Education to Empower

Education and Activism

Inspired by Filipino historian Renato Constantino’s work “The Miseducation of the Filipino,” this project was conceptualized using the notion that education is a weapon for emancipation. In this text, Constantino argues that Philippine history must be re-written for and by Filipinos. Rather than creating educational policy that pleases the colonizer, it must focus on re-connecting Filipinos with their heritage. In agreement with these ideas, the PPL project hopes to place education back into the hands of Filipinos, where diverse voices will inform us of the Philippines’ genuine and unrevised history. Furthermore, through providing the space to read these texts, the project aims to counter the effects of colonization, described by Constantino as “the history of our ancestors …[being] taken up as if they were strange and foreign peoples who settled in these shores, with whom we had the most tenuous of ties. We read about them as if we were tourists in a foreign land.” In this way, the project is eager to return agency to all Filipinos. Education must not be withheld nor utilized as a tool for oppression.

Encarnacion Alzona

The first Filipina historian and female PhD recipient, Alzona dedicated her life towards fighting for gender equality in education and government. She was a key player in women’s suffrage in the Philippines.

The Politics of Literature

Established by exiled Filipinos in 1872 in Spain to advocate for the needs of the Philippines as a Spanish colony. The group and associated bi-weekly newspaper fought for representation in the Spanish government as well as other civil rights such as freedom of speech.

For hundreds, if not thousands of years, literature has been used in many societies to comment on the current state of affairs. In addition to studying literature as an art form (and perhaps a performance), we can also study the intentions behind the writing itself. Since this project is specifically dedicated to exploring short stories and poems rather than novels, we have the opportunity to read these works within the political contexts of publishing. When looking at the provenance of early independentist short stories, we find that they often come from newspapers and magazines (e.g. El Renacimiento, Diario de Manila, and La Solidaridad, among others) which often enjoyed a higher circulation rate than novels, which were mostly published abroad and read by the upper classes. Thus, there is an element of subalternity (or subordination) in readership that this project also considers not only in terms of accessibility in the past but also in the present. Language is political starting from the writing process itself to its reception.