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”
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”
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