New Bilibid Prison

A reaction paper for my Sociology of Deviance class field trip to the NBP

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This was my first time visiting a correctional facility. To be honest, I had no expectations, although some people I know would have been mortified and had pictures of bald-pierced-tattooed-bearded men behind bars, inside filthy cells, always hungry and angry. I didn’t see that this is the norm in Bilibid. In fact, I was quite surprised with what I saw.

From the entrance to the Medium Security area, the place looked more like a small community than a stereotypical prison of hard concrete floors and thick metal bars displaying the inmates like a captured wild animal at the zoo. There were basketball courts, stores and dormitories all around. Even the presence of trees surprised me. The inmates at the Visiting House were ready to interact with us as we shivered in the corner. They were wearing t-shirts instead of black and white costumes, not even the orange tees with a “P” on it (though the Maximum Security inmates wore the same color of shirt). The inmates at the Visiting House acted more like street vendors that a stereotypical hardened criminals. The fact that they were enclosed in a space with us students meant that the guards trusted them enough not to hurt us. It was a terrifying situation at first, groping for a common ground with people we don’t usually interact with.

As we were braving the ankle-deep floods on the way to the conference hall, there were half-naked men in the basketball courts. I wondered if they were inmates. Nevertheless, I expected them to say something like “Hi Miss,” or anything to that effect when we passed, but none of them did even though they looked and were positioned close to us. Instead, we were greeted courteously with “Good afternoons”.

Seeing the program when we arrived was also enlightening. I expected awkward silences and tensions upon meeting the inmates. Instead they were having a mini-program celebrating the birthday of some superintendent, whom again, I expected to be some hard man that the inmates were afraid of (even though the poems and music and the messages described him as an “angel”). I assumed the same thing with the female staff of Bilibid, maybe they were cruel women out to punish the inmates verbally like an abusive mother. But when the superintendent stood up to thank them, it gave me an impression that they were like a family in the prison. I wondered if they were punished so much that they had to cheer on him even though they dislike him, but if the situation was problematic, it didn’t show. One of my classmates even branded the woman in charge of education (forgot her exact title) a “stage mother”.

Their College Guild performance exceeded expectations as well. They were confident and entertaining, even comparable to the kids of Glee (if not better). I can’t believe they have the guts to imitate Lady Gaga. The host was right, outside prison, it would have been really unusual for middle aged men who committed criminal offences to blend voices and groove to the music. It really just broke stereotypes for me.

Perhaps what their amazing performance struck me was how they were enjoying what they are doing. I think it just showed how restorative justice empowers even those who broke the law. There are times when I wondered if they were actually unwilling to perform, if this was against their will. After all, caged animals can perform entertainingly with a whip on the ringmaster’s hand. But I didn’t think so. Instead of passively staying at the cells or toiling in the heat, they were also given education and programs that will help them when they go out to the free community. It does not aim to stigmatize them from society or mark them as so-called “trashes of society” but possible agents of change. Dancing, singing and acting were forms of human expression that no script can animate. The fact that they were given a chance to share their testimonies to the public shows that they are given a “voice” in the correctional facility. Their valedictorian’s speech depicted that criminality has a social facet. It is true. The only difference was how they used their agency.

The visit to the Bureau of Corrections museum showed what wasn’t showed in the Medium Security facility — the technicalities of prison. The diorama of the Maximum Security facility showed the Panopticon-like model of the prison, which actually scared me. Is it terrifying because the inmates inside the facility might have needed that much of surveillance? Or is the prevalence of omniscient authority that terrified me? I think it was both.

The uniforms of the inmates also showed some kind of “branding”. They were differentiated from each other by color. To me, it was better that they no longer wear those awful black and white striped “pajamas” or the uniform that looked like sack cloth, which reminded me of San Lorenzo Ruiz. Instead they just wore t-shirts, which is also what people from the free community wore. But I wonder if they know the difference from the outside. Do they know that there are brown and orange shirts for another degree of criminality? Clothing itself is a discourse, and uniformity means that those who wore blue shirts have a similar ascribed identities whether they like it or not.

The electric chair, which punished mostly prisoners-of-war, was almost a symbol of cruelty and primitiveness of authorities towards criminals. The lethal injection chamber showed detailed procedures of putting an end to a life. I was relieved that the sentenced man would have to be sedated first before the heart-stopping end. It made me thankful that death penalty has been lifted. The tarpaulin recording the major prison disturbances also reminded me what the criminals are capable of. It was a constant power struggle early on. The stories of attempted mass escapes showed the authorities and the inmates go against each other. Were these the more major norm or the exception to the rule? The power struggle early on was an entirely different dynamic from what I saw earlier in the College where both parties coordinated in improving lives more than just paying for justice. It was more of a hand-in-hand attempt at correction.

Overall, this prison trip broadened my vision to the reality of what is going on in place usually hidden from public view either because they were harmful or because they were unpretty. Nevertheless, it opened my mind to a few questions that would be interesting to find out more about. Are there certain kinds of inmates who benefit more from the correctional facilities more? Is there some sort of a hierarchy between inmates even though they are of the same facility? Why and how do correctional attempts usually fail or succeed? How can corrections be improved to suit a diverse group of people where it’s not a one-size-fits-all? What are the results of the corrections in the lives of the inmates after they go out to the free community? These would be great studies in the future because it benefits the rest of society and may even determine what activities could substitute criminal behavior.

Faith and Sociology

This is an article written for the newsletter of my department (Sociology). It’s personal and social at the same time since it talks about my beliefs both as a Christian and a sociologist

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Believing in God has always been an intellectual experience for me.

For the longest time, I believed that my course and faith will never meet. Religion has always been a hot topic in Sociology, in which believers are ones to get burned first.

Belief in a sovereign being would classify one into the stereotype of people who have not outgrown their childhood socialization, or probably never have learned anything in class. Even though Christianity deviates itself from religion into a focus on relationship with God, a lot of people won’t even tell the difference.

Like most people, I used to hate anyone who believes in some sort of a higher being. Passing by churches admittedly left me feeling disgusted, especially at that time when the Catholic Church meddled with political affairs. I could feel my self-righteous fingers pointing at them as I shout “hypocrites!”

This has probably started since elementary, where studying in prestigious Catholic schools alienated a lot of students through memorization of prayers and requirements of attending mass — even though the lifestyle of our religious authorities were hilarious. Somehow the picture of God is enmeshed with the picture of the illness of society. Could God be just a social construct that is as messy as the society? Or does God exist as an objective reality?

Quite unusually given my hostility to anything “religious”, I became a Christian in college. I have often asked myself the reason why I accepted Christ, even to the point of doubting if belief in God was a mere influence from my peers. But to me it wasn’t. I did not doubt that my faith was a personal experience from a sociological God.

