Philip S. Garces III:

DECOLONIZING KNOWLEDGE, DECOLONIZING THE SOCIAL SCIENCES: ISSUES CONCERNS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

This short essay is mainly composed of how the authors of some class reading defended or rebutted the western culture or euro centrism, educational dependency and neo-colonialism, the western mathematics, the debate between the traditionalists and the multiculturalists and how is the Philippine or the Filipino Social Sciences is still heavily anchored to the western conduct of social sciences.

Integration
By way of integrating the concept within several class readings, I would like to start from the broadest, I think, but the starting point of all these discourses, the way and how we constructed and perceive social reality. In John Searle’s discourse on social reality, it is highly ontological in the sense that we are inquiring on how social facts exist in our social life. Also, what I think to be the integrating factor in Searle’s article is how he distinguished the objective and the subjective in two realms: epistemology (epistemic) and ontology (ontologically). Basically what he says here is that the objective is in a sense “known to all” or “available to all” and the subjective being dependent to the signifier or to the one seeing or interpreting an event or encountering knowledge.
In connection to Searle’s arguments a question arise like: can we have an objective knowledge like Mathematics? At the initial and superficial investigation, we can say that the mathematics that we have today in our schools is highly objective for its being context-free, nature of being general and universal. The flaws in this argument can only be seen if we ask our selves on how this kind of universal nature of mathematical knowledge is created? If we look more closely, the mathematics that we use today in our schools is mainly western or highly embedded by western cultural values like hard rationality, objectivism and the notion that having knowledge (objective) can give power for its ability to predict and control events. Definitely, this article of Allan Bishop about the western mathematics is a cultural critique of inquiring of: who’s really the knowledge of mathematics? The answer to this is mathematical knowledge of the western people through conventions and agreements on the general mathematical concepts.
Getting in to the more concrete arguments within the practice of education, the article on “Is There a Crisis in American Higher Education?” it questions of the viability of the traditionalist point of practicing or teaching as opposed to the emerging concept of multiculturalism. As biased by John Searle, he argued that there are some traditions in teaching in the US or in the western tradition that needs to be confined within the bounds of western practice like the acknowledgement of western “great men” from Socrates to Wittgenstein and their works and not other “great men” from the East. This is because it is established and perpetually disseminated that the people and the works from the west are far superior to those from the East. As opposition to the traditionalist view, the multiculturalists argued tat that we should acknowledge and take into consideration the aspect of personal circumstances and background which are part of the identity of a person. What the author presented as part of his rebuttal to the multiculturalists, he proposed Liberal Education which means equality to the opportunity within the bound of the educational system but without taking into consideration personal circumstances.
The last part of the integration is focused on the mechanisms of the west in colonizing the academe of the east especially in the Philippines. As was argued by S.F. Alatas, he said that there is a global division of labor within the social sciences that is operating. This means that there are certain aspect in the conduct of the social science that can only be done by the practitioners from the east and some only by the westerners. This is heavily based on the political economy within the social sciences that is powerfully operating. It assume that much of the jobs that can prestige should be relegated to the west because they have the capacity to do this given the resources and their established power relations within other countries.
In the case of the Philippines, Randolf David said that the Phillipine Social Sciences is still heavily anchored to the western practice of the social sciences. Most of our texts, theories, even fundings and research heads mostly came from the west. All of these are part of the educational neocolonialism as proposed by Altbach, meaning, there is still the continuing impact of former western colonial regimes and some advances nations on poor or developing nations in the areas of educational system and intellectual

