Bias in textbooks

WHEN I was a boy I wanted to be one of the Malacañang drones who wrote messages for the President that end up on souvenir programs. It looked like an easy job but quite challenging as you must make sure not to repeat yourself, and more importantly project some national relevance and presidential gravitas into the celebrations of the Philippine Horticultural Society or the Philippine Bar Flunkers Association or the Filipino-Ilocano Association of West New Jersey Inc. Imagine all the wasted creative talent that goes into this job. Nobody reads the messages of politicians in souvenir programs.

Another writing job I considered exciting then was being World News editor of a newspaper. There is a lot happening in the world and it takes some imagination to pick up the most interesting or bizarre stories from foreign lands for print in the Philippines. In 1985, when I joined the now-defunct Philippine Daily Express, I was fascinated by the telex machines that churned out news from the wire services as events unfolded. I held these print-outs with the feeling of knowing the news even before it got into the newspaper. All that has changed with the Internet.

Having been abroad since October last year I have read English-language newspapers in Japan, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, constantly comparing these with Philippine newspapers I would read on the Internet. I often took note of stories that would be interesting to Filipinos but never got around to writing them up and sending them off to the Inquirer news desk. When I left Jakarta in April there was a story about a Citibank executive who siphoned off clients’ funds into her own account. She faced media in a veil, tight-lipped and fully-made up, making me wonder about the literal meaning of “relationship manager” in banks. Did she really steal? Was she wealthy before she joined Citibank? Did some clients willingly give her money for the pleasure of her company? Then there were credit card collectors, from Citibank again, who terrorized a man to his death.

Hidden inside the Jakarta newspapers was a story that ran for a few days regarding a blind man who married a transvestite. Three years of marriage and he never knew he was living with a man. Oh well, love is indeed blind, but his neighbors suspected the ruse and, bayanihan-style, grabbed the “wife,” took off her pants and exposed her as a man. The husband then sued for annulment. In Kuala Lumpur, where I am presently based, front-page news last week was about gay Malaysians who cited religious persecution and won asylum in the United Kingdom. They even have front-page news calling for the review of Malaysian history as presented in their textbooks. In the Philippines we are so focused on the funny errors we fail to see that the way history is presented—the biases, the omissions—all these impact the future.

Two Sundays ago I was surprised to see in church a signature campaign “for a truly Malaysian history.” Why was the Catholic church gathering signatures? Concerned parents who went through their children’s textbooks saw that these were “written from a narrow world perspective and has a strong bias towards certain religious civilization and belief.” That is Islam. So aside from ridding the history textbooks of factual errors they proposed a review and rewriting of the textbooks to “be undertaken by qualified historians, representative of all the major communities in the nation.” This reminded me of people who want the Visayas and Mindanao equally represented in our national history. Not a bad idea really, but what they are asking for here might be difficult to deliver.

They claim the textbooks “fail to reflect fairly on the contribution of all communities in the development of the nation.” The tourism slogan “Malaysia truly Asia” illustrates the multi-racial character of the country where you see Malays, Indians, Chinese trying to live together as a nation. Just think in terms of food: Hindus can’t eat beef, Muslims can’t eat pork, Chinese will eat beef, pork and almost anything. Finding pork in a supermarket is quite a challenge here and the only time I found ham and pork in a high-end supermarket there was a dedicated cash counter where you had to pay for non-halal items. A Filipino I met here even said that if you don’t want your luggage ransacked at customs during random inspection put chicharon on top of your clothes.

There was a call for an accurate record of historical facts from an unbiased viewpoint. There was a call for a broad and balanced perspective of the major civilizations and events in world history. There was a call for focus on historical facts and processes and not contain any religious or political agenda. There was a call for due and fair recognition of the contributions of all communities towards the historical development of the nation. The Malaysian Government responded by setting up a committee to review the history curriculum and school textbooks composed of academics representing different faiths and ethnic backgrounds. Too bad I won’t be around to see what the committee will find and what its recommendations will be. This exercise is something relevant to our own situation with history textbooks and curriculum as we review and re-engineer our own basic education.

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