Last year, I wrote a research paper about how people are able to exercise their agency when they belong to a religious group. This was out of my effort to rethink how I stereotyped believers before (and to think that we generalize anyone who practices religion as “judgmental”) I know for a fact that nobody is hypnotized into committing into a whole set of beliefs that could probably stifle their so-called freedom. So what do believers think about believing?

The findings of the research put my previous prejudice in check. Instead of thinking that anyone who holds any belief in God is duped by a reified institution called religion, one should consider that an individual putting faith in a belief is a means of exercising agency. While believers may be influenced by their family, peers, educational or religious background, to personally believe in God is a choice altogether.

There are just a lot of things to discover about beliefs in God, Christian or otherwise, even though a lot of people may be allergic to religious matters. Being analytical or critical is also a test of faith that a believer should take.

Anthropology of Dress

Term paper in Anthropology regarding how CSSP students from UP Diliman dress

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I. INTRODUCTION

The University of the Philippines (UP) prides itself for being known for, at least discursively, academic freedom and excellence. The social characteristics attached to the institution also translate into a material form such as in students’ clothing. Dress, defined by Entwistle (2000) as “meanings given to particular practices of clothing and adornment”, can function as a way of differentiating a group of people from the rest of society. Dress can be seen as a means of conforming to a group while also expressing differentiation against other groups. Non-conformity in the manner of dressing, however, can also happen within a group. With that said, students from UP actively engage in defining the discourse of “how UP students dress” while also performing how they dress within UP. This paper aims to compare the discourse of dress in UP with the actual performance of dressing by UP students.

II. THEORETICAL APPROACH

Being part of a social group such as UP brings a dual tension for the individual. The first is how they are going to identify themselves as part of the university by emulating the freedom that discursively defines it, and the excellence it endorses as a state university. It is not doubtful that in emphasizing liberalism as one of characteristics of the UP culture, its students are doubly compelled to be liberal, original and stand out against other universities. While UP technically has no uniform, its institutional image may have become the dress code itself.

The second tension that the institution brings is that students within the context of UP are compelled to be unique not just against students from other universities but also against each other. As a state university, UP is a mix of students from different hometown influences, socio-economic backgrounds and ideologies to name a few. One can safely say that UP is a demographic “fruit salad” and may reflect in the way we dress. How are we able to express individuality or commonality at the same time?

Bourdieu (1984, cited in Entwistle 2000) emphasizes that dress is a means of distinguishing a social group, especially in relation to power. His concept of “habitus” characterized the body as a vessel of acquired information, containing one’s sexuality, religion, class, race, ethnicity, and other intersectionalities within an individual. But aside from individuals, dress may also be affected by external influences, such as the prescriptions of peer groups, the media and ever-changing fashion trends and preferences. All these social and individual factors, not just the fact that they are from UP, affect how students dress.

The dualism and dichotomy of Structure against Agency is noted by Simmel (1971, cited in Entwistle 2000:114) in pointing out that in terms of dress, there is an inconsistent desire to express both identification with the social group and differentiation with individuals. Not everyone may conform to the “dress code” of UP, but most likely UP students are aware of the “dress code” and their placement within it — whether or not they conform of rebel against it.

However, it is also important to note that dress may not express what is natural. Dress may not be a mere reflection of what an individual is like. Similar to Foucault’s concept of “technologies of the self”, dress can either be a means of “authenticity or artifice” (Entwistle 2000:113) – it can express the character of the individual or can mask it and manipulate it into projecting another one such that the information it portray may not necessarily be accurate. It can be both a means and an end. The studies of Featherstone and Shilling (1991, 1993 cited in Entwistle 2000:74), showed that dress functions as a means of achieving personal gratification. Therefore, students dress may not just reflect the natural self-expression but also can be utilized for goal-attainment.

Ethnography and discourse analysis will be used in this study, because it will provide a means for cross-checking whether or not students participate in the discourse they create about the UP dress. The study will also triangulate the discourses with actual performance. It is not enough to rely on the discourse of how UP students dress if it is not grounded on empirical evidence, especially that dress is an empirical fact that can also be affected by social change.

III. ETHNOGRAPHIC DESCRIPTION

The research setting and the participant selection was done at the Palma Hall, more commonly known as the “AS”. The Palma Hall may be considered as the place with the most diversity because it holds some of the Foreign Language and General Elective subjects that every student must take, especially by freshmen. It houses hang-outs of several academic organizations, fraternities and sororities, and is the center of student mobilizations in the campus.

The Palma Hall is the home of the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy (CSSP). The College includes eight courses, namely: Anthropology, Geography, History, Linguistics, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology and Sociology. CSSP’s demographics are different from other colleges, thus the need to avoid the generalization of the results of this study to be a UP-wide phenomenon.

I conducted short interviews with 50 currently enrolled CSSP students at the Palma Hall using convenience sampling. Some research participants were selected at organization hang-outs, others were approached randomly and still others were students I know personally. As I was selecting research participants randomly at the AS lobby, I realized that it was actually difficult to find CSSP students since most students from different colleges also hang out at the lobby.

Majority of the research participants were freshmen and sophomore students. Their courses and year levels were recorded but were not considered to be a significant factor. The research participants were asked four main questions, together with follow-up questions for verification and further solicitation of answers:

1) How would you describe how UP students typically dress?
2) What do you think are the factors that affect how they dress?
3) What does our clothing say about UP?
4) How has the way we dress changed through the years?

In Question #4, freshmen, who might not be around to witness social change, were asked to compare their initial impression of how UP students dress when they were in high school and their actual experience in UP. Research participants from higher year levels were asked to compare the changes from when they entered UP.

The research participants were not asked whether or not they think they conform or rebel against the discourse they gave about the UP students dress. Instead, after the interview, I asked for permission to take their photographs in order to compare their answers with the actual way they dress. Overall, interviewing CSSP students about the UP dress is easy. Not many declined an interview. But several participants refused to be photographed, especially those who I met through random selection. Only 36 participants agreed for a photograph, which is rather unusual because the discourse often constructed of UP is that of a safe place for freedom and self-expression. I expected that they would not be shy or intimidated when asked to be photographed.

In answering the interview questions, I am also surprised how research participants construct more or less the same discourse. It was almost as if they were answers right out of common sense or tradition, and they came more or less from a generalized point of view. However, the research participants came to rethink their answers in the question of how the dress changed through the years, where they were made to look at the specific influences of the UP dress (that is, aside from the weather and things as such). They noted the current demographic shift in terms of the socio-economic backgrounds because of the increasing tuition fee in UP. But when asked to encapsulate the UP dress again, they unhesitatingly go back to their first answers.

IV. ANALYSIS

The discourse on the UP dress is rather individualistic, in a sense that in using Entwistle’s dualism of authenticity vs. artifice, most of the research participants expressed that UP students dress out of what is natural to them or according to their current situation.

