The Strengthening of Philosophy Education and the Appropriation of

Filipino Values: A Means Towards National Development

Ruby S. Suazo
Philosophy Division
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies
University of San Carlos, Cebu City, Philippines

Bago’s stylized framework for development in the Philippines is very

inspiring. She concludes that the present situation of the country is a result
of the Filipino’s cultural values that serve as the foundation of the nation
because of their greater influence and impact on their way of life. Since the
values of the people are reflected on the workings of institutions, this idea is
embedded as one of the goals of Philippine education being one of its social
institutions.1 Furthermore, she believes that the integrative development of
the nation can be made possible through education. This makes the revival
of values education in the curriculum supposedly very timely for it can be
the most potent vehicle for personal and national development.

Former Pres. Gloria Macapagal - Arroyo even formed the Presidential

Commission on Values Formation. The commission is formed because of “the
existence of the Filipino’s strong desire to see the establishment and
institutionalization of just and moral governance and the imperative to have
a continuing and intensified drive against graft and corruption, patronage
politics, apathy, passivity, mendicancy, factionalism and lack of patriotism.”2
This recent development suggests that rethinking of the different values of
the Filipino is not yet a passé. It remains relevant up to the present for the

1
Adelaida L. Bago, Curriculum Development: The Philippine Experience (Manila: De La Salle University
Press, Inc., 2001), 9.
2
Gloria Macapagal – Arroyo, Executive Order No. 314: Creating the Presidential Commission on Values
Formation (Manila: Malacañang, April 30, 2004); available from http://www.ops.gov.ph/records/eo_no314.htm;
accessed November 5, 2006.
desired integrated development that should be sustainable, equitable,
spiritually uplifting, and socially integrating has not fully materialized yet.3

In line with this, Bago notes that this has remained to be the main
thrust of the values education curriculum. This thrust is spelled out even
more in the goal of the Values Education Program: “to provide and promote
values education at all three levels of the educational system for the
development of the human person committed to the building of a just and
humane society and an independent and democratic nation.”4

In fact, one of the aims of the Education Act of 1982 is “to provide the
knowledge and develop the skills, attitudes and values essential to personal
development and necessary for living in and contributing to a developing and
changing social milieu.”5 The values to be taught to both the elementary and
secondary students are contained in the The DECS Values Education
Framework6 developed by the National Committee for developing and
promoting the Framework for Values Education chaired by Minda C. Sutaria.

The DECS Values Education Framework looks into the human person in
relation to its self and community. As self, the human person is divided into
four dimensions: physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual. In community,
the human person is seen socially, economically, and politically. Socially, he
is taken in terms of its family and society. Socially, the person is expected to
develop the value of social responsibility. Economically, he is to develop

3
Bago,
4
Bago, 132.
5
Bella O. Mariñas and Maria Pelagia Ditapat, “Philippines: Curriculum Development”: 112; available from
http://www.ibe.unesco.org/curriculum/Asia%20Networkpdf/ndrepph.pdf; accessed February 10, 2011.
6
Minda C. Sutaria, Juanita S. Guerrero and Paulina M. Castaño, eds., “The DECS Values Education
Framework” in Philippine Education: Visions and Perspectives (Manila: National Book Store, Inc., 1989), 117 as
cited in Bago, 133.
economic efficiency. Politically, he has to develop the values of nationalism
and global solidarity. The values developed are expected to improve the
human dignity of the human person.

Furthermore, other values educators, such as Talisayon and Andres,

identified also the pertinent values of the Filipinos. Talisayon, on his part,
intimates that the core or central clusters of the Filipino value system
revolve around seven values: (1) family/kinship orientation; (2)
makatao/kapwa tao (personalism); (3) “loob complex” (religious/psychic
orientation); (4) social acceptance; (5) pakikiramdam; (6) pakikisama
7
(group centeredness); and (7) economic security. The framework of
Andres8, a synthesis of the studies conducted by Lynch, Bulatao, Gorospe,
Hollnsteiner, Landa Jocano, Mercado, and Quisumbing, on the other hand
analyzes the Philippine value system into three aspects: first, in terms of its
aims, goals, and aspirations; second, in terms of belief, convictions and
attitudes; lastly, in terms of principles and norms.

