Mainstreaming indigenous knowledge in schools: exploring teachers' ambivalence towards indigenous religion

• In Event: Disrupting Colonial Logics

Proposal

The Philippine Indigenous People's Rights Act (IPRA) of 1997 defines "indigenous people" as "belonging to a group who have maintained common language and markers and/or have resisted political, social and cultural inroads of colonization." This conceptualization of the indigenous would render anomalous the perpetuation of a western-inspired education system. And since education is a right that should be accorded to each Filipino child, the government is lawfully obliged to decolonize education. In fact, the written policy states that indigenous communities have the right to determine culturally and linguistically appropriate education for their children.
The movement towards contextualization and indigenization of the Philippine basic education curriculum began to step up in 2004 when leaders from indigenous communities and civil society began holding forums to advocate for the integration of indigenous knowledge and concerns in the school curriculum. Later, the Department of Education (DepEd) participated in the consultations which led to the conceptualization of the National Indigenous People's Education Policy Framework in 2011. The current policy framework adheres to an integrationist view of indigenous education. Indigenous knowledge is added to the curriculum content and informs how instruction is undertaken. It must be noted that other places in the world adopt the parallelist view in which curriculum content, teaching practices, and forms of organization from basic to higher education are totally based on indigenous knowledge systems and practices and reject the mainstream education content. This radical approach is a reaction to the lack of public recognition of indigenous nationhood and sovereignty that led to the erosion of indigenous languages and spiritual beliefs, which is viewed as a form of genocide.
Moving in parallel with the IP education was the push for Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE). The MTB-MLE policy foregrounds the child's mother tongue as the primary language of instruction, especially in the early grades. Filipino (the national language) and English would be introduced gradually. Languages spoken by Filipino children (belonging to large and small indigenous language communities) were included in the official medium of instruction to be used in school as long that the language is provided with the "four minima" – orthography, grammar guide, dictionary, and a set of children's storybooks in the mother tongue. Since the development of these materials is to be done locally, it is imperative that teachers in schools work with the community to produce the materials.
This qualitative study explored the experiences of primary school teachers in selected public schools in an indigenous community in the Northern Philippines. These teachers participated in the development of culturally responsive storybooks that used indigenous knowledge and languages. It also analyzed the conditions and contexts that influenced the storybook writing processes. Some 63 sample teacher-made storybooks, interview transcripts, and field notes from participant observation were analyzed.
The paper found that the storybooks sought to represent the world of the indigenous community. The contents of the stories about names of people, places, plants, and animals, including the names of authors and illustrators, created a sense of place and history. The stories made visible the culture bearers, especially the grandparents, allowing the indigenous learning system to permeate the school system. What was patently absent in the storybooks that supposedly contained indigenous knowledge was a reference to Kabunian, the indigenous Supreme Being, other deities, and indigenous religious beliefs and practices. The teacher-writers explained that the absence of such items in the stories was due to their current Christian religious views, which treat indigenous religion as part of their pagan past that must be forgotten. There were many instances when public school teachers expressed inner tensions as they were tasked to integrate indigenous knowledge that they had abandoned in the past.
The absence of names and stories related to indigenous religion in the storybooks reveals the incompleteness and ambivalence of the conception of place due to the strong influence of the Christian religion and mass schooling, both of which were brought by colonization. Adamo (2011) noted that colonial theology maintained superiority over indigenous religions, labeling them animistic, polytheistic, and satanic. Indigenous religion was associated with misery and superstition and was not worth studying. This paper suggests that focusing on the place can provide a productive space for Indigenous People's Education. At the same, it also challenges IP teachers to reflect and examine how far and wide they can go in integrating their indigenous knowledge system and practices with the formal school curriculum. The process requires a critical and decolonized view of knowledge, schooling, and religion.

Author

• Maria Mercedes E. Arzadon, College of Education, University of the Philippines