THE article published on Tuesday, September 6, by SunStar Davao to share information on the 600 Moro killed by American forces that President Rodrigo Duterte referred to in a press conference before he left for Laos went viral.
The post reached 782,728 people, 18,404 reactions, comment, and shares, 103,209 post clicks in the SunStar Davao Facebook page as of 6:04 p.m., Tuesday, and generated 116 comments many of which have become a discussion thread in the SunStar website.
We are still reading through the comments to the article “Duterte reminds US of Bud Dajo massacre” to get more insights into what people are sharing and commenting, but one thing is apparent, Philippine history has not been taught as it should as many were not even aware of the Bud Dajo massacre, many of them saying that was the first time they read about it.
This does not come as a surprise as for so long, Mindanao educators have been crying for inclusion of Mindanao history in mainstream education.
“If history teachers have only relied in DepEd authorized textbooks and have not done supplementary readings from specialized scholarly materials made available since the 1970s and articles in prestigious international and local journals, their students would not have learned anything about Mindanao's history,” said Bro. Karl Gaspar, CSSR, an anthropologist and Academic Dean of the Theology Program , a consortium of the St. Alphonsus Theological and Mission Institute and the Ateneo de Davao University, and Professor of Anthropology at ADDU, when asked to comment on the absence of knowledge.
“For the longest time, our Philippine history textbooks used not just for our basic education but also in the higher levels of the educational system have not included very significant historical events that took place in Mindanao and Sulu islands, especially if these events impacted on the lives of the Moro and Lumad peoples who are the original inhabitants of southern Philippines,” Gaspar said.
Gaspar, who is author of many books about Mindanao and the indigenous peoples added, “Many historical realities of the pre-conquest era have not merited the full attention of both foreign and Filipino historians including the existence of a settlements in the Sarangani-South Cotabato coastal areas with sophisticated pottery practices (producing anthropomorphic jars which are now the centerpiece artifacts of Philippine museums), the civilization that arose in what is now Butuan city and its adjacent coastal areas, the Sultanates of Sulu and Maguindanao, the principalities of Lanao and the early self-determination struggles of tribal peoples against the early European invaders.”
Fr. Albert Alejo SJ, who initiated the Righting Mindanao project in 2012 and holds a doctorate in Anthropology, said that lack of knowledge about Mindanao history among the Filipino people underscores an “urgent call to produce education materials that serve peace and development.”
It is the ignorance about Mindanao that is at the very root of conflicts.
In the textbooks that were reviewed for the 2012 project, it showed that textbooks on Sibika at Kultura and Philippine history were full of wrong information about Mindanao and its people.
In a talk for the Jesuit Basic Education Commission in September 2012, Alejo quoted from Rosalita Tolibas-Nunez’s book “Roots of conflict: Muslims, Christians, and the Mindanao struggle”, where she wrote: “(T)he perceptions and understandings that Muslims and Christians have of each other lack objectivity and are colored by strong biases and prejudices; but especially strong are the biases Christians have against Muslims.” In one of the Grade 6 textbooks published 2007 that was reviewed stated: “Ang Yakan naman ay taga-Basilan. Maliit lamang sila, singkit ang mga mata, at maitim ang buhok na parang taga-Borneo.”
This is among many glaring errors in Philippine textbooks.
Yakans are known for being relatively tall and with well-formed noses as their ancestors have intermarried with Dutch traders as the Sulu and Tawi-tawi archipelago was within the trade routes of the Dutch long before the Spaniards came.
In a second grade textbook that was reviewed also in the same year this was what it said, “Sinasabi ng maramin gbatang lalaki ang nakukumbinsing mga terorist ang Muslim na sumanib sa kanila. Marami sa kanila ay hindi nakapag-aral at nalalagay sa panganib. Ang iba ay nasasaktan at namamatay.”