Issues and recommendations
The biggest issue in the social sciences in the discourse of its being colonized is our great dependency to the western practice of social science. Much of our texts, theories, and others are anchored if not heavily influenced by the West.
To decolonize the social sciences, I propose a gradual rather than the radical drastic mode of freeing the social sciences. What I mean is the continued effort of reforming and modifying the social sciences until it reaches its goal of freeing itself from the (neo)colonial powers. What I think should be the first step to this is we should start at early years of education because this is the stage where we incorporate our knowledge in preparation to the next stages of education and it is also the stage where we are prone to various forms of knowledge. a good and reliable factor to this is the improvement of the quality of teaching by the teachers. We should orient out mentors the proper way to teach the social sciences and other areas of knowledge in such a way that we promote our own social science, culture, history and others rather than the west. We should not have the attitude that since we are a technological institute and we do not focus on the social sciences we just teach social science in a manner of mediocrity just for the sake of saying that we also teach social science here.
In terms of our history and philosophy, we should promote this two very basic and foundational aspect of the academe in such a way that it contains our own perspective and not from the west. Although it now a trend in history to use the “pan-tayong pananaw” or the use of our own perspective, a more focused promotion to this trend should be given. In this way a comparative analysis can be made by students between the difference of having a history written by westerners and history written by Filipinos for Filipinos.
Another recommendations is the establishment and improvement of academic centers focused on indigenous cultures like the Cordillera Studies Center of the University of the Philippines Baguio which focus on the Cordilleran culture. In this way, we are helping in building awareness that there are also indigenous cultures that exist within our country that cannot be said inferior nor superior to the western culture.
In an offensive stance we should assert ourselves the right to develop freely without the aid or influence of the west. We should also assert that we can do things what the westerners said that we cannot do. We all have the intellectual capacities to do comparative and cross-cultural analysis that was said to be the domain and expertise of the west.
What I’ve recommended to decolonize the social sciences especially the Philippine Social Sciences are just small moves that may materialize with other recommendations. These are small steps that I hope may lead to big changes in working with other recommendations.

Rachel G. Bustamante and Darlene Alvina P. Tala:

Decolonizing Knowledge; Decolonizing the Social Science:
Issues, Concerns and Recommendations



The Cold War gave way to the boom of neo-colonialism. This was the period wherein relations with the different nation states were established, providing new alliances for more liberal transactions in terms of trade and binding treaties for security. As time goes by, more events foster the need for dependency and foreign relations. The worst result of this colonialism is the intellectual reliance of the developing countries. Philip Altbach noted in his article, Education and Neocolonialism, the difference of traditional colonialism and neo colonialism. He asserted that the traditional colonialism requires a direct political domination while the neocolonialism entails an influence in education and intellectual life. The prevailing manifestations that western values are imposed to us are the following: First, the paradigms that we use in our learning techniques in almost all colleges and universities are from them. Likewise, the text books commonly used in the classes are published in the foreign countries. Similarly, the academic fields and its themes chosen to be studied were all extracted from their program. Second, the medium of education or the language policy is after their verbal skill. As such, we become alienated from our own national language. Lastly, since the west is recognized to be the leading economic proprietor, they have the power to dictate the job market. And so, they have this capability to ingest what kind of courses should be demanded in a developing state. For example, since the market for nurses is extensive in their country, the majority of developing state tend to widen the nursing courses as to complement with the occupation demanded in the foreign state and thus, to be easily employed abroad wherein the opportunity of earning higher wages is more probable.

Having the notion of academic dependency, Syed Farid Alatas traced the history of such issue in economic dependency. He asserted that academic dependency is related to the global division of labour in the social sciences. Furthermore, he imparted that academic imperialism is a phenomenon that is analogous to political and economic imperialism whereas imperialism was understood as the policy and practice of the political and economic domination of colonial by more advanced nations. He noted that for the present day, academic imperialism is more indirect. In other words, the economic incapability of a state may also drive its intellectual realm to be more dependent to advanced nations. It is explicitly manifested in scholarship grants offered by the West for the scholars of the developing states because of the latter are inefficient resources to support the students. In doing so, the theories and practices that were passed on to the intellectuals were all West-based. Thus, profound connection and influence from the powerful nations were comfortably inculcated to us.