In the first question, how UP students typically dress, the word “Comfortable” has almost become a catchphrase. 23 out of the 50 research participants used “Comfortable” in describing how UP students typically dress. It describes the discourse of practicality and utilitarianism that primarily defines everyday wear of UP students. “Comfortable” may be seen as adaptive of the culture in UP as well, which has, according to one participant, a walking culture. One participant also attributed the fact that some courses may be so difficult or some students live nearby that it is difficult to even bother about dressing up.

It is important to note that “Comfortable” is an individualized term. It is possible that there is no standard definition of what “Comfortable” is, as what is comfortable for one may be uncomfortable to another. According to majority of research participants, the primary factor that affects the way UP students dress is the “Weather”, which includes physical experiences such as the temperature and seasons. Often during the interviews, “Comfortable” is accompanied by the statement, “You wouldn’t want to wear a jacket on a hot day!” The weather, thus, is still a function of comfort. Because “Weather” can determine the UP dress, it can be said that “Comfortable” may be a socially defined to some extent and that it is not an absolutely individualized term.

Generally, the photographed research participants were dressed simply. A huge majority wore just t-shirts. The only participant wearing long sleeves was with a jacket, and it was raining on the day of the interview. Only one participant wore a sleeveless top, and one also wore a skirt. In taking into account the walking culture in UP, most of the research participants wore closed shoes. Contrary to the common stereotype, only five of them wore slippers, most wore rubber shoes and ladies’ flats.

The word “Comfortable” was followed closely by “Diverse”, meaning students dress differently from each other. In answering the third question, majority of the research participants claimed that the way students dress portrays the “Freedom” there is in UP. Some students mentioned that in the university, it was up to the students to choose among the wide varieties of subjects, courses, organizations, beliefs and activities. And aside from the positive notion of freedom, the research participants answered that the UP dress reflects the “Lack of uniform” in UP, which means the way we dress shows how there are no restrictions or dress codes to follow. This freedom and lack of restrictions would allow students choose among wider types of dress. It allowed for more diversity.

However, there is not much diversity in the way the research participants described the typical UP dress and what they actually wore. In describing what UP students typically dress, the research participants mentioned jeans, shirts, shorts and slippers, in that order of frequency. Similarly, majority of the participants wore jeans and shirts. Contrary to the discourse, only five participants wore slippers. Other dresses, such as boots, scarves, skirts and accessories were either not mentioned as much or regarded as something of special use or out of the ordinary. These types of dresses were perceived more as an “artifice” than a reflection of “authenticity”. Among the research participants themselves, only one wore a skirt. Only one female participant wore hair accessories, and it was even just a simple clip. Nobody wore a necklace as well, as only ID straps hung around their neck. The more common accessories were ballers and wrist watches. At least in this study with CSSP students, there is only modest amount of evidence of diversity in terms of dress.

“Self-preference” is the third most common word that the research participants used to describe the UP dress. It includes the individuals’ personalities, tastes and moods, often expressed in statements like, “Well, they dress in any way they like!” As established earlier, the “Freedom” in UP permitted diversity and various preferences. Some participants also mentioned that the way we dress showed that UP is “Tolerant” and “Open to influences”.

“Preferences”, different from the “Self-preference” category, is also a factor in determining the dress, which ranked second to “Weather”. “Preference” is an ambiguous term as it may entail both authenticity and artifice. It also function both as a means for self-expression or goal-attainment. And it is different from “Self-preference” because of the element of choice. While “Preference”, such as taste or mood, can affect how one dresses, preference alone may not translate into an actual performance. For example, a female student may have the taste for high heels, but may not choose to wear it to school as often because it is not comfortable. Students, therefore, may not always dress just in any way they like even though it may affect their dress.

While UP on its own is free and free from dress codes, individual circumstances may inhibit students from self-expression. In the same way, “Activities”, which encapsulates the lifestyle of students and the things they do throughout the day, is also considered as another factor that affects the UP dress after “Preferences”. In this study itself, there were research participants who were wearing Org shirts and PE shirts. They may not like wearing these shirts, but they are compelled to because of their activities.

In taking into account social change, most students answered that the way UP students dress are relatively “Similar” or unchanging through the years. Most freshmen answered that their pre-conceived notions of the UP dress during their high school years, which was “Comfortable” were proven to be the true when they started studying in the university. Following “Similar” is the view that the UP dress is becoming “Trendier”. The participants who answered this way attributed it to the rising tuition fees in the university that allows more people of the higher social class to enter UP. Indeed, among the research participants, I find only one who wore house-clothes (wearing loose shirt, shorts and slippers). Majority wore more or less simple clothes that one would still use to go out with, such as jeans and closed shoes.

CONCLUSION

In general, the discourse of how UP students typically dress was very individualistic: students were perceived to wear whatever they want in their own terms. It helped that the university allows its students the freedom to choose among wide varieties of clothing without being restricted, as it has been a lifestyle in the university to exercise these kinds of freedom of expression. Freedom and the lack of restrictions are therefore a factor that causes students to note that where diversity is possible, the people within it are most likely also diverse, especially in a place like UP where people from different walks of life meet. However, this study showed that in CSSP, there is not much actual deviation in terms of clothing. Comfortable wear outweighs even personal preferences, even though the latter is a key influencer. The UP dress, at least in CSSP, is reflects the agency exercised by individuals by being basically adaptive to that of the life in the university instead of the image it carries. Students in CSSP also perceive that the UP dress had not changed much in the recent years. Only a minority notes that the dress was getting trendier, attributed to the demographic shift in terms of socio-economic statuses of students because of recent increases in tuition fees.

Reference:

Entwistle, Joanne. (2000). The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress and Modern Social Theory. Polity Press.

Patikul

Reaction Paper for my Anthropology class

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When I first heard that Patikul earned the Children’s Choice Award, I don’t know how it could be possible. My impression from posters and comments about the film was that it was about violence in Mindanao, the terrorism that lies within the region and the abuse and poverty that its constituents are experiencing there.

Patikul, indeed, was about all these. But it turned out that it was a story of hope despite these circumstances. It is based on a true story of the community in Patikul, Sulu whose school principal was murdered after being held up by terrorists. The teachers of Kan-Ague Elementary School are terrified for their safety and quits going to school, leaving the children’s education on hold. The government is unable to response to this, so the community, families of impoverished coffee bean-pickers volunteered to escort the teachers on their way to Kan-Ague, risking their resources, safety and livelihood.

What struck me most in the movie, first, is the value of a collective action. If you come to think of it, the community in Patikul are on the bottom rung in terms of their social and economic status. Majority of them are illiterate and poor. But they are able to organize themselves to a progressive action. By being able to gauge the importance of their contribution for the benefit of the future generation, they are able to sacrifice comfort and safety to cooperate to the long-term betterment of their lives. The unity in the community became their primary weapon against the perpetuation of their poverty by lack of education.

