Blueprint for a New Philippines - Part Thirteen
By Cesar Lumba
I have seen an explosion these days on the internet of suggestions being made about how to help the country pull itself by the bootstraps. No doubt, all are well-intentioned and are a good alternative use for the energy generated by the recent national preoccupation with Gloriagate, which, as a national issue, appears to be at its death-throes.
Some who had been radicalized by the Garci tapes fiasco and are now willing to give the President a second chance are wondering how all of the energy recently generated could be harnessed to improve the lot of the little guy.
It is very easy to come up with goals and ideals - we already know what these are - it is quite another to choose the best alternatives out of a universe of possible alternatives.
There is a suggestion - mistaken in my opinion - that the way to go about nation building is by starting small. Do, in other words, that which can easily be done. Do, incrementally, one small project at a time.
This, however, is merely a continuation of what is already being done in the Philippines. You only have to read the papers - not even the learned journals - to know that it is how things are being done in the Philippines. One small project here, one small project there, and then hope that they will snowball and carry the whole country into the promised land.
But it hasn't worked. After many years, the rich are richer, the poor are poorer.
I'll tell you why it hasn't worked.
Take the approach of some of the country's educators. What comes to mind easily is the Christian Brothers' new school for the poor in Bagac, Bataan. It is indeed a noble achievement that the Brothers are in a position to offer quality education to the school children who would not otherwise be able to afford it. And it is not just the Christian Brothers. There are other groups, other religious organizations, that are reaching out to poor children and endeavoring to give them quality education.
What is wrong with this picture is that the education of some of the poor children will result in perhaps those children's ascension to the ranks of the elites.
It is definitely good for those children, but is it good for the country?
Remember that the overhwhelming majority of children go to public schools. Those children who are not afforded the quality education in the La Salle school or in other schools run by priests and nuns throughout the country, will remain stagnant and unable to fend for themselves in adulthood.
In a society that is largely exploitative (neo-feudal) the products of the La Salle schools for the poor and the other schools run by priests and nuns will tend to dominate and exploit those who have not had the same quality education.
Imagine a town with 25,000 inhabitants. Under normal circumstances, there might be 2000 in that town that may be classified as the elite, the power brokers, the dispensers of economic favors. The rest are dependent, totally or partially, on the elite 2000.
Now, because some of the students are being educated properly by the schools run by the religious, eventually the elite population will grow even as the population grows. Twenty years later, when the population is double at 50,000, the elite might triple to 6000.
In other words, in the expoloitative society that the townspeople live in, there will be more people who will exploit the poor. Many of those additional elites who will end up exploiting the poor will in fact have been educated by the religious schools, including the La Salle Brothers' Bagac school.
So, while the Brothers' and other religious groups' intention is both noble and commendatory, if providing quality education to only a lucky few is the only thing that is being done for the poor, the results can dramatically contribute to further exploitation of the poor.
Let me illustrate this with a chicken coop. In the natural pecking order, there may be four or five roosters and hens who go around terrorizing the other chicken in the coop. If you add two more alpha male chicken to the coop, there will be more peckers going around and enforcing the new pecking order.
This is an extreme example, I admit, but it illustrates my point clearly, so I have used it.
It illustrates that certain small, incremental projects, while easy to accomplish, may do more harm than good.
What is needed in the Philippines is a complete overhaul of the educational system. And this means the public school system. We should not just expand the members of the elite class, by educating some of them in the elite schools for free. We should in addition educate all the children properly so they cannot be exploited by the elites.
When majority of the population can fend for themselves, the dynamics of the age-old unwritten arrangement between the poor and the rich in the barrios and barangays in the cities as well as in the remote areas of the Philippines will be replaced by an emergent new order that mandates cooperation and not exploitation.
I am being intentionally repetitious: if we lift some poor students and help them eventually join the ranks of the elites in the Philippines, and we do not help the other poor students who are raised in public schools, what we are accomplishing is merely increasing the ranks of those who will exploit the poor in the neo-feudal society of the Philippines.
On the economic front, we see other evidence that small incremental growth may have severe long term ill effects. Take the case of the explosive growth of call centers. The Philippines has benefited from the growth of outsourcing world-wide (insourcing from the vantage point of the Philippines), but the growth may soon stop as it becomes more difficult to find employees who speak good English.
When the international community becomes convinced that the Philippines has limited growth opportunities in the call centers business, they will turn to other countries that may eventually siphon off even existing call center activities in the Philippines. For if the call center entrepreneurs find other countries with better assets than the Philippines, they will pull out of the Philippines and invest in other countries.
We saw this happen with the many industsries that were once in the Philippines but were eventually chased away by our capricious judicial system, the kidnapping, the threat of terrorist attacks.
We hope that this will not happen with our call center businesses, of course, that we will be able to feed the pipeline with good, English-speaking students as the need for them explodes.
Just the same, this illustrates that incremental improvements in one sector, if not supported by overall improvement in the whole system, will be temporary at best, counter-productive at worst.
The more I reflect upon what is happening in the Philippines, the more I become convinced that my series, Blueprint for a New Philippines, has exceptional relevance in these times.
To those who are wondering how best to proceed with nation-building in the Philippines, I am recommending that you read or re-visit my Blueprint by clicking on this url: http://www.xanga.com/clumba.
