PEOPLE EMPOWERMENT: The Genuine Variety of It

Ruel F. Pepa
[Reprinted from SENSICAL Journal Volume I, Number 1, September 1996]

People empowerment becomes essential only in the context of praxis, i.e., theorizing on the basis of experience/practice and making the theory applicable to experience to test its correctness and usefulness. First and foremost, the true prophets of people empowerment must therefore be keenly aware of the reality of widespread disempowerment that has gripped a society or a nation. In this situation, the call for people empowerment gains the character of genuineness if and only if these very prophets themselves are the ones who lead movements to break the fetters of oppression and exploitation that openly manifest gross people-disempowerment in all levels of social involvement. All other considerations besides this point become pure and simple propaganda whose true character is disorienting, deceiving and deteriorating to further disempowerment.

A national leadership who on the one hand has been repeatedly calling for people empowerment but on the other had has been trying to disempower the social fiber of a nation by promoting labor exportation and foreign exploitation of local resources is nothing but a mouthpiece of farcical commitments and false promises which are attributes of a blatant betrayal of an impoverished people. The call for people empowerment can never be genuine in a situation where survival is the game and the rules are for it perpetuation. When the leading option of the people is still survival beside the hard reality of a downtrodden dignity, people empowerment is but an unreachable destiny.
Genuine people empowerment is located in a socio-political space where survival has already been transcended and dignity is what matters most. People are truly empowered if the decisions and choices they make are expressions of their dignity and not their desperate wish to survive. Genuine people empowerment is truly manifest if the people do what they do because it is an expression of their highest principles and not because they are forced by the powers that be to do it and they are doing it because they do not want to perish. Genuine people empowerment is the strength of the people’s will to assert their humanness amidst a dehumanizing situation.

INTERWOVEN THOUGHTS ON PEDAGOGY AND ACADEMICS: A[(n) almost] PHILOSOPHICAL RUMINATION

Ruel F. Pepa

I. The Philosophy of the Art of Teaching

The art of teaching is facilitative and liberating. It is learner-focused and ideally aims to provide the best opportunity to give release to the most creative expressions of the learner. In the process what is definitely magnified is of course the learner’s humanity because one precise manifestation of humanity is creativity. It is hence appropriate to further assert that teaching is a humanizing art. Corollary to this notion is the idea that if the so-called teaching fails to facilitate, liberate and humanize the learner, such a situation reverses the very ideal of what teaching should actually be. This view is important to be raised because if teaching is too stiffly structured within a very narrow perspective and programmatic scheme, the very essence of releasing the creative in the learner is utterly defeated. In this connection, teaching requires a certain degree of honest-to-goodness dynamicity grounded on the sensitivity of the teacher as far as the changing needs of the time as well as the sensibility to generate enhancements in the programming of materials, activities and resources relevant to the subject matter being taught are concerned. This state of affairs makes teaching responsive not only to personal demands but more so to social and national prospects toward development.

In The Heart of Teaching Issue 84 of the series “Facilitative Teaching — Releasing Control and Empowering Students,” the following statements buttress the present concern:

The facilitative teacher begins by offering students as many resources as possible and imparting information about where everything is and how it is used. Acting as a guide, the facilitative teacher offers practice sessions in whatever skill is being taught, gradually backing off until students conduct their own learning. Studying alone or in groups, students themselves find and determine how the content of what they're learning is meaningful to them. Research on the human brain shows that imbuing information with personal meaning is essential for retention. Once students are learning on their own, the facilitative teacher actively monitors the process, which may involve a certain amount of noise or even what may appear to be chaos. The facilitative teacher is ever observant, available for questions, and ready to step in if necessary, but remains in the background as much as possible. One important function of the facilitative teacher is to see that everyone is involved in the process, recalling off-task students with a meaningful glance or a non-confrontational question about how things are going. [1]

This state of affairs makes teaching responsive not only to personal demands but more so to social and national prospects toward development.

The entirety of these concerns brings us to a realization that teaching is not aimed to domesticate, exploit and indoctrinate the learner for doing so is a contradiction in terms. Genuine teaching that facilitates, liberates and hence empowers the humanity of the learner cannot afford to create an automaton that simply parrots and repeats information deposited in its mental apparatus. Authentic teaching as the main instrumentality that defines the basically ambiguous notion of education is triumphantly achieved in the person of a learner who confidently stands in life poised to face its light and heavy complexities with creative determination, moral integrity and indomitable courage. “To liberate teaching and for teaching to be liberating, the learner in oneself must be freed.”[2]

In the realization of all these things, one very significant concern must still be dramatically brought out and that is the fact that in teaching where the so-called “teacher” encounters the learner, it must humbly be accepted that on the one hand, the teacher is also a learner and on the other hand the learner is in many ways also a teacher. In this regard, the eminent Brazilian philosopher of education Paulo Freire of the Pedagogy of the Oppressed fame has this to say:

Only insofar as learners become thinking subjects, and recognize that they are as much thinking subjects as are the teachers, is it possible for the learners to become productive subjects of the meaning or knowledge of the object. It is in this dialectic movement that teaching and learning become knowing and reknowing. The learners gradually know what they did not yet know, and the educators reknow what they knew before.[3]

What matters in the whole process of teaching and learning is its dialectical character that inevitably leads to a synthesis of an improved and better level of existence in the context of a world that constantly changes.

