Ideological State Apparatus: Education

Education is considered as a very powerful ideological state apparatus in any society, more so during the Hispanic period in the Philippine archipelago. The ability to transmit accumulated knowledge and to create a capable manpower is achieved through education. Unfortunately, the Spanish colonizers of Rizal's time used education to subjugate and discipline the Filipino by feeding them a defective educational system that was filled with much religious mysticism and hokum. Indeed, the irony of having a friar teach religious meta-physics instead of Physics during a Physics class was observed in Rizal's second novel. By barring access to actual scientific education, the Filipino people were left scrambling for the truth in the dark and consequently, they were led to believe that the scripture along with the rest of the Catholic doctrine held all the sacred truths they were searching for. This deception had dire repercussions to the advancement of the Filipino society. The deprivation of a proper secular education effectively aided the stagnation of the modes of production towards their advancement. As such, the country was helplessly left at the mercy of few Spanish feudal lords, which, coincidentally, were those who strongly opposed the education of the native Filipinos, the Spanish friars. A retarded society bereft of any substantial academic upbringing whose whims were easily swayed by those in power resulted from this travesty.

It is interesting to note that peace in the Bisaya dialect, kataninungan, is surprisingly close to the Filipino word for knowledge, katalinuhan. In a society where actual learning is replaced with mindless memorizations of prayers and with other needless religious fanaticism, it is expected that any person with a formal education be looked upon with much disdain and be ridiculed with foolishness. This sad truth was exemplified by how Pilosopo Tasyo was treated in the town of San Diego. His open-mindness and apparent intelligence was instead seen as madness. Rizal painted the painful reality of his beloved Mother Land being unable to empower itself with education and as a consequence, lost its sanity in the process. Sisa's fate serves as a good example of how an individual may lose one's sanity if left deprived of a proper education. The foolishness of Tasyo's intellect being perceived as madness and Sisa's unfortunate plight of insanity brought about by her lack of education aptly capture the reality that, indeed, one's peace of mind lies on one's education, as the Bisaya word kataninungan illustrates. (12/16/2010)