Nevertheless, critics see the aforementioned values of the Filipinos as

anti-development. Jocano explains, “Many critics… see Filipino traditional
values as something we should not have valued in the first place…. They say
that these values have “damaged” our culture, brought about “the ills in our
society,” given rise to our “undesirable traits,” brought about ‘weaknesses in

7
Serafin D. Talisayon, “Values In Our Quest for Freedom (1896 – 1898) and Their Application for Future
Development” in Lourdes R. Quisumbing and Felice P. Sta. Maria, Peace and Tolerance: Values Education Through
History, 105. This is a result of Talisayon’s compilation and review of almost a hundred academic, journalist and
opinion articles about Filipino values, orientations or attitudes, and idiosyncrasies. He was able to discern
commonalities and consensus among various authors, and reduce them into a set of identifiable value clusters
with some internal consistency or coherence.
8
Tomas D. Andres, Understanding Filipino Values: A Management Approach (Quezon City: New Day
Publishers, 1981), 27.
our character’ as a people, and have caused the ‘moral breakdown’ of our
institutions.”9

Andres shares the same sentiment as the most observers and critics
alike who believe that the values of the Filipinos are anti-development but
he believes that this attitude is due to the emphasis of the negative features
of the Filipino values. Soler, as cited by Andres, says that “the principal
cause of the present economic conditions may be attributed to the
negativism in the Filipino national personality. This negativism in turn
creates a crisis of national identity and a crisis of national self-confidence.”10

Most Filipinos perhaps believe that we are already supposed to fail

because of the misplaced practice of our values. But Camilo Osias, even
during the 1940’s, was very empathic in saying that “we must not fail; we
cannot afford to fail. We must succeed; we must will to succeed. It is
therefore incumbent upon us to formulate a philosophy and adopt a way of
life that serves as a guide to the citizen and the nation – a philosophy that
gives cohesion to individual and collective endeavor and makes life
purposive and meaningful.”11 The appropriate application of the said values
to the Filipino’s desired goals will make them good, desirable and positive.

With the onset of this confusion, I argue that a strong and proper
Philosophy education of all parties involved would have been helpful in
threshing out the issue. A strong philosophy education is very relevant in the
development of a nation. If the teaching of values education at the

9
F. Landa Jocano, Filipino Value System: A Cultural Definition (Manila: PUNLAD Research House, Inc.,
1997), 2.
10
Tomas Andres, Positive Filipino Values (Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1999), 7. Cf. Ricardo S. Soler,
“A Crisis of National Self-Confidence” in Industrial Philippines (January 1972), 16.
11
Camilo Osias, “The Philippines, A Cultural Laboratory” in The Filipino Way of Life: The Pluralized
Philosophy (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1940), x.
elementary and secondary levels appears to be very functional, at the
university or the tertiary level, it is expected not to be functional anymore
but speculative, meaning, philosophical. This is for the reason that,
according to Lyotard, “the teaching of philosophy is generally recognized to
be the basis of all university activity.”12 He explains that “philosophy must
restore unity to learning, which has been scattered into separate sciences in
laboratories and in preuniversity education, it can only achieve this in a
language game that links the sciences together as moments in the
becoming of spirit, in other words, which links them to a rational narration,
or rather metanarration.”13

Furthermore, UNESCO expresses also the importance of teaching

philosophy saying, “What is the teaching of philosophy if not the teaching of
freedom and critical reasoning? Philosophy actually implies exercising
freedom in and through reflection because it is a matter of making rational
judgments and not just expressing opinions, because it is a matter not just
of knowing, but of understanding the meaning and the principles of knowing,
because it is a matter of developing a critical mind, rampart par excellence
against all forms of doctrinaire passion.”14

In the Philippines, philosophy education is taken very much for

granted. CHED memorandum no. 59 series of 1996 only requires a 3-unit
philosophy course as part of the general education curriculum, preferably
Introduction to Logic. During a national public hearing on the Policies,
Standards and Guidelines (PSGs) for the Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy
degree program held on 2 December 2010, the nomenclature of Introduction

12
Jean-François Lyotard, “The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge” in From Modernism to
Postmodernism: An Anthology, Lawrence Cahoone, ed., expanded second edition (Massachusetts: Blackwell
Publishing Ltd., 2003), 273 n. 8.
13
Jean-François Lyotard, “The Postmodern Condition”, 261.
14
UNESCO, Philosophy: A School of Freedom (Paris: UNESCO Publishing, 2007), ix.
to Logic was changed to Critical Thinking with roughly the same content with
the former. The reason for the change of name though with the same
content is that the original intent of the course which was to develop critical
thinking is already forgotten. Part of philosophy as a discipline is indeed
critical thinking, “which is the ability to question your (or anyone else’s)
assumptions, discover and hopefully articulate good reasons for your
position, no matter what your position is.”15 Nevertheless, the problem with
the course is neither the content nor the name but the approach of teaching
it. But I still argue that the 3-unit course on Critical Thinking is not sufficient
considering that the business of philosophy is ideas. Thus, the program of
UNESCO integrating philosophy in all levels of education is worth
considering.