II. Formal Education as Pragmatic and Transformative: A Challenge to Academic Decadence

Formal or academic education, to be true to its essence in pragmatic terms, should be individually facilitating, socially empowering, politically liberating and culturally challenging. We can envision here individuals whose true education is attested by their productivity, openness and integrity as expressions of their creativity, responsibility and sensitivity in a challenging, complex and changing world. Bruce Kimball, elsewhere in his The Condition of American Liberal Education[4] identifies six points of pragmatism[5] that characterize genuine liberating education:

1. that belief and meaning, even truth itself, are fallible and revisable;
2. that an experimental method of inquiry obtains in all science and reflective thought;
3. that belief, meaning, and truth depend on the context and the inter-subjective judgment of the community in which they are formed;
4. that experience is the dynamic interaction of organism and environment, resulting in a close interrelationship between thought and action;
5. that the purpose of resolving doubts or solving problems is intrinsic to all thought and inquiry; and
6. that all inquiry and thought are evaluative, and judgments about fact are no different from judgments about value.

This type of formal education is concrete, functional and progressive not in the way it is viewed in the academe but in its solid, significant and substantial contribution to society in general. This type of education is not defined in terms of academic degrees, transcripts of records and diplomas. This is honest-to-goodness education whose bearers are capable practitioners, performers, professionals (in the larger sense of the word) recognized, relied-on and rewarded not because of high fallutin’ descriptions whereby one speaks of her/himself in the HRD office of a corporate entity but because of how s/he actually performs effectively, efficiently and, at best, effusively at the workplace. This is academic education whose single proof of meaningfulness is shown in pragmatic instance. Academic education is hence pragmatically substantiated.

Formal education as pragmatic education is fundamentally socially relevant. The social relevance of formal education should be a legitimizing factor to give direction to a person’s way of life in spite of the abstractness and artificiality of formal education. The academe that is not a place where current socio-political-economic issues are seriously brought out, discussed and deliberated on defeats the true essence of education in general and obsoletizes academic education in particular. Again, let me quote Freire on this:

To think that such work can be realized when the theoretical context is separated in such a way from the learners' concrete experiences is only possible for one who judges that the content is taught without reference to and independently from what the learners already know from their experiences prior to entering school.... Content cannot be taught, except in an authoritarian, vanguardist way, as if it was a set of things, pieces of knowledge, that can be superimposed on or juxtaposed to the conscious body of the learners. Teaching, learning, and knowing have nothing to do with this mechanistic practice.

Educators need to know what happens in the world of the children with whom they work. They need to know the universe of their dreams, the language with which they skillfully defend themselves from the aggressiveness of their world, what they know independently of the school, and how they know it.[6]

In the face of this expectation, the academe could only achieve an acceptable level of credibility as a true bailiwick of pragmatic education if the academe is an actual participant not only in the deliberation about but also in taking actions transformative of certain social, political and economic terrains. The academe in this sense is understood as an arena of praxis where education takes place not only by way of classroom theorizing but also of on- and off-campus actions. In the process, it is basically important to focus on consciousness expansion because truly meaningful actions cannot be achieved unless there is consciousness transformation. Formal education reckoned as pragmatic education concretely responds to the implied challenge to Karl Marx’s “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.”[7] Hence from consciousness-transformation emanates the energy that pushes world-transformation.

Based on our understanding of what transformation means and encompasses, it was identified that transformation should be the guiding principle that underpins all educational endeavour. . . .

. . . [E]ducation is essentially about the promotion of personhood and the development of full human potential. While we are confronted by the challenges of different social and educational systems, transformative education may play a big part in helping individuals to become truly human beings. By this, we also mean individuals’ development as whole-persons - the development in all aspects of a human being, including the physical, moral, creative, emotional, intellectual and spiritual; as well as the expression of their potential.[8]

On the other side of this idealized situation of what has been called pragmatic academic education is the reality of an alienating type of education in the context of a society hitched on semi-colonial and semi-feudal presuppositions. The academe is a microcosm of the social realm where it is located and we could almost be certain that the academe short-changes the students and formal education itself as it continues to be insensitive and less-concerned of social realities. Formal education banks on the importance of reflection as a point of entry that leads to action.