Allan Bishop supported Altbach and Alatas’ text by exposing the secret weapon of cultural imperialism embedded in the teachings of western Mathematics. Math is accepted as a universal knowledge wherein it is accepted to be valid everywhere. In Bishop’s article, he was bold to assert that through education, outsiders were able to promote Western culture. He emphasized the subjects in Math as a primary tool in advocating the colonization of the mind in a way that it was characterized to be general, thus it is widely accepted to be internationalized, and so, the Western European Culture pre-dominates the understanding of every individual. It was also a success for Bishop to incorporate the values of the West in the way that Mathematics is passed on to us in day-to-day basis. One of these values is rationalism, wherein it promotes individualism rather than holistic. This involves the hard-algorithmic rationality wherein it is narrowly conceived by scholars who are dominant in the intellectual realm. We are taught to forget that Math is not the reality, it is a mere convention whose contribution to its existence were chosen inadequately. The result or the output of the statistical method is a mere representation of various probabilities, thus, it is nothing exact. The second value is objectism. West presumes that objective knowledge is better than subjective knowledge, holding all other factors constant. Western Mathematics was perceived to be logical and ontological, thus it involves the principle of Atomism. With Math associated in atomism, we consider things to be separable and countable like human. Again, the promotion of individualism is found. It is a value that supposes the object to be separated from subject. Therefore, they believe that object can be manipulated and can contain different assigned values. The last value is power and control. They infer that objective knowledge gives oneself the power over the subject that he or she is studying. Being able to control gives rise to the power to predict. Moreover, if a person knows the initial condition, he or she may calculate the statistics very well giving that person the capability to predict the future. Going back to the arguments of Altbach, it is then true that through education, West was able to develop on us the false consciousness wherein these concepts and models become habitual and routine in our intellectual life.

In connection to this, we must consider the definition of our social reality. John R. Searle discussed the nature of the social fact that can be classified into two dimensions, being ontological and epistemological. Ontological is defined as science of “being” in general, the nature of existence and the categorical structure of reality while in the epistemic sense, social facts were regarded primarily as predicates of judgments. These two dimensions were again divided into two further dimensions which are the objective and subjective distinctions. In the ontological sense, objectivity enunciates that the mode of existence is independent of any perceiver or any mental state while subjectivity articulates things whose existence depend on their being felt or perceived by subjects. On the other hand, epistemically speaking, subjectivity means that the truth or falsity is not a simple matter of fact but depends on certain attitudes, feelings and points of view of the makers and hearers of the judgment whereas objective judgments are the facts in the world that make them true or false are independent of anybody’s attitudes or feelings about them.

The situation of intellectual dependency prevails in almost all of the least developed countries. However, for the purpose of specificity, it would be righteous to focus in the issue of the Philippines within this context. In doing so, we would like to incorporate the article of Randolf David regarding this same matter. He claimed that the situation of the Social Sciences in the Philippines is more likely to be severe since we were highly influenced by the American culture. Most of the studies done within the country were first and foremost funded and spearheaded by these outsiders. Secondly, the themes of the studies were all decided by Americans. Thirdly, the methodologies were imposed by them. Lastly, all of these were written in the foreign language and were actually published for their benefit. The point is, Filipino scholars were strongly influenced and controlled by the West. He stated that social science is important for the state to recognize and distinguish itself. However, social science must first be able to comprehend and realize its own characteristics and abilities. In doing so, the academe should be detached to the manipulative command of the hegemonic power.