As to the teaching of philosophy among elementary pupils, it is

received with reservation considering their preparedness. Nevertheless,
when it is said that the business of philosophy is ideas, Adler refers to “the
ideas basic and indispensable to understanding ourselves, our society, and
the world in which we live.”16 He muses:

These ideas, as we shall see presently, constitute the vocabulary

of everyone's thought. Unlike the concepts of the special
sciences, the words that name the great ideas are all of them
words of ordinary, everyday speech. They are not technical
terms. They do not belong to the private jargon of a specialized
branch of knowledge. Everyone uses them in ordinary
conversation. But everyone does not understand them as well as
they can be understood, nor has everyone pondered sufficiently
15
Dave Yount, “The Importance of Philosophy or ‘Why Should I Take Philosophy?’”; available in
http://www.mesacc.edu/~yount/text/importofphil.html; accessed February 11, 2011
16
Mortimer Adler, Six Great Ideas: Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Liberty, Equality, Justice (New York: Collier
Books, 1981), 3.
 the questions raised by each of the great ideas. To do that and
to think one's way through to some resolution of the conflicting
answers to these questions is to philosophize.17

If these ideas are used in ordinary conversation, then children likewise

become conversant about them. Nevertheless, this is not much of my
concern in the paper. My concern is showing the capacity of philosophy
to help us realize our dream for national development.

Considering the Filipino values of hiya, pakikipagkapwa-tao, sakop,

pakikisama, they are likewise ideas that “constitute the vocabulary of
everyone’s thought.” And, they are also ideas that every Filipino might
not have understood well nor pondered upon sufficiently. In view of
this situation, Wittgenstein’s comment on philosophy as aiming at the
“logical clarification of thoughts…[and being] not a body of doctrine but
an activity… [thus a work that] consists essentially of elucidations”18 is
an eye-opener. Furthermore, his comment on philosophy, to wit
“Philosophy does not result in ‘philosophical propositions’, but rather in
the clarification of propositions. Without philosophy thoughts are, as it
were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give
them sharp boundaries”19 is setting cognizance of how Philosophy can
become relevant to us.
Critics believe that Filipino values are anti-development for we
too believe on their negativity and backwardness. Nevertheless, our
values are not the reason why we are underdeveloped. Our inability to
understand sufficiently how our values operate and how the Filipino

17
Adler, 3 – 4.
18
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus, translated by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness,
with an introduction by Bertrand Russell (London: Routledge Classics, 2001), 30.
19
Wittgenstein, 30.
mind operates can be the reason of our underdevelopment. Thus,
Ramirez charges that “at present, our social institutions are not
responding to people’s life-needs”20 because the Filipino people do not
fully understand the dynamism of their value system. Since we are not
conversant with the whys and wherefores of our values, foreign
observers can easily sway us to believe that our values are really
wrong.

It is that having the value of philosophizing instilled unto the

system of the Filipino can be very helpful. Philosophy is a very potent
tool for self-understanding. For Paul Ricoeur for instance, “philosophy
is a form of critical pedagogy aiming to bring about a democratic
economy, just society, and good life.”21 In fact he is committed to “a
philosophy as critical theory resulting in personal and social
transformation and progressive politics.”22 Thus, for him philosophy as
reflexive philosophy “considers the most radical philosophical problems
to those that concern the possibility of self-understanding as the
subject of the operation of knowing, willing, evaluating, and so on.
Reflexion is that act of turning back upon itself by which a subject
grasps, in a moment of intellectual clarity and moral responsibility, the
unifying principle of the operations among which it is dispersed and
forgets itself as subject.”23 Doing a reflexive philosophy increases
one’s subjectivity. The aim of reflexive philosophy is “to appropriate in
praxis an originary dynamism which grounds human existence and

