CULTURE is a set of beliefs, values and practices that comprise a people’s way of coping with life in the prevailing social order. Hence, for a country to shift to a new order, nothing short of a Cultural Revolution has to happen.
The Catholic Church provides the dominant beliefs, values, and practices of most Filipinos. But it does this from a position of privilege and influence in the social order so that it actually becomes a cultural shield of that order. The Cultural Revolution must, therefore, penetrate this shield by diminishing the Catholic Church’s undue domination of people’s minds.
We cannot just pray for a better life within a flawed social order that the Catholic Church tells people is God’s will. Until such time that God hears our prayers, we cannot just grin and bear it as enjoined by Catholic religious leaders who enjoy positions of privilege within the prevailing social order.
We have to start trusting our reason that also says it is God’s will to shift to a more equitable, hence more Christian, social order. To do this we need secular education to enlighten us into having the maturity and courage to trust our reason that tells us to change a situation that guardians of our Faith merely want us to accept.
According to German philosopher Immanuel Kant: “Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another.”
To be enlightened, in its Kantian sense, is to be mature and courageous enough to trust in our reason’s guidance of our life. This is the first task of secular education, to enlighten us towards having the courage to use our reason, not the dictates of others, in managing our life situation. We are stuck in an unjust social order because our predominantly Catholic religious education has created a culture of acceptance of a social reality (a few getting richer and many getting poorer) that reason tells us cannot be right.
This does not mean the enlightened cannot have Faith. It simply means it is reason that makes him/her accept God’s gift of Faith and not the dictate of parents or religious mentors. An enlightened person of Faith, moreover, does not gulp down everything he/she is taught about his/her Faith but uses his/her reason to separate the essential from the peripheral in that Faith.
There are values and scientific or technical skills that secular education must also teach. But for these to be put in the service of a new social order, they have to be in the hands of an enlightened people.