To give further description of the issue, allow us to mention a specific circumstance by introducing a field in the social science department. In accordance to this, we will discuss the issues within the realm of Psychology. Psychology is a discipline which strives to understand human mysteries via behavior and the mind. Psychology as a product of neocolonialism brought us standards patterned to western societies – theories and methodology. As to give us a concrete example of psychology as a product of neocolonialism, let us trace the growth of psychology in the Philippines. From the year 1920 to 1950, Filipino psychologists were mostly engage in establishing independent academic departments and practicing institutes. In the 1960s, in which the formation of the Psychological Association of the Philippines (PAP) was the most essential defining moment in the history of Philippine psychology brought together psychologists from the different institutions towards a common purpose, that is to disseminate the result of their researches and present their findings for discussion. As psychology became the most popular major in the 1970s, it became a quota course. Not only because it became an alternative route to get a medical degree (B.S. Psychology) or a law degree (A.B. Psychology), further more as the demand for it increases, faculty members who were to teach the course were inadequate. The demand for psychology courses should grow parallel with faculty with advance degrees in order to supply the need in knowledge and expertise. In 1959, University of the Philippines Psychology Department grew from 2 faculty members when Alfredo Lagmay moved the department from the college of education to the college of liberal arts and sciences, to 26 full time faculty members. Among them there are only 13 who have doctorate degrees. Before the explosive growth of Psychology in the Philippines, students were confused and resistant to take psychology as their major field because its use and practice was not known. It has the connotation that being a psychologist only referred to as giving of advice to mentally challenged person (which is true) and it’s a shame to seek advice from them for the fear of being labeled to as a “deviant” or abnormal, thus psychology as a practice eventually declined and taken for granted.

One of its critiques lie on the structure of its methodology and theories for it was the westerners who were the proponents and the struggle of Philippine psychology to detach itself from this standard is very difficult because universities and colleges teach the course from this view. What are the consequences of being dominated from this intellectual bondage? Being under the power or western methodology and theoretical frameworks, we lose our identity as Filipinos. In real life situations, we cannot analyze our own society through western theories because we are very distinct, in accordance with our beliefs, customs, traditions and values. Inevitably, this is because most of Filipino Psychologists acquired their doctorate degrees in the US. Researchers begin within the premise of these theories and methodology, and in between, they incorporate scientific and instinctive knowledge about Filipino behavior, thus reforming these two to come out with explanations of Filipino behavior would give a subtle foundation. The attempt to revolutionize Psychological thinking triggered the establishment of Sikolohiyang Pilipino which has aims to standardize a truly Filipino psychology. Virgilio Enriquez, who facilitated this movement, proposed that the theories which would eventually be the tool for the course would be extracted from indigenous facts, and that these facts would be drawn together using indigenous methods. He insisted that linguistics, folklore and religion would be sufficient resources for deriving information for the Filipino psyche.

With these dilemmas that the least developed countries encounter, we then propose the following recommendations: First, in order to increase the number of competent mentors in the colleges and universities that offer psychology (and social sciences in general) as a field, the government should allocate sufficient resources for them, such as wage, for ensured full time living and to discourage employment abroad, likewise, for conducting their researches efficiently. Secondly, for a true Philippine psychology to grow, theories and methodology should come from our unique identity as Filipinos, deriving from our own folklore, custom, traditions and language. Researchers should encourage their fellow researchers to study specific areas that concern our nation’s being and chaos. And researchers should note the urgency to document and realize the studied lives and identities of diverse cultural groups in the country, also to assert and endure the struggles in keeping these publications alive in order for the nation to appreciate the significance of the social sciences for the country. Reflections and evaluations or researches should be based on our own terms; it should be evaluated within our history, to put into context the social science knowledge where Filipinos can readily understand and become aware of it. Third, would be the widespread acceptance of this proposed Philippine Psychology Methodology by the practitioners themselves and encourage them to help strengthen this tool. Fourth, educational systems of Universities and colleges that offer psychology as a major field should provide journals and textbooks with adequate Philippine data. Together with this, they should offer good facilities and ensure that the faculty members who will educate the students are truly qualified and to further define their profession’s nature.


References:

Bautista, Ma. Cynthia Rose Banzon, “The Social Sciences in the Philippines: Reflections on Trends and Developments”
Tan, Allen L., “Philippine Psychology: Growth and Becoming”