Second would be community ties. There was a scene where one of the youths in the community joined Abu Sayaff, and when the terrorist group came across his neighbors who were trying to get home, the youth intervened. Another was when a teacher recognized one hostage-taker as her former classmate, thus sparing them and their students. I think those scenes showed that community ties are put above ideology even by terrorists who are expected to have no mercy. While the terrorists turn away from their community to achieve goals through a different means, some of their historical roots and values are still not taken away.

Lastly, the film gave me a sense of privilege for being able to go to school without much hardship. In Patikul, teachers and students alike risk their safety for the sake of service and learning. Education is also seen as their only way out of poverty. They did not have resources, connections or a profitable livelihood their children can depend on. I think what the parents fought for was the opportunity that they did not have — to study. The quality of education in Kan-Ague Elementary School was far from top-class. Their books were outdated, they have a shortage for teachers and classrooms, but they try to make use of what they have and seek help. I think that this should pressure the government to improve education for those who are outside of Manila, since it seems that good education is rather in the city or in private schools. There should be an effort to give the best education and to make it available for everyone.

Social/Individual Identity

Q:
How do societies distinguish individuals from one another? Include in your discussion social identity and construction of gender.

A:
Individuals contain within themselves various intersectionalities in terms of race, ethnicity, citizenship, gender, religion, sexuality, socio-economic status, et cetera. While some of these statuses are ascribed, majority of them are achieved or can be changed within the individual’s lifespan. For example, while someone can be born biologically male, he can later on alter his body’s materiality by undergoing surgery. Or while a woman can be baptized as a Catholic, she can later on convert to Islam. Social identity based on these intersectionalities is therefore changeable as well.

People start being enculturated from birth. Culture can define a people’s language, what they wear and eat, where they live, how they marry, treat the dead and how they interact. This can be a means of stereotyping individuals based on the culture that they grow up with. However, as mentioned above, an individual may choose to conform, resist or change his or her socialization and social identity because they are not passive agents that simply absorb the culture they are born into. Thus, it is not ethical to ascribe character traits to a particular group because it discounts the individuals that may not necessarily conform. The culture that the individual grows up with may not necessarily be the culture that he or she practices.

At the same time, individuals are defined by “the other” or the society according to the groups they belong to. For example, because of their reproductive role, women are often constructed as natural “mothers”, in a sense, naturally nurturing. This biological determinism translates to various expected social roles as mothers, wives or nurses. Thus, certain jobs are dichotomized into “women’s jobs” and “men’s jobs”. Ascribing nurturing traits to women fails to take into account that motherhood as defined by society, more than the biological manner of giving birth, is also a learned experience.

Subjective Art

Q: Why do you think people believe different things, and why are they so certain that their view of the world is correct and other views are wrong? Why are metaphors and meanings (in art) important in creating a particular worldview?

A:
People have different point of views because they belong to certain groups that have influenced their socialization and their personal identity. Various institutions that the individual is exposed to, such as the family, peers, school and the media shapes their beliefs and opinions, where reality is constructed in various ways.

Womack claimed that ethnocentrism is the belief or view that our own culture is the best. It is measuring other culture in terms of one’s own culture instead of understanding another culture in their terms. Ethnocentrism perceives other cultures from the outside, disabling the individual to understand and respect it by seeing it from the inside. This, I think, is the reason why some groups seem to be certain that their worldview is more correct than others’. They fail to see that not all people believe in the same things or have the same values as they do, but see it merely as failing their standards.

In the controversial CCP art exhibit, Mideo Cruz showed what he might have valued most in his exhibit “Poleteismo” — the artistic expression of the nation’s idol-like worship of concepts such as patriarchy. As an artist, the means of expression is what he values most. However, he failed to take into account the values placed upon the symbols of Jesus by Catholics. Majority of Filipinos are Catholics, and they are the “stakeholders” of the CCP since they pay for it through taxes.

On the other hand, offended Catholics also failed to take into account the artistic value of expression of Cruz’ works. The CCP should be an avenue of artistic expression and the works in it should therefore be seen as an expression of a part of society that people usually take for granted, which may not necessarily be of religious value. Offended Catholics may have seen Cruz’s works by face value, or by their own perspective, instead of the meanings attached to it that the artist would like to communicate.

Art is a symbolic representation of the characteristics and values of a culture that reflects a reality that are not in the form of language or text. It thus becomes open to interpretation even though the artist may have an original message he or she intends to portray. Art, though subjective, objectively represents something that may stand for different meanings depending on the viewer. This is the case of the differences of how Mideo Cruz and offended Catholics constructed the artworks.

What does it mean to be human?

My paper in Anthropology 181: Social Anthropology

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To be a human is to acquire the meanings attached by other humans who have existed before one. The development and lifestyle of a human being is rooted from previous developments of other humans, to the point that it would be completely inconvenient and inherently unadvisable to do away with the progress made until the current time. We coexist with each other. We learn from each other. We are dependent on the past notes that are handed over to us once we learn the ABCs of human life. If we forget to be socialized in order to pass for a human being, we could possibly still survive. But we would suffer the consequences of shame, miscommunication and stupidity of being a “misfit” within our kind.

At the same time, to be a human is to recognize that we did not make the world, no matter what meanings humankind has attached to it. Not everything is made with human hands or has been discovered by the human brain. There is a force greater than us that was able to make the objective world: the seeds of which we plant, the water of which we bathe with or the soil which we tread on, just to name a few. To be a human is to recognize that we are also part of creation and that to walk arrogantly as if we are the center of the universe is to be missing something vital.

To be human is to gain wisdom to distinguish between what is objective and subjective, what is human-made and what is beyond human. It is to make use of what is known while exploring the unknown, to attempt to think independently while acknowledging interdependence, to create while recognizing oneself as part of creation, to be an individual while identifying oneself with the rest of the population. We are never alone.

Philippine Human Development

An old reaction paper re: the PHDN

I have always thought ideally of the educational system in the Philippines. I know for one that we have one of the highest literacy rates in the world, which is about above 90%. I also know that we are known in Asia and all over the world for being an English-speaking country, that here in UP we see foreigners from East Asia coming here just to learn the language. I also think we have the brightest students given the number of internationally renowned professionals that are Filipinos.

Yet, reading this document about the plans to develop the Philippine education system opened up my eyes to the reality that schools are actually very much in need of improvement, especially public schools and schools in the rural areas. Education should be the top priority of the government because it is the institution that would shape the people who will manage other institutions. It determines the quality of mind of the next generation. If the educational system is underdeveloped, we cannot hope for competent Filipino professionals and workers in the future.

Mentioning the pride of our bilingualism, it is actually included in the Philippine Human Development Network (PHDN) Report’s guidelines to use the native language for young students during the first three years of schooling before immersing them in the English language as the medium of instruction in the higher years. Research after research showed that a student really learns faster and more effectively when he is educated from his mother tongue, the language that he speaks at home, because it is where he firsts expresses himself and his experiences. Forcing English as our medium of instruction only confuses students, and they would have hard time learning and catching up with their lessons early on. Add that to the fact that even teachers shift the language syntaxes in order to make students understand, instead of focusing on just one for an effective teaching.