However, such could only happen if what is reflected on is not what a generic textbook says but what is experienced in social practice. In fact, textbooks should be products of reflections on social experiences and hence, the teachers and students themselves in an academic location should be the ones to write the textbooks that the next batch of students should use and likewise reflect on in the whole gamut of an uninterrupted dialectics of pragmatic transformative formal education.

III. The Academic as a Co-Creator of Knowledge

The academic is much typified as someone who calls the shots in the classroom in the manner that we may describe her/him as an instructor who has in his/her disposal references and other subject or course materials formulated and published by other academics whose assumed authority is a given. In other words, we look at the academic as a parrot whose advantage over the real one is her/his ability to consciously “parrot” what the references/course materials say as if they exude the “supernatural” force of a command.

I don’t really have a haunting problem here. The problem that I see is the general situation of the instructor’s inability to rise above the “authoritative” text and, with the strike of the same “supernatural” power, construct a new and fresh dimension where new and fresh notions, hypotheses, and convictions could inaugurate a totally new and fresh way of looking at the phenomena of reality, a completely different way of expressing the creative impulses, an unflinching march of transcendence to terrains where no angels dare to trod.

Let’s not be angels who lack the guts to question “The Unquestionable” and defy “The Omnipotent”. In the academe, the academic should never allow her/himself to be cowed by the profession of the “The Unquestionable” and “The Omnipotent”. They don’t actually exist. They are only creatures of habit and fear, trying to terrorize sanity and logic. They are nothing but bluffers who have no recourse but to run away from the challenges posed by passionate intellect and bold scholarship.

Having no fear at all of the established, the given, and even the contextual, the academic stands alone amid the rarified air of the academe, where the creative destroyer/destructive creator emerges not only triumphant but savoring with exhilaration the interweaving flow of destruction and creativity that substantiates, re-substantiates, and transubstantiates new paradigms of knowledge-making, new knowledge itself, even the passion of the intellect to challenge the paradigms and the catapult that has sent the new paradigms to the mental space of both the dynamic and the dramatic, the dogmatic and the defiant.

The academic creates new knowledge not in the linearity of space-time but in the laterality of a reality that is not eternally there but in the multiplicity of realities continually constructed in a dialectical dance of thesis, antithesis, synthesis/thesis, antithesis, synthesis/thesis, antithesis, synthesis/thesis . . and so on and so forth, ad infinitum--an affirmation and re-affirmation of the Heraclitan presupposition whose anima is further enhanced by the critical spirit of the sensitive and the sensible, by the challenge of defiance, that if turned against this very presupposition itself will only justify endless celebrations to edify the Appolonian and the Dionysian demands of Nietzschean assertiveness.

Let the academic disengage from and transcend the mechanicalities of classroom routines when printed “authorities” and the “authoritative” claims of PhDs, EdDs, DScs, et al, are held high to the point of absolutization and blind deification. The academic as a co-creator of knowledge with fellow academics is a defiant spirit who dares to question and even demolish the “infallible decrees” of hypothesists/theorists who aim to erect flawed monuments out of their dogmatism and arrogant pontifications.

Let the academics share among themselves in the commitment to create knowledge that upsets the intellectual arena so that the dynamic of unhindered/unlimited/unshackled scholarship where studies in the form of theorizing and pragmatization of ideas eternally flow, are accepted and negated, demolished and resurrected in a totally new form and substance regardless of the chaotic interaction, intermingling and interpenetration of non-integrating notions and non-accommodating voices, conflicting passions and non-ccoperating convictions.

©Ruel F. Pepa 2008

NOTES

[1] The Art of Facilitative Leadership, a videotape produced by PLS and available through the PLS Bookstore (insert link to: http://www.plsbookstore.com) at 800-506-9996. http://www.plsweb.com/resources/newsletters/hot_archives/84/empowering_students/

[2] Taken from the abstract written for the essay “Liberating Teaching” by Nancy Porter published in the journal Liberal Education, v68 n2 p115-26 Sum 1982. http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ271397&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ271397
[3] Teachers as Cultural Workers - Letters to Those Who Dare Teach, Translated by Donoldo Macedo, Dale Koike, and Alexandre Oliveira, Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1998, p. 90.

[4] Published by the Ohio State University. Edited by Robert Orrill (1995).

[5] http://www.rollins.edu/colloquy/colloquy1997/philosophy.html

[6] Ibid., p. 72.

[7] Theses on Feuerbach, # XI. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm

[8] “Transformative Education for Human Development” a paper delivered during the 3rd Vittachi International Conference held at Al Akhawayn University , Ifrane, Morocco, 1-5 July 2006 with the theme “Rethinking Educational Change”. http://www.transformedu.org/Conference/Proceedings/AVisionforTransformativeEducation/tabid/70/Default.aspx

RANDOM THOUGHTS -1

-1-

On a Philosophy Teaching Program

1.1 In academe, a Philosophy teaching program should be developed based on the Marxist-Gramscian transformativist paradigm where the stress is on getting to critical philosophizing that responds to the Marxist challenge that Philosophy should not only interpret the world in various ways but to change it.

