Interface of Indigenous Learning and Formal Systems in the School of Living Traditions

• In Event: Indigenous knowledge in practice

Proposal

The School of Living Traditions (SLT) Program of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) began more than two decades ago. It is a flagship program by the NCCA which is the overall policy-making, coordinating and grants-giving agency for the preservation, development and promotion of Philippine culture and arts. Historically, the SLTs were created through the initiatives of community representatives in the NCCA’s Subcommission on Cultural Communities and Traditional Arts to preserve and integrate traditional culture and its various creative expressions as a dynamic part of the national cultural mainstream.
The SLT is also, first and foremost, a physical structure. It is described as a non-formal learning center in the middle of the community, serving as a place where the community can converge to practice and transmit their arts, crafts, and traditions. The SLTs began from three centers: Mandaya Loomweaving, Talaandig crafts, and T’boli performing arts which were all pioneered in 1995.
The SLT is not part of the formal Philippine educational system. As a community development and heritage program, the SLTs operate under a number of tenets with one of them being “community empowerment”. In the beginning, the SLT was a mere training initiative. Now, the SLT has been enhanced to become a long-standing and sustainable program within the community with 29 enhanced SLT centers. As a community-based informal center of learning involving masters and apprentices, the SLT mode of teaching is usually oral, and is grounded in “learning by doing” philosophy. The community will always be the one to plan and determine their capacity and NCCA facilitates the mechanisms for implementation as initiated by the community. A local coordinating team from the community itself is designated by the community to oversee the project implementation and management.
Throughout the years, the SLT has had unprecedented success largely because of the quantity of programs that it has established in different communities. With more than 600 SLTs assisted and an enhancement of the program a few decades after it was first conceptualized, the SLTs have truly become an institutional and integral part of the NCCA as an organization and a movement that reflects the values and mandates of the agency. However, it still becomes a point of contention especially when looking at the basis of why it was established in the first place. It cannot be denied that, despite the well-meaning intentions of the program, there are several questions about the relationship of the SLT with the community particularly as a state program. Since the SLT incorporates indigenous learning systems as an integral part of its operation, it is inevitable that the SLT also has community-sanctioned mechanisms that take place. The question now is, can a government project actually achieve genuine and organic success in the community? This study focuses on role of the SLT as a cultural space and a place of negotiation and contestation and meaning-makinf between the government and the community.
It is noteworthy to examine the SLT and the meaning-making processes in the SLT, thus, this study shall present how the State and the community’s meaning-making contributes to the discourse of education in heritage safeguarding as reflected in the SLT. Specifically, it presents the SLT implementation in terms of plans, activities and practices within the context of these communities. For example, the Ifugao knowledge and learning system is an important and vital part of the ethnic identity of the Ifugao. (Abayao, 2010) For Bennagen, the exploration of a learning system that can be appropriate for the Southeast Asian as well as the developing country setting should be able to take into account the complexity and nuances of the communities and the elements that they abide by.
The study will analyze the social processes taking place in the SLT and how human agency is being exercised in all levels of operations, that the community are expected to follow. At the same time, how the same actors continue to adhere to the intrinsic power of the institutional management systems and procedures.
This discussion will largely revolve around the meaning-making of culture which has always been a contested notion even among well-seasoned anthropologists. Over time, “culture” became less about boundaries and more about political processes of contestation and power. By giving meaning to culture, actors and stakeholders with significant influence have used the ideas of culture as a harness of people and communities. (Wright, 1998) Inevitably, there are power-based interests that lead to the creation of culture regardless of interests and differences. In this case, culture becomes both a pattern and an on-going process of meaning making. (Baldwin, Faulkner, Hecht, & Lindsley, 2006)

Author

• Renee Coreses Talavera, National Commission for Culture and the Arts