Also, the number of schools in the Philippines is not enough for the millions of students who have the right to them. In the provinces, it is not uncommon to hear stories of children and teachers swimming rivers and climbing mountains just to go to school. These are signs that the system of education is deteriorating. School facilities are also inadequate and in need improvement. Schools are short of classrooms, and they are usually not conducive to learning due to damages that have been left behind. In some schools, they are compelled to have double shifts that minimizes the hours that students spent at school to make way for other students. Sometimes they resolve to multi-grading, where students of different levels come together in a single room for the same subject. These solutions often are do not deliver the best results. The libraries of some schools do not contain updated volumes, laboratories contain fragile items and sometimes they do not have libraries or laboratories at all. The ratio of books to children could also be as awful as 1:9. So with this kind of deficiency, poorer students will have to do extra efforts to understand their lessons. The government should take it upon themselves to provide this necessity, that’s why hand in hand with improving the educational institution, the PHDN also aims to address the weak civil service rules, budget methods, and rule enforcement mechanisms of the government, which affect the service of student development.

The problem of the educational system could also be within its curriculum. I have always found it strange why we, as an agricultural nation, focus too much on industry and manufacturing. Sure, it pays to cope up with modernization, but we should not leave on sector behind in terms of development. The courses in most colleges and universities in the Philippines mostly cater to the needs of Westernized or industrialized countries and not in the design of our own. Only a few schools actually adopt courses that would be helpful for their communities, primarily because Filipinos often equate education with employment. They do not focus on the learning per se, but the diploma that would earn them money. We cannot blame the Filipinos for shortchanging their portentials, however. And in fact we have technical and vocation courses and schools in the Philippines (TESDA) to address those who may not have privilege to be educated but would still like to be removed from the sea of jobless people. PHDN also aims to expand these schools as their demands increase in this country of high cost of living.

Another one of their goals is to find other sources of funds to finance the basic education. Usually this financing takes the form of taxes, but obviously taxing a poor country for education would make education even more expensive for the masses. The Report does not include what sources they are exactly looking for. But definitely, this goal is a good one to attain because even in the local setting of UP, with the Tuition and Other Fees Increase, lots of students have given up the opportunity of studying here because they cannot afford the expenses that comes along with public education, just when the government should subsidize majority of the tuitions fees.

PHDN also aims to strengthen the pre-teaching educations and emphasize the importance of having teaching careers by giving teachers incentives. Nowadays, being a teacher is not a popular job anymore, even though the Philippines have critically high demands for them. Some educators have moved to other countries because they are best paid there. But perhaps through these incentives and programs, we can motivate students to take up teaching as their careers in order to sustain the educational system. Teachers are the lifeline of education because they are the sources of knowledge and whatever they impart to students shall last. But if education itself is deteriorating, then teacher education must have also gone with it. There is a need to improve the education of teachers as much as the students’. I remember when my Mom and Dad were teachers, I could see then how they tried to improve their crafts by going on seminars and trainings with other schools in the country in order to establish and enrich the foundations of education. They also look for materials that will increase their knowledge such as journal writings, manuals and modules. Not only teachers, but also school administrations should go through the same improvement trainings, seminars and workshops. Through those kinds of teacher and administrators improvement programs, we can be sure that what they have to offer is real quality education that goes beyond reading from ordinary books.

Perhaps the biggest project that the PHDN will launch is the restructuring of the Department of Education (DepEd). The PHDN will facilitate in planning budgets, allocating resources, coming up with programs to improve systems, evaluating schools, looking for alternatives, monitoring both the public and private education, setting standards and setting clear-cut and realistic expectations. Being the bastion of education in the Philippines, it will direct schools all over the country towards its goals and would lead to improved competence of current students and future graduates. The DepEd should be more responsive to the needs of local schools and impose strict policies and hiring dedicated teams in order to be more efficient and less vulnerable to corruption.

The Philippines has a unique culture and a unique need for its educational system. No two countries are alike in terms of the demands that each of its societies give, and not everyone has the means to achieve their goals. Thus, formulating this Philippine-centered design would very much help us see the closer picture of the real educational system, which is not limited only to Metro Manila, but to the rest of the country. Also it is important to remember that the government plays an important role in implementing the programs of PHDN. We do not only develop students, teachers or future employees. We develop humans, their potentials, which might be of aid to our country.

Yet no matter what PHDN plans to improve our country’s educational system, we must keep in mind that educating does not stop in teachers and school officials. Parents, workers, peer groups, religious leaders and the local government are the other institutions that are also part of a student’s learning environment. In order to develop the students’ young minds, educating should not stop at schools and should not end in employment. It is a lifetime, continuous goal that every individual must desire to achieve and every society to work on to achieve.

Source: http://hdn.org.ph/

Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Memorias de mis putas tristes

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ bestselling novella, his first new novel in ten years, was originally entitled Memorias de mis putas tristes, translated by Edith Grossman into English in what we would know as “Memories of My Melancholy Whores”, a story about an old man finding love inside a brothel. Garcia Marquez is known as the father of Latin American magic realism (Barra, 2005), and the translation of his works would naturally require skill to capture this “magic” while making it understandable in another language. This paper explores the translation of the novella, revealing the method of, and commentaries on Edith Grossman’s rendition, and the issue of bringing the work of Garcia Marquez closer to the Filipino elderly in its original language, Spanish.

            Edith Grossman is a critically-acclaimed American translator of many Latin American fiction books, including Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, among the works of other contemporary Spanish-language writers and poets and Nobel laureates such as Garcia Marquez (via Wikipedia.com). She has generally been praised for her translation of Memories of My Melancholy Whores. Reviews maintained that her translation was ‘elegant and exact’ (Rafferty 2005), ‘shimmering’ (Barra 2005) and ‘inspired’ (Ashar 2009), the credibility of translation perhaps due to the fact that she has gained a wide recognition for translating Don Quixote. Meanwhile, other critics, like Hopkinson (2005) noted his confusion between translations of certain phrases in Memories of My Melancholy Whores as well as other works of Garcia Marquez that have been translated by Grossman. Some critics, on the other hand, claimed that she even improved the original text. Manguel (2005) argued that the title, whose words included tristes meaning “sad”, has been translated into “melancholy”, allegedly, to make an impression that the “whores” were given their due importance instead of being dismissed readily in the character’s memory.

In actuality, much of the criticism that Memories of Melancholy Whores received were not in the translation but the story itself. Manguel noted that even Grossman’s skilful translation was not able to salvage the story. There have also been issues regarding the topic of “whores”. In 2007, BBC News reported that the book has been banned in Iran after the first edition of 5,000 copies has been sold out. Many conservative groups complained that the book promoted prostitution after the authorities found out that the title has been sanitized to “Memories of My Melancholy Sweethearts” in Farsi. This only proves that translation plays an important role in representing an idea of a person speaking another language. Translation can be seen as a bridge of two languages, and can present the text at a continuum between faithful or not.

