Pedagogy: Teaching Practices of American Colonial Educators in the Philippines
Isabel Pefianco Martin
Kritika Kultura No.1

Main Idea: The language and literature teaching practices imposed by the American colonial educators here in the Philippines led to what Filipino historian and essayist Renato Constantino wrote as "not only only learning a new language, they were not only forgetting their own language, they were starting to become a new type of American." Colonial pedagogy allowed the American colonizers to produce their cultural clones.

Evidences: 

• The exclusive use of English in public schools insisted by the American education officials was upheld until 1940. This became, in the words of Renato Constantino, a "wedge that separated the Filipinos from their past."
• There were texts being taught in public schools such as Evangeline, The Song of Hiawatha, and The Alhambre which had themes that directly promoted American colonialism.
• The Americans decided to import teaching methods from the continental US such as memorizing dialogues, rather than reading, to learn a new language.
• Majority of the writing in Philippine schools tend to imitate the language of the Anglo-American canon that was presented to them.
• According to Isabel Martin, "The combined power of the canon, curriculum, and pedagogy constituted the ideological strategies resulting in rationalizing, naturalizing, and legitimizing myths about colonial relationships and realities. (Martin, 2002, p.98)

Below is a related video file which talked about the education that the Americans imposed on the Filipinos. It showed about how American colonialism was promoted in public schools, similar to what the article by Isabel Pefianco Martin had written.


Image from : https://wearekubo.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/class.jpeg
Video from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnOfNii2yiQ