20
Mina Ramirez, “Toward a Revolution of Mindsets: A Critique of the Present Socio-Cultural System” in
Reflections on Culture, 5.
21
David Kaplan, Ricoeur’s Critical Theory, (New York: SUNY Press, 2003), 2.
22
Kaplan, 2
23
Paul Ricoeur, “On Interpretation,” From Text to Action: Essays In Hermeneutics, II, 12.
with which the conscious, practical self does not coincide.”24 Through
reflection, the subject recaptures itself through the expressions of life
that objectify it.
For instance, the issue on Filipino identity is now taken for
granted by scholars for they believe that it is very impossible to reckon
who really the original Filipino is. Indeed, knowing directly the original
Filipino is really an impossibility. However, taking the cue from Paul
Ricoeur that knowing oneself takes a lot of detour is a good beginning.
One of the detours that we can follow through is the narratives.
Following the narrative as a detour is very appropriate. Kaplan,
reading Ricoeur, notes that “narratives not only constitute history and
tradition but determine who we are, what we are, and what our
prospects for the future are.”25

Similarly, the pursuit to understand the Filipino self foresees a

similar result. Henceforth, the Filipino self should be known because it
is expected to become an impetus to act; it serves as “a rallying point
for unity, self-discipline, and love and pride in one’s country.”26 The
importance of knowing one’s self depends on the ability of the person
to appropriate his decision upon his own.

The assumption is that the moment the Filipino understands who

he is, he can extend such knowledge to the societal level and
eventually create a wave of true national sentiment. Arguably,
knowing the Filipino self estimated the finding of a sense of meaning

24
John Van den Hengel, The Home of Meaning: The Hermeneutics of the Subject of Paul
Ricoeur (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982), 15 – 16.
25
Kaplan, 60.
26
Mangubat, 297a.
and thereby understands his reason for being. Consequently, this
gives the Filipino a sense of direction.

Momentarily, since the Filipino does not yet find his locus of
control, he has also not ascertained yet the direction of his endeavors.
Inasmuch as the present Filipino is formed by his diverse influences,
both eastern and western with their opposing tendencies, he becomes
confused. Seeing the best and the worst of both worlds is supposedly
advantageous to him. But his ignorance about his reason for being
makes him incapable of threshing out the good influences from the
bad influences, something that can drive his nation to the desired
stability and integrated development.

References:

Adler, Mortimer. Six Great Ideas: Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Liberty, Equality, Justice. New
York: Collier Books, 1981.
Andres, Tomas. Positive Filipino Values. Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1999.
Andres, Tomas D. Understanding Filipino Values: A Management Approach. Quezon City:
New Day Publishers, 1981.
Bago, Adelaida L. Curriculum Development: The Philippine Experience. Manila: De La Salle
University Press, Inc., 2001.
Jocano, F. Landa. Filipino Value System: A Cultural Definition. Manila: PUNLAD Research
House, Inc., 1997.
Kaplan, David. Ricoeur’s Critical Theory. New York: SUNY Press, 2003.
Lyotard, Jean-François. “The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge” in From
Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology. Lawrence Cahoone, ed. Expanded
second edition. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2003.
Macapagal – Arroyo, Gloria. Executive Order No. 314: Creating the Presidential Commission
on Values Formation. Manila: Malacañang, April 30, 2004. Retrieved November 5,
2006 from http://www.ops.gov.ph/records/eo_no314.htm
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Retrieved February 10, 2011 from
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Pluralized Philosophy. Boston: Ginn and Company, 1940.
Ramirez, Mina. “Toward a Revolution of Mindsets: A Critique of the Present Socio-Cultural
System” in Reflections on Culture.
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Blamey and J. B. Thompson, Trans. Illinois: Northwestern University Press.
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Education Framework” in Philippine Education: Visions and Perspectives. Manila:
National Book Store, Inc., 1989.
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for Future Development” in Lourdes R. Quisumbing and Felice P. Sta. Maria, Peace
and Tolerance: Values Education Through History. Pasay City: UNESCO National
Commission of the Philippines.
UNESCO. Philosophy: A School of Freedom. Paris: UNESCO Publishing, 2007.
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McGuinness with an introduction by Bertrand Russell. London: Routledge Classics,
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February 11, 2011 from http://www.mesacc.edu/~yount/text/importofphil.html