On the contrary, according to an interview by Devaney (2004), Grossman notes that the works of Garcia Marquez’ were incapable of further “improvements” for they were already remarkable in any language. She goes on to admire how Garcia Marquez “gives exquisitely detailed observations” that would not require clarification on her part. At the 2003 PEN Tribute to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the award-winning translator delivered a speech stating that translation for her is an act of “critical interpretation”; that while “Fidelity is surely [her] highest aim”, literal translation is not reliable in terms of taking into account the tone, intention and meaning of the text. She notes that “Languages trail immense, individual histories behind them, and no two languages, with all their accretions of tradition and culture, ever dovetail perfectly” (via Wikipedia.com). Her statements only showed that while being faithful to the original text, it is also the translator’s job to get the message across from the writer to the readers, and that the literal meaning of the words in a language may fail to do this certain kind of communication when translated to another language verbatim. Translating therefore entails objectivity and at the same time, the subjective judgment of the translator towards constructing words.

Interestingly, Edith Grossman herself published a book for Yale University Press in 2010, entitled Why Translation Matters. In her short four-chpater book, Grossman argued that literary translation is an original writing on its own. In the words of Howard (2010), translated works are “a new work in another language”. Grossman writes:

The undeniable reality is that the work becomes the translator’s (while simultaneously and mysteriously somehow remaining the work of the original author’s) as we transmute it into a second language. Perhaps transmute is the wrong verb; what we do is not an act of magic, like altering base metals into precious ones, but the result of a series of creative decisions and imaginative acts of criticism.

Ingebertson (2010) related how Grossman also intensely criticized book reviewers who often describe her works in a single word, such as saying that a book was “flawlessly” translated, or claiming that the translation was “able to preserve the beautiful style of the text”, without actually looking into the process of translating. It was as if translating can be liken to the metaphors of a student converting words right out of a dictionary and a tracing paper over an original craft, as illustrated by Grossman. That should not be the case, according to her, because the translator participates in weaving the story into another language. The text will never be the same again and that is not necessarily bad. In fact, the very act of attempting to translate a text changes it because no two languages are similar. These being said, Grossman is deliberately implying that she voluntarily participated in the remaking Garcia Marquez’ Memorias de mis putas tristes in English.

GROSSMAN’S COMMENTARY ON MEMORIAS DE MIS PUTAS TRISTES, WHAT SHE FOUND DIFFICULT TO TRANSLATE, HOW SHE WOULD DESCRIBE THE OLD MAN

Whether she brings the reader into the story or brings the story to the reader, on the other hand, is relative to the reader’s experiences and therefore, needs to be explored. The Filipino language is closer to the Spanish language because of the latter’s colonial influence intertwined with the former’s history. Much of our vocabulary is rooted from the Spanish language more than English. Therefore, relative to English, direct translation from Spanish to Filipino is expected to be easier and more understandable in terms of our experiences, since, as post-structuralism claims, words provide a means and limits of expression.

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However, it is important to note that the English language and Spanish both came from the West. Their experiences, or the plot of the story, can also be more similar for English and Spanish especially that Garcia Marquez is a contemporary writer, a writer whose readership is global, arguably, English-speaking. Thus, even if the translation of the words could be closer in Filipino, the lifestyle of the old man, the series of circumstances in the plot and the language style could be difficult to translate or to be comprehended in the Filipino setting in understanding the Filipino elderly.

In pursuing the topic of the elderly, I have found five possible words in Spanish that may capture “the elderly” in varying degrees:

1. Viejo/a – “matandang lalaki” or “matandang babae”, also an adjective, as in “luma” or “matagal na” (via Google Translate)

2. Anciano – definition almost the same as Viejo

3. Vejete – “kuripot na matanda”. In English, however, vejete is translated as “an amusingly eccentric old man” or “a ridiculous old man”, (via Google Translate and Spanishdict.com) implying a humorous portrayal of the elderly

4. Personas de edad – plural, “mga may edad”

5. Hombre/mujer de edad – gendered, “lalaki o babaeng may edad”

Among the words given above, viejo is more commonly used in Memorias de mis putas tristes, but rarely to address himself. Viejo in the text is more often used in terms of describing aging, old things and old age instead of describing the old man. His cliché statements such as, “Aging is not in how you look but how you feel,” maintains that he does not see himself as an old man, but perhaps as a man who is undergoing aging. A dialogue between the old man and his friend revealed that, at age ninety, he thinks he is aging instead of old:

“The truth is I’m getting old, I said. We already are old, she said with a sigh. What happens in that you won’t feel it on the inside, but from the outside everybody can see it.”

In fact, the story is about finding love at the most unlikely time. It was about beginning instead of the end of life that is expected of old age. Only the reviews of the book labelled the main character as “the old man”. The book was on first person voice who did not call himself an old man, except when he came, heart-broken, realizing that he was “and old man and dying from love”. In translating the sentences that contained the word viejo, I found out that only twice did it come to describe the old man, usually during times of sadness. Other than those rare instances, he is often referred to as ‘the scholar’ or ‘the bachelor’ by his social circle. This is perhaps because he is able to retain his status as an employed man at ninety.

In my second paper, I have cited Neuhaus and Neuhaus (1982, cited in Medina, 1991:218) in defining social age, which is age-related changes from defined roles or other social forces that vary across cultures. I have also included Montes (1982:371-72 cited in Medina 1991:224) who listed five of the needs and problems of the elderly, two of which are:

1. Decrease or loss of income due to retirement, loss of work
2. Social and emotional problems including the feeling of neglect and rejection, loneliness and isolation, helplessness and worthlessness due to reversal of roles and decreased physical activity

Retirement for old Filipino men, which is usually at the age of sixty depending on their line of work, is a traumatic experience (Lolarga, 1982:15 cited in Medina, 1991:225). This is in line with interactionist theory of aging called activity theory, which emphasizes the importance of being engaged and busy as a source of vitality among the elderly. According to this theory, elderly people who remain active will adjust well to society, primarily because they are able to cope with economic and financial pressures and contribute to the modern world. In the same way, the sad or traumatic realization of elderliness comes from experiences in the social world and in institutions that limit their social participation. But for the old man in Memorias de mis putas tristes, relative to the elderly in the Philippines, social age is set much higher so he is able to pronounce himself as aging instead of old, as he is able to work like middle-aged people do. The different cultural considerations of social age, what the basis of social age is for different cultures, however, need to be explored more.

