By Rene V. Carbayas
ISABELA CITY, Basilan – Cultural workers,
educators and artists who are members of the subcommittees of the Sub-commission
for Cultural Dissemination (SCD) of the National Commission for Culture and the
Arts (NCCA) have recently met to push for cultural development agenda in the
Philippine Development Plan (PDP).
Marichu G. Tellano, NCCA’s chief for plan and policy formulation
and programming division said that the gathering hopes to give new inspiration
and new insights to the members of the different committees under the SCD,
essentially to provide the national committee members and the sub-commissions a
platform to discuss local cultural concerns and issues.
She added that the workshop intends also to identify local cultural
genius and treasures vis-à-vis its role in local and national development.
All these, she said will be manifested when the sub-commission
completes the crafting of a two-year development plan that defines priority
programs of the sub-commissions in each island cluster like the National
Capital Region (NCR), Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao, which takes into
consideration the NCCA outcomes.
Tellano further explained that the March 23-24 planning workshop
at the Century Park Hotel in Manila was the first level planning involving the
inter-committee within the sub-commission grouped according to regional
representation.
The second level planning will be the island cluster
consolidation of the plans of all the groups and or committees from the
different sub-commissions to complete the plan and programs for the particular
island cluster across the four sub-commissions of NCCA, namely: Sub-commission
on the Arts, Sub-commission on Cultural Heritage, Subcommission on Cultural
Dissemination, and Sub-commission on Cultural Communities and Traditional Arts.
In his message, NCCA Chairman Felipe M. de Leon Jr. said that
the “lack of pride in being Filipino results in lack of commitment to the
nation and, consequently, a low level of achievement or even mediocrity, the
‘pwede na ‘yan’ mentality,” which was the result of years and years under
colonial rule.
“Rather than become innovators, entrepreneurs, creative thinkers,
producers and manufacturers, Filipinos, including graduates of elite schools,
are just too happy to find employment, especially overseas,” he said.
He added the colonial experience has developed the negative
programming of the Filipino psyche that resulted to the “cult of smallness”
(anything small like the ‘bahay kubo’ and the maya bird became a national
pride), “the celebration of defeat” (examples are the Fall of Bataan and
recently the Fallen 44), and “the Doña Victorina syndrome” (the mestiza complexion
and or doubt in the Filipino capacity for achievement).
“The underdevelopment of Philippine society is fundamentally
rooted in this chronic loss of Filipino self-esteem due to centuries of
colonization and miseducation,” de Leon stressed.
De Leon further observed that up to the present time, the
country’s educational system remains colonial rather than culturally
appropriate, causing a great loss of cultural energy.
“Our country has been spending valuable public money for the
education of Filipino professionals in the arts and sciences and many other
fields. But since the cultural sources of their education are
Western, it is inevitable that the expertise they acquire will be more
applicable or appropriate to a Western industrialized society than to the
rural, agricultural setting of most Philippine provinces. So a great number of
our graduates will end up migrating to rich Western or Westernized countries,”
he said.
For Chairman de Leon, promoting the arts primes a people for
development, saying that promoting and developing the arts or cultural identity
of a people inevitably inspires, brings about, and leads to all other kinds of
development.