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.
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.