 

The crucial element in the Filipino elderly life that is lacking Memorias de mis putas tristes is the family. The old man didn’t have a family, living independently on his own without seeing this as necessarily a bad thing. Meanwhile, the 1986 Philippine Constitution provides that “the family has the duty to care for its elderly members but the State may also do so through just programs of social security”. Martin (1990:93 cited in Williams and Domingo, 1993:416) also argued that “The ability and/or willingness of families to support the elderly is declining and the elderly themselves have suffered a loss of status in the course of economic and social change.”

For most of the elderly, wealth (including properties accumulated within their lifetime) is a major issue because it is a status symbol within the community or the family. Wealth could be a determinant of power in decision-making. Williams and Domingo (1993:415) claimed that decision-making is an important indicator of power, or the extent to which individuals, regardless of age, are able to control important events in different spheres of their lives. The old man derives his financial independence from his monetary gains from his pension. Due to his pension and savings, he still can afford to have a housekeeper, pay the bills and to feed himself in cafes despite the small pay of his current job. In the case of the Philippines, acquiring the pension is a long and tedious process that the elderly needed to depend on their family for assistance and support.

 

            This paper have introduced Edith Grossman and the comments on her style of translation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ Memorias de mis putas tristes. It also included Grossman’s own account of the method of translation in general and her views on criticalness of the translator’s role in interpreting a text. I have also argued how, while Filipino is closer to Spanish in terms of vocabulary, English can also be closer to the Spanish experience in the sense that both are languages from the West. I have addressed Montes’ (1982 cited in Medina 1991) needs of the elderly and compared the life of the old man in the story to the experiences of the elderly in the Philippines in terms of retirement, family life and financial independence.

 

 

 

 

References

 

• Ashar, Linda. (2009). Gabriel García Márquez’s Novella of Late Awakening to Romance. Retrieved from Suite 101 website. Date retrieved: January 6, 2011 from http://www.suite101.com/content/book-review-memories-of-my-melancholy-whores

• Barra, Allen. (2005). Love in the time of Viagra. Retrieved from Salon website. Date retrieved: January 7, 2011 from http://www.salon.com/books/review/ 2005/11/09/marquez/index.html

• BBC News  (2007) Iran ban for Garcia Marquez novel. Retrieved from BBC News website. Date retrieved: January 6, 2011 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/ 2/hi/americas.stm

• Devaney, Tom (2004). Aiming the Lance of Language: Translator of Contemporary Lit Takes on a Classic. Retrieved from Penn Arts and Sciences website. Date retrieved: January 15, 2011 from http://www.sas.upenn.edu/sasalum/newsltr/spring04/grossman. html

• Edith Grossman in Wikipedia. Date retrieved: January 7, 2011 from http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/Edith_Grossman

• Hopkinson, Amanda. (2005). Fantasy of a fading master. Retrieved from Independent Books website. Date retrieved: January 6, 2011 from http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/memories-of-my-melancholy-whores-by-gabriel-garcia-marquez-trans-edith-grossman.html

• Howard, Richard. (2010). Duet for Two Pens. Retrieved from NY Times website. Date retrieved: January 15, 2011 from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/books/ review/Howard-t.html

• Manguel, Alberto. (2005). A sad affair. Retrieved from Guardian website. Date retrieved: January 6, 2011 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/nov/12/featuresreviews. guardianreview15

• Medina, B. (1991). The Filipino Family. Chapter 11: Then Later Years. University of the Philippines Press: Quezon City, Philippines.

• Rafferty, Terrence. (2005). ‘Memories of My Melancholy Whores’: Client of the Year. Retrieved from NY Times website. Date retrieved: January 9, 2011 from http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/books/review/06rafferty.html

• Williams, L. and Domingo L. (1993) “The Social Status of Elderly Women and Men Within the Filipino Family”. Journal of Marriage and the Family. Vol. 55, No. 2 pp. 415-426.

Filipino Childhood and Parenthood

Published for what its worth, this is about childhood paralleled with Ka Freddie’s song Anak.

Anak is a remorseful folk-ballad song composed and sung by Ferdinand Pascual “Ka Freddie” Aguilar. The song remains to be the highest-selling record in the history of Philippine music for gaining a double platinum record in a matter of weeks, being released in 56 countries, translated into 26 languages, producing hundreds of covers worldwide and making it to the Billboard’s top two international hit songs in the 1980s (via Wikipedia.com). This global recognition from a single song earned Freddie Aguilar the title of being the most recognized Asian artist who achieved worldwide fame (Balasbas-Gancayco, 2006). This paper aims to discuss the story behind the song, its writer and his contribution to Philippine music, and the notion of an “anak”. This will analyze the emerging themes in the song such as the value placed upon an “anak” as well as the meanings ascribed in the word “anak”. It will also mention the nationalistic issues Ka Freddie raised regarding the Filipino language.

Anak was an autobiographical account of the Isabela native’s adolescent rebellion against his parents, particularly against his father, who wanted him to pursue law instead of music. According to a 2007 interview by Balitang Taartits, Ka Freddie has already been expressing his talent and confidence in singing as a young boy. However, conflict arose between him and his father when he mentions the desire of pursuing music despite his latter’s disapproval. Freddie was unable to finish his college education, disobediently leaving the Electrical Engineering course only as a freshman from De Guzman Institute of Technology and eventually running away from home at the age of 18. The story that followed is exactly how the lyrics of the song went. He got himself into the vice of gambling, and after five years, realizing the mistakes he made, he composed Anak as an apology to his parents before reconciling with them during the same year (Balasbas-Gancayco, 2006). As a father who got married at 20 and seemingly learning his lesson, Ka Freddie claims to be strict towards his own children, prohibiting them from taking drugs, getting drunk, smoking too much, and getting pregnant or getting someone pregnant (Balitang Taartits, 2007). Anak itself can be seen as a story of defiant tendencies of a son or a daughter. The song inspired a movie with the same title, starring Vilma Santos and Claudine Barretto (via Wikipedia.com). It was about a daughter who blames her overseas-working mother for the former’s wayward life.

The English version of the song Anak is entitled “Child”, which does not accurately capture the meaning of the word “anak”. Anak is a gender-neutral Filipino term for a daughter or a son, instead of a child, which may mean a young person. While the society prescribes who a “child” is by cultural norms and legal definitions, an “anak” embodies an identity within a relationship with a certain parent that will last for as long as the parent lives and involves also a transfer of responsibilities once the anak eventually assumed the role of a parent.

The song depicts the cultural value placed upon children (plural form of sons and daughters) in the Filipino setting. According to Medina (1991:193), the Filipino culture provides that marriage should eventually lead to parenthood and that the gap of marriage to parenthood is prescribed by society. As such, it is seen as problematic for a couple to not have children on their first two years of marriage (Medina 1991:193). A couple (“mag-asawa”) will not be considered a family (“mag-anak”) without the element of a child (“anak”).

