Educating the Filipino loob and katwiran: Beyond the impositions of a cogito rationality

Abstract

The Philippine educational system and its core curriculum is oriented toward the formation of the modern, autonomous, rational subject, particularly one that will fit into the contemporary global market and production system. Through this system, Filipinos are deepening the colonization of their rationalities and subjectivities by imposing a system that shapes a subject who exists to serve the global market by being a fit worker, consumer, entrepreneur, and producer of knowledge. However useful this educational system may be, it does not consider the ‘Filipino’ subjectivity’s need for formation as a loob who is a kapwa. The Filipino subjectivity which is grounded on the experience of a loob filled with liwanag opening to the world, needs an education in its own capacity for knowing and realizing its well-being. The conception of the subject in relation to the world calls for a different kind of education, particularly in the development of indigenous skills in humanistic research. This paper will argue that as a Filipino student is subjected to the imposition of the dominant Western educational system, they should also equally be given an education in their own rationality rooted in their own native subjectivity. A people must have the opportunity to be trained in their own rationality rooted in their own subjectivity in order to evaluate its value for human flourishing.