Raising Boys

Being makabayan (nationalistic) October 11, 2005

A chaotic sight of mothers, yayas, and students striving to finish their Makabayan (Civics and Culture) assignment within the lunch break greeted me when I arrived at my son’s school today.

Thankfully, Dylan did his assignment–a chart of Philippine symbols like its flag, national costume, national dance, national hero, national bird, national language, etc.–the night before and so he was spared the aggravation of doing it in one hour’s time.

When he called me at the office at 8:30 the night before to say he forgot to tell me he had an assignment in Makabayan, I told him to just draw what he can before going off to sleep and we’ll finish the rest when he wakes up in the morning.

I was surprised to see that he was able to draw all of the symbols on pieces of bondpaper. Unfortunately, some parts of the bondpaper were crumpled. What I did was to cut out his drawings and paste these into a clean bondpaper.

My son got a low grade of 91 in Makabayan during the first grading period. He and I were still familiarizing ourselves with his whole day class schedule so I was not really into guiding him in his studies in this particular subject at that time.

The Makabayan subject is doubly hard for my son because it is taught in Filipino, a language that my husband and I snob in our selection of books, TV shows, and movies, and because we do not go to any church.

Reviewing Dylan’s books on this subject, sometimes he and I come across practices that seem obsolete and yet are still being considered givens. Or lessons that do not seem applicable.

Does it make my son less makabayan (nationalistic) if he does not know anything about kissing the hands of elders to show respect? I don’t begrudge people this practice but families should be given the option to abandon it altogether. Hand-kissing seems a throwback to that era when parents were infallible and it was unheard of for children to have any opinions. I told my son that there are many ways one can show respect, not just through hand kissing.

Who wants to be makabayan (nationalistic) nowadays anyway? Given all that’s been going on, you’d grab at the first chance to get out and leave all of this behind.

It does not help too that the Makabayan grade has two components–Sibika at Kultura (Civics and Culture) and Character Education. Can you question a low grade in character? And since when did the grade on character become incorporated in a class subject? First, they take out Science and now this? I can’t help but wonder if this is the reason for the deteriorating condition of public education in the country.