Blog #3: Claudette

Sometimes, the truth hurts. It hurts because it makes you feel like your whole life is a lie. It hurts because you might not be able to do anything about it. It hurts because it doesn’t just affect you, but your family. But the truth can set you free. Learning about how Colonial Mentality is and will be affecting Filipinos was something I wasn’t prepared to learn. This week has been a really tough week for me mentally, because I realized that I also had the colonial mentality because my own parents also had it. The only way for colonial mentality to leave the Filipinos is knowledge and time. Knowledge of the way America has oppressed them then and oppressed them now and time because it takes generations to have this mentality established in the society, it would take generations to remove it.

The education system is what builds the future generations of a country and in turn will affect its future. Educational system in the Philippines, however, has been trying to assimilate into the Western educational system because of this colonial mentality. For example, we visited Dr. Capamones at Anteneo de Manila University and he’s informed us about how there schools are adopting the K-12 system and are planning on having instructions all in English and having English a requirement by limiting the Filipino language. The reason being is that to be globally competitive. When we went to PWU to watch Angel Shaw’s documentaries, the President Benitez talked about how the colonization and its effects brought us as a community and we should view it as so to me seemed like he was saying we should accept what happened and move on. This way of thinking perpetuates colonial mentality because they are basically trying to conform to the Western ideals by using justification such as competitiveness and looking onto the future instead of being stuck in the past. Speaking English would make Filipinos adept to the language that is apparently almost worldwide. By doing so, the American colonizers don’t have to do anything anymore because the Filipinos are already doing their work for them. Renato Constantino (1982) writes about the implementation of western education on Filipinos and how it effects and will affect them. He wrote, “ the United States is not only the master of its house, its control and influence extends to many countries around the world.” (Constantino, pg. 9). This means that the fact that English is becoming the world language is because all the countries that US has influenced over are all those they have power over as well. Filipinos are conforming to this by teaching English just to belong under the umbrella of the US power, which will bring them up higher to the pedestal that they’ve built after colonizing the Philippines. If the educational system in the Philippines would be more conscious of colonial mentality and fight against it by not being pro-English then as a catalyst it will create a nation that stands on its own and foster with its own consciousness instead of the influence.

Before being able to move on from any negative experiences, as a nation you have to make sure everyone is on the same page. After going to Marcos’s and Aguinaldo’s mansion, it seems as if even back then colonial mentality prevalent. Aguinaldo as the first President of the Philippines seemed as if he wanted to lead the nation as a nation with freedom but the way his house was built says otherwise. His house has many pieces that were of American design. The second reading, which is by Anne Paulet (2007), describes how what happened to the Philippines is what was done to the Native Americans by the Americans. She says, “ The vision was based on the belief that American imperialism needed to rest on the acceptance of the populace rather than on their passivity and exploitation,” (Paulet, pg. 6). With that being said, the goal of America as the colonizers is to fool Filipinos into thinking that they were allies and helped them become “civilized” by introducing all of their Western ideals which you can see with Aguinaldo’s mansion. In order for Filipinos to move on, they have to get rid of this mentality that we have this colonial debt that we owe to Americans and that we have to thank them. The Tagalog version of the declaration of independence literally had “utang na loob” in it, which means “inner debt.”

Colonial mentality is stronger than ever with Filipinos in this day and age. E.J.R David and Sumie Okazaki (2006) did a study on the colonial mentality scale of Filipinos. In the conclusion they wrote, “we found evidence that CM is passed on to later generations through socialization and continued oppression and that it negatively affects the mental health of modern day Filipino Americans,” (David and Okazaki, pg. 12). The Filipino population is indeed growing and there are a lot of us that are in other countries, which makes colonial mentality harder to get rid of. Some of the examples that we’ve experienced this week were the PBA game and the tour of the University of Santo Tomas. The PBA game showed us the influence of America in terms of basketball. University of St. Tomas was the first Western school in Asia and all of its structure is of Western influence. There are also examples of the resistance of this colonial mentality. Ayala Museum has an exhibition of gold from the indigenous people of the Philippines, which proves that Filipinos were indeed civilized before the colonization of the Spanish. Kawayan De Guia makes art that shows resistance against the colonization such as the one with the American flag with his own blood in the art. This gives me hope as a Filipino that a revolution is currently undergoing to change our nation.

Work Cited

Constantino, R. (1982). Miseducation of Filipinos. In I In A.V. Shaw & L.H Francia,   Vestiges of war. (pp. 177-192). New York: New York Press.

David, E.J.R., & Okazaki, S. (2006). The Colonial Mentality Scale (CMS) for Filipino Americans: Scale construction and psychological implications: A review and recommendation.
Journal of Counseling Psychology 53 (1), pp. 1–16.

Paulet, A. (2007). To change the world: The use of American Indian education in the Philippines. History of Educational Quarterly, 47 (2), 173-202.