike or a habal-habal (aka skylab) for 30-40 minutes and cross two rivers.

When we got to the river a habal-habal carrying a big load of firewood had gotten stuck and was starting to fall over. The person driving the habal-habal I was on stopped and said, "We'll help first." I got off and sat by the riverbank. The driver was having difficulty keeping the motorbike upright as the firewood had started to disloge and he only had a little boy, around eight years old, as a companion. From the other side of the river a man driving his own habal-habal also stopped, got off, and went to help with the stuck habal-habal. The three men and the little boy worked on re-arranging the firewood and pushing the habal-habal.

I watched silently and thought about how in these mountains stopping is so commonplace. And I thought about how, in the big city, we glorify our busyness that stopping has become such a rare thing.

We find it hard to stop and sit and be with another person without fidgeting and looking at our watches or mobile phones. We find it hard to stop and take in the beauty that surrounds us. We find it hard to stop and think about what we're doing and why we're doing it and who we're doing it for.

Busyness can sometimes be overrated. Sitting by the riverbank I couldn't help but ask myself, "When was the last time I stopped for someone/something?"

Manila

I get to travel to Manila for work more or less every quarter. I hate Manila. It's congested, polluted, and expensive. It takes forever to get anywhere. It costs a lot to be out and about in the big city. It's tiring. Everyone's in a hurry. Everyone seems angry and there's this general distrust for one's fellowman.

But as the famous Pinoy [short for Filipino] group Hotdog (or is it Hotdogs?) sang, "Manila, Manila, I keep coming back to Manila..." Because there is something that makes me want to go back to Manila in spite of all its big city annoyances.

A three-year old boy with curly hair and amazing dimples. His grandparents, parents, and uncles too. But mostly three-year old boy. :)

When my nephew was born I was about to relocate to Mindanao for work. I sat for him during his first seven months. Then I moved to southern Philippines. I missed his first birthday. And the second too. :( The first couple of years of being away from home, I missed a lot of family events. The same story goes with my friends. My friends were celebrating birthdays and graduations, getting introduced to boyfriends/girlfriends, publishing books, starting businesses, getting awards of some sort... And I was a thousand-something kilometers away witnessing all these events unfold through Facebook and Skype.

It sucked.

Last year I decided to be present for all major life events of family and friends. And it was amazing.

But I realized that putting too much focus on events just makes you look for the next "high." Not that being present during major life events isn't important but event-focused living usually leaves you wanting more and more. Or gives you the illusion of being present when in reality, most of the time, you are not. There is a certain depth to being part of and soaking in the everyday and seemingly mundane.

I also realized that even in the communities I have been working with, though I have been invited to be part of major life events (weddings, baptisms, etc.), relationships are built in the everyday journeying together. My being a godmother to a tribal child doesn't mean anything if I am not present enough for the child to recognize and acknowledge me as her godmother.

One of the major things that I learned last year was the concept of journeying. That instead of thinking constantly of beginnings and endings (which focuses a lot on events), I saw that looking at things in a continuum of life milestones was better. So there aren't really beginnings and endings. Only milestones in our ever-continuing journey to self discovery and discovery of others.

And in the journey of discovery, presence matters a lot. In the major life events, yes. But more importantly in the everyday journey.

I still don't know how that looks like when I'm not in Manila. But when I am, I really appreciate it that I can baby sit for my nephew in the mornings, work in the afternoons, and have quiet, home-cooked dinners with really close friends in the evenings. :)

Nephew and Aunty's morning play time :)
We play games that improve gross and fine motor skills (that's a really nerdy way of saying we play basketball, catch, run, draw, dance, etc.), joke around, and give each other lots of hugs and kisses

I'm Back!

I haven't blogged in more than two years because I felt uncomfortable with the idea that I didn't know who were reading my posts. I continued writing, mostly letters to closest friends, but last year I realized that stories need to be told. Maya Angelou said,

"There is no greater burden than carrying an untold story."

And I guess, going back to blogging is my way of unburdening myself. I did tell myself that this story sharing shouldn't be self indulgent. Haha. So I have decided to only blog about things that are insightful. :P

A month ago I have decided to redefine what "accomplishment" and "achievement" meant for me. I do non-profit work for a small organization that serves indigenous peoples in remote areas in southern Philippines. It is an awesome job. Until I go back to the big city and learn about how my friends and college batch mates are now doctors, lawyers, HR heads with masters degrees and all that hifalutin stuff. I, on the other hand, was sort of still where I was at the year I graduated and got my bachelor's degree.

It sort of makes you stop and wonder if you're doing something wrong or if you're making the right life choices.

And then I realized... Although I am essentially the same person I was almost a decade ago, my experiences have changed me in so many ways. And doing what I do (more about what I do in a separate post), I am putting myself in a position where I can be constantly transformed.

So this year I have resolved to intentionally document four things. Things that make me feel, not just accomplished, but fulfilled. These are:

1. Relationship building
2. Time in nature, time to appreciate what is beautiful
3. Being part of the teaching-learning-sharing process
4. Being intentionally engaged in work that finds ways of bridging social and cultural divides

And I don't know how to end this post so I'll be anti-climactic on this one. Haha.