1.2 In this light, the aim is to locate Philosophy in the context of a Praxis as well as to bring critical philosophizing to the level of the masses, thereby empowering them and in the process, blurring the chasm between the professional and the lay. Though not a Marxist, Rorty had the same project: the de-professionalization of traditionally academic disciplines.

-2-

On the Challenge of Filipino Theologizing

2.1 Can we not find a way to draw inspiration in theologizing from our experience of spirituality as Filipinos sans elements of Christianity? Perhaps the better question is, Isn't it really feasible to talk of Filipino spirituality outside of the trappings of Christian presuppositions and influences? Well, of course, I'd like to believe that Christianity genuinely deeply inspires lives—no question about that. But isn't it more worth considering if it is still possible to hear—even in its faintest manifestations—the resonance of pre-colonial spirituality? I feel more challenged by an exploratory study to seek a way to get to the distant past where hopefully we could find and be inspired by a deeper spirituality of our ancient ancestors. I am challenged by the possibility of a more meaningful type of spirituality that is free from the colonial and therefore alienating hegemony of Judaeo-Christian theological formulations.

2.2 The feasibility of connecting to the ancient roots in reflection of certain so-called fundamental ideas of faith should be sought. And in this consideration, I’d rather think of faith not strictly in Christian terms for doing so would be alienating to the faithful of other spiritual persuasions.

2.3 One project that very much responds to this is the one done by the actress and environmental activist Chin-chin Gutierrez which culminated in the production of a collection of ancient lullabies or cradle music from different Philippine ethno-linguistic traditions. This is a “three-year project [considered as] the first known compilation of documented ‘cradle music’ interpreted by a pop artist from personal research, interviews and recordings with various tribal and linguistic groups in the Philippines.” (http://www.oovrag.com/books/2004uyayi.shtml)

2.4 Perhaps, a more expanded view of spirituality free from the confines of the meta-narratives laid down by established religions of Western orientations is of notable significance at this point of our reflection. Chin-chin’s spiritual reflections and project bring to our 21st century sensibility and sensitivity the morphological resonance of a deep spirituality that captures in artistic expressions the richness of a past that is not-yet-dead and to which we can authentically and significantly connect. I’d like to believe that a further consideration of this special concern may be profoundly enriched by a careful review of what C. G. Jung wants to say in the elaboration of his depth-psychology theorizing.

-3-

On the Challenges of "Not Getting Any Younger"

3.1 It is not only from a reflection of our own individual lives that we shape new aspirations and ways of making things happen. Philosophically—and existentially, for that matter—we see in lives of the young the vast expanse of a limitless reality as conjured by an inherent sense of the future in every possibilizing human person. Though, of course, theirs is still wider—probably, more challenging is the proper term—than ours who are already heading towards the twilight of our being. But who will tell us to stop and give up creating the future that we have always dreamt of, not only for ourselves but for the future generations?

3.2 In the Prologue of Nikos Kazantzakis’ Spiritual Exercises, it is said “We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss and we call the luminous interval life. As soon as we are born, the return begins. At once, the setting forth and the coming back; we die in every moment. Because of this, many have cried out, ‘The goal of life is death!’ But as soon as we are born, we begin the struggle to create, to compose, to turn matter into life. We are born in every moment. Because of this many have cried out, ‘The goal of ephemeral life is immortality!’”
3.3 The creative impulse—the élan vital of Bergson’s theorizing—continues to flutter. Nietzsche’s Will to Power persists to make its way to new challenges. At the end of the road—as well as of the day—I hope to shake hands with Teilhard de Chardin when we get to Point Omega.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE HUMANITIES?

In this consideration, it is more fitting to start off with a historical rehearsal of the Renaissance—that single distinctive moment in human history that recaptured the greatness of the human spirit; a reaffirmation of human nobility; a reassertion of human power to create her/his destiny; a vehement specter of defiance to the religious arrogance of the Medieval Period, a.k.a. the Dark Ages; the threshold that gave way to a new age, the Modern Era.

The Modern Era as we all know has vigorously presented itself in human history by way of the following successive milestones: the Scientific Revolution which was a reclamation of the grandeur of the sciences from the dogmatic excesses of the Middle Ages; the Age of Enlightenment which was a celebration of the immense creativity of the human spirit by way of the Humanities, i.e., the Arts, History, and Literature; and the Industrial Revolution geared to serve the interests and purposes of humanity by pragmatizing the achievements and wonders of science in the instruments of modern technology.

But in the course of