Bulatao (1979) noted the changing cultural value placed upon children in terms of economic, psychological and social rewards and also based on other factors such as the children’s gender, birth orders, et cetera, as well as the decline in fertility transition. One of the “values” of children mentioned by Bulatao is instrumental assistance, which is the help children would offer to their parents, economically, financially, domestically and socially. Marxist notions would claim that having children meant having hands to toil the field during the feudal times. In the modern society, however, it is middle-class children’s schooling is seen as the investment (Medina 1991:194). After studying, children, especially older ones, are expected to provide financial assistance to their parents for their other siblings’ education, as the Filipino’s notion of utang na loob would suggest, to pay back their parents for their efforts.

Likewise, the disvalues of children according to Bulatao (1979:6) are the financial costs they incur (such as for education or throughout their lifespan), the restriction on parents in terms of professional mobility, health considerations and parental responsibilities, and the costs of children to social relationships (such as marriage). Majority, or three out of four, of the disvalues of children in Bulatao’s article had something to do with “costs”. This is also evidenced by the study of purchase decisions in 60 families in Metro Manila where it was found out that children are important components of decision-making in terms of influencing the selection of goods.

According to Zelizer (1985:7), microeconomic theories of fertility could help explain the changing values of children to society, which is taken into terms of the utility that parents acquire from their children. Thus, children who choose to rebel by not finishing schooling, running away from home or disobeying parents’ wishes would prove to be of less utility, or “wasting” the investment that their parents made. This was the case in Freddie’s personal life as reflected by the lyrics of the entire fifth stanza Hindi mo man lang inisip / Na ang kanilang ginagawa’y para sa iyo / Pagka’t ang nais mo masunod ang layaw mo / ‘Di mo sila pinapansin.

Parental roles emerged also as one of the themes of the song, as it elaborates on the moral authority exercised by parents to their children in the Philippines. The lyrics of the Filipino version of the song said that parents are the child’s ‘light’ and that give valuable advices: At ang kamay nila ay iyong ilaw / … At ang payo nila’y sinuway mo. Similarly, The Child and Youth Welfare Code (1976) stated that it is the parents’ right and obligation to discipline their children in order for them to form a good character (cited in Medina 1991:196). This is in line with another value of children, which is psychological appreciation (Bulatao 1987:5). According to Bulatao, parents see their children as an incentive to succeed, to be responsible and moral because they have someone who looks up to them.

Another factor that drives parents to guide their children is that children’s behavior is often seen as a reflection of their upbringing (Medina 1991:196). In communities where family ties are close and neighborhood gossips are unavoidable, children carry more than the names of their family. They also carry the reputation of their parents as parents. As such, parents usually discipline their children in various and contextualized ways, which can cause tension within the relationship of the child and the parent, especially during the adolescent years. Adolescence may thus be considered as one of the most difficult periods in a child’s life because while they are trying to assume the status of an adult, they are still seen as children, as illustrated by the lyrics: Ngayon nga’y malaki ka na / Nais mo’y maging malaya.

Davis (cited in Medina 1991:203) enumerated the variables affecting parent-adolescent relationship strain and cited complexity in social structure as one. Davis claims that the lesser institutionalization of parental authority, confusion and inconsistency in child-rearing practices resulting to the confusion of standards and the existence of authorities outside the home contributes to the relationship strain between adolescents and their parents (cited Medina 1991:203). These characteristics of strict child-rearing practices and at the same time less attention to moral guidance is pronounced in the urban poor (Fernandez-Magno cited in Medina 1991:202) that the relationship strain in adolescence is more evident in urban areas (Medina 1991:203).

The double standard in terms of child-rearing is also expressed in the song: Sa gabi napupuyat ang iyong nanay / Sa pagtimpla ng gatas mo. The mother is expected to nurture the child while the father is to provide and discipline him or her.

Ka Freddie prides himself of writing in the local language and became recognized later as a nationalist artist during the Marcos regime for his protest anthems. During the beginning of his career, it is noted that Anak’s Tagalog version is the one that gained international recognition instead of the English version and that after he recorded an album in English in Los Angeles, he felt that despite its success, the album “was not really him” (via Freddieanakaguilar.com).

This nationalism and preference for the local language and culture resonated upon receiving an award in Korea. Ka Freddie noted how he could not read what was written in the plaque because it was written in Korean. He says in Filipino:

“I was shocked when I was called again onstage to receive an award. The trophy was nice except that I couldn’t understand the inscription because it’s in Korean. You know how Koreans are, they’re very nationalistic. They don’t write in English on trophies or plaques of appreciation. They aren’t like us (Filipinos) who are very colonial” He then delivered his acceptance speech in Filipino (Villansanta, 2008).

Also, in an SNN (Showbiz News Ngayon) episode in 2009, there was a heated issue surrounding Ka Freddie’s expression of distaste towards internationally-famous Filipino singers who render American songs instead of singing original titles, specifically naming Charice Pempengco, Arnel Pineda, Gary V. and Regine Velasquez to be among them. Ka Freddie stated that these artists only prove the statements of foreigners true that Filipinos are “monkeys” because they lack originality and only imitate foreign songs (“monkey see, monkey do”). He says in Filipino, “Do you think if Charice sings a song by Lucio San Pedro (composer of the popular lullaby, Sa Ugoy ng Duyan) to Oprah, it will make her less of a great artist? Will it not create a more distinct impression of her globally, make people admire and be curious of the Filipino language?” His statements received public criticism.

References

Balasbas-Gancayco, Dot Ramos. (2006). Still up on his toes in Philippine Star website. Retrieved at February 2011 in http://philstar.com.

Bulatao, Rodolfo A. (1979). On the nature of the transition of the value of children. East-West Center: Honolulu, Hawaii.

Tonight with Arnold Clavio. (2010). Freddie aguilar denies calling filipinos unggoy and gaya gayang charice & arnel pineda. Retrieved February 23, 2011 from jeans4justice channel in Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= kz4AFQNsYtM

Balitang Taartits. (2007). Teledryaryo – Freddie Aguilar. Retrieved February 23, 2011 from hapisadako channel in Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFSqlf8UkNM

Medina, B. (1991). The Filipino Family. Chapter 10: Parenthood. University of the Philippines Press: Quezon City, Philippines.

Showbiz News Ngayon. (2009). Freddie Aguilar Strikes Back Again! Retrieved February 23, 2011 from gaeul17 channel in Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwrOyMsw-jA

Anak, Freddie Aguilar, Lucio San Pedro in Wikipedia.com

The Freddie Aguilar Story. Retrieved February 23, 2011 from Freddieanakaguilar website: http://freddieanakaguilar.com/bio.html

Villasanta, Boy. (2008). Freddie Aguilar wins Korean Asia Star Award. Retrieved February 23, 2011 from Freddieanakaguilar website: http://freddieanakaguilar.com/disc.html

Zelizer, Viviana A. (1985). Pricing the Priceless Child. Retrieved from Google books website February 23, 2011 at http://google.com/books.