The broadening meaning of literacy and the marginalizing effects of education on indigenous and disabled peoples

The broadening meaning of literacy

and the marginalizing effects of education on

indigenous and disabled peoples

A PAPER FOR

Educational Anthropology

Written and prepared by

Marcial I. Enginco

For

Eufracio Abaya, PhD

Professor, Educational Anthropology

College of Education, University of the Philippines Diliman

This document presents the author’s views and reflections on a diverse set of issues presented in several papers, in the process detailing previous misconceptions, skewed social views, as well as reinforcing previously held personal beliefs, attitudes and observations.

In Institutionalized (Mis)Definition of Literacy, the author discusses how the powers that be in society including the government, educational system, and big industries seemingly, wittingly or unwittingly, conspire to define literacy so narrowly that those who don’t fall under such parameters are automatically marginalized both in personal development and economic and social opportunities.  This arbitrary definition, as the author suggests, does not take into consideration the many ways knowledge can be learned and expressed outside the realm of the classroom.

Meanwhile, in the essay From minority to mainstream: The dilution of peoples, the author weighs in on the marginalizing effects on indigenous peoples of the introduction of western-style education and lifestyle to their ways of life, which, in his view, undermines the very core that makes these people unique and special.  He seeks to examine through the lens of social justice the implications of the forays of educators into the psyche and literacy of indigenous peoples which invariably result into weakened cultural identification and the assimilation of market-driven values.

The last essay Disabling Disabilities, on the other hand, discusses the dire and often helpless situation persons with disabilities invariably find themselves in as dramatized by a case study of a physically disabled child living in a Communist China that has put tremendous pressure on its citizens to produce and perform to meet the national goal of economic prosperity.  This section also highlights the need for institutionalized reforms and policies that should in effect level the playing field between the able and the disabled in as far as contributing to the good of the society is concerned.  Likewise, this section delves on the resistance of society to readily accept physical and mental disabilities as regular members of the community and the society.

Institutionalized (Mis)Definition of Literacy

According to the National Statistics Office, 86.4% of Filipinos in 2008 are either simple or functional literate; with a simple literate person being defined as someone with basic reading and writing skills, and a functional literate as one who can read, write and also do basic computations.   This means that out of 90 million Filipinos in 2008, 12.5 million of whom are lumped together as illiterate – with no reading, writing and computing skills.  In a society that equates literacy with functionality, does that mean that those with no literacy skills are inutile, and thus a burden to society and the government?

While it is easy, and almost a default reaction to blame the government for what appears to be a glaring statistic, it is more prudent and perhaps more critical to question the veracity of the information vis-à-vis what is truly happening on the ground, and thus its implications as a statistic when taken at face value.  When literacy is narrowly defined as a set of skills that are normally acquired from standardized schooling, then it is easy to conclude that the 12.5 million Filipinos who do not conform to the set standard for being literate are also unproductive and thus valueless to a society that demands production measured in letters and numbers.

I find this conclusion unacceptable.

The pervading narrow definition of literacy runs in contrast to the breadth and depth of literacy as discussed by James Collins in his paper Literacy and Literacies, which attempts to reexamine commonly accepted dichotomies in educational Anthropology that have far ranging, albeit often unnoticed and therefore not subjected to open discourse outside of academic circles, effects on society and how it views certain structures that govern learning.

Collins opines that power resides in knowledge, and that knowledge – or literacy, for that matter -- may be expressed in other ways than reading and writing, and can be situated not only in key Western parts of the world, where the invention of the printing press coupled by its leading nations’ colonizing thrusts have made its pedagogies and literacy values almost the homogeneous standard, but more importantly, any where there is exchange and development of knowledge whether in writing, spoken word or functional know-how as an adaptive practice to the changing times or as a means to find gainful means to enhance one’s lot in life.

This broad-based outlook on literacy offers a more realistic view of how knowledge resides in various cultures and in different forms.  Collins writes that the concern with multiple literacies has focused on the diversity and social embeddedness of those ways with text we call literacy, emphasizing the ways as much as the text (Collins, 1995), which is actually what the current educational system does when it puts too much weight on norms instead of focusing its attention on situations and peoples that lie in the peripheries of the mainstream.

Should this find currency in the Philippines then the concept of literacy will find greater meaning and relevance to a greater number of people across the entire social spectrum.  The 12.5 million people who fall under the illiterate class would no longer be labeled as unproductive and worse, a burden to society because, in reality, they have different sets of inclusive literacy such as trade knowledge, local know-how, and situational expertise that allow them to function and even thrive under their particular circumstance.

From minority to mainstream: The dilution of peoples

Today’s Filipino cultural minorities are reduced to caricatures of their old, once proud selves.  When the man on the street would be asked what his idea of an indigenous person is, chances are that the range of his responses would correspond to trivial clichés: The Mangyans of Mindoro who don’t know how to cross the street, the Badjaos of Sulu and the Aetas of Central Luzon who roam urban areas for alms, or the Igorots of Baguio whom tourists can pose for photographs with for a nominal fee.

In all these skewed images of the cultural minority, the common theme is that the indigenous person comes across like fish out of water, an oddity; they just don’t fit and are destined not to fit – unless they radically change who they are, to the point that they may no longer recognize their ethnicity, and even then getting accepted into the mainstream is not even a guarantee.

Indigenous peoples from all over the world – from the Maoris of New Zealand (Bishop, 2003) to the Aborigines  of the Australian Outback (Collard, 2003), to the Indians of Brazil (Episcopal Commission on Indigenous Peoples, 2007), to cite just a few -- have been in a state of cultural upheaval ever since men from outside their well knit community, and dare I say society, decided that they needed to be assimilated into a much larger world where opportunities abound provided that they start to learn what others in the mainstream know, and in the process unlearn and even forsake who they are and the values that, for generations, had mattered most to their tribes.

The United Nations have long known about the dangers posed by the encroachment of mainstream cultures into the ways of life of indigenous communities and have thus declared a set of liberties enshrined in the 1993 United Nations Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Episcopal Commission on Indigenous Peoples, 2007) in the hope of giving them and their culture protection from outside forces and have greater determination on the course of their lives and culture. 

Article 3 in the same Declaration states that “Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination (Italics mine).  By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.”  While this is fair and well, the idealism contained in the tenet seems lost in the way countries have institutionalized measures, particularly through the vehicle of education, that practically ensure that any indigenous community that mainstream schooling reaches either through full integration or modified curriculum would have relinquished, in part or in full, its identity as a people.  This is evident in the reformulation of the educational curriculum in New Zealand to accommodate Maori culture and sensibilities (Bishop, 2003), and the integration of the English language in the education of Aborigines in Australia (Collard, 2003), and the Indigenized Formal Education and Alternative Learning System implemented in the Philippines (Episcopal Commission on Indigenous Peoples, 2007).

Article 14 in the same declaration further states that “Indigenous peoples have the right to revitalize, use, develop and transmit to future generations their histories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and literatures…”  Again, this is noble in spirit but does not reflect how many cultures of indigenous peoples are and have been diluted by mainstream society, leaving the minority indigenous only by looks and cultural affiliation, and with hardly a say or choice to continue and pass their indigenous ways to the next generation or not.  While there are individuals and groups belonging to the cultural minority who push fervently to preserve, or at least balance their native culture against the onslaught of the mainstream, it is apparent that the power of the latter is too great a force to stem and abate.  This is evident in the Cordillera Region particularly in the Banawe Rice Terraces area where the younger generations leave the local community to work in the city because they find farming and, to a great extent, their way of life difficult and no longer appealing.

Disabling disabilities

A normal person is described as having all his physical, mental and psychological faculties intact and functional.  Anyone with damage, weakness or impairment to any of these is technically considered disabled.  Being disabled is often a product of circumstance or biology or both; however, the modern world is not exactly constituted to give disabled people all the conveniences and opportunities available to their normal or abled counterparts, to balance the playing field, so to speak.  In many parts of the world, especially in underdeveloped and developing nations, a person with disability is often viewed as a liability both to the family and society; thus underlining the systemic source of discrimination against people with disabilities.

The journal Discrimination against children with disability in China by Xiaoyuan Shang, Karen Fisher and Jiawen Xie illustrates the dire predicament that a person with disability faces in a developing world (Xiaoyuan Shang, 2009).  The narrative in the study follows the life of Maomao, a child stricken with physical disabilities and epilepsy, in an impoverished rural town of China.  To make matters worse, Maomao is half of a brood of two in a nation that strictly enforces the one-child policy.  Because his parents are too poor to pay for the state-sanctioned fine for exceeding the allotted number of child, Maomao is not eligible to enjoy the state subsidy which, at least on paper, he is entitled to get.  Needless to say, Maomao’s parents also could not afford to give him special education that could be had outside of the public school system.

Maomao’s travail is well documented, from the physical abuse that he gets from his father, to the psychological bullying of his peers and other youngsters, down to the deliberate neglect of teachers and school administrators who deem that the time and meager resources of the school are better served elsewhere, specifically to children with no disabilities.  Not surprisingly, Maomao has not had the chance to develop and discover his potentials to at least become a productive member of the community.  On the contrary, he has turned to be recalcitrant; picking fights and damaging properties on a whim, or to vent out his anger toward his self, family and society.

Societal acceptance of disability apparently takes time even in developed countries.  This is evident in the route that Americans took before they began to have a clear dichotomy of mental and learning disabilities (Sleeter, 1984).  In the paper Why is there learning disabilities? A critical analysis of the birth of the field in its social context, the term learning disability was once used to draw the line between those who have power, meaning money, resources and influence, and those who have none or less of it.  It was almost exclusively used to call white middle-class students who did poorly in school, to differentiate them from blacks, Hispanics and other minorities who performed just as poorly but were conveniently labeled as laggards, or worse mentally retarded.  The use of the word disabled, even the term brain damaged to describe poor performing white students somehow abated the shame parents felt for having sub-performing children.   The words disabled and brain-damaged somehow absolved their children from blame and ridicule and mitigated their shame as parents with stature to protect.

However, this branding slowly lost traction as America uncovered scientific truths behind learning disability, mental retardation and just sheer lack of motivation to learn.   This underscores the obfuscating effect of power and perceived influence and prestige in really determining the root causes of problems, which then makes finding solutions that work doubly difficult.

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I have always held on to the belief that respect for human life should be the starting point of any well-meaning action that could change another person’s life; and that respect is not just about providing opportunities and developing potentials but also understanding and giving importance to the values that one person or community finds vital and thus inalienable to his identity.  Respect, for me, starts with accepting what is already there.

I have to admit that before this semester began my idea of literacy and illiteracy was no different from those of the majority – it’s about who can read and write.  However, I have never looked down or made people who have less education than me feel inferior, or less happy or less fulfilled than I am.  I talk the same way to people, regardless of their state in life: with respect.  I am not one to cast a sorry eye on a janitor mopping the floor as students from affluent families trudge along carelessly.  He is simply doing his job that puts food, however meager and simple, on his family’s table; and that is fulfillment, the same fulfillment that a corporate executive gets when he dines out his family in a fancy restaurant.  Not surprisingly, I have made friends and connections with janitors, vendors, and even the neighborhood trash recycler.

When we bear in mind that happiness and fulfillment are relative concepts, we begin to understand that not everyone will strive for the same goals, or will find contentment in pursuits that have not been theirs in the first place.  This is specially true in the invasive role of education and modern society on indigenous people in far-flung areas who have lived for generations, centuries even, under their communities set of values and with the resources that have been available to them right outside their home.

Educators, evangelists, big businesses and even government offices should be respectful of these people’s way of life and think only of inviting assimilation if the community, not just leaders who may be coerced or cajoled by bribes or gifts as in the APECO case in Aurora, itself decides so.  I believe that in mainstreaming, the minorities will always bear the brunt of the sacrifice and will almost always signal the end of a culture, till it only becomes part of memory and history books when integration becomes complete.  And when that happens, the distinct physical look of a minority will serve as a reminder that he is, despite his adjustments, still merely an outsider invited in.  This will happen when people with good or opportunistic intentions act on their drive without exercising respect for the people whom they intend to assimilate.

Respect, too, is the most important thing that can be shown to people with disabilities.  If I am a person with disability, I wouldn’t like people to look at me as if I am helpless, inutile or incapable of finding and achieving victories and, ultimately, happiness – all these are relative to a person’s capacities, or anthropologically speaking – agency.  This is condescending and smacks of ignorance and utter disregard for another person’s worth.  I would simply want people to accept me and allow me the opportunity that I, too, in my own little ways can bring change and fulfillment not only to myself and my family, but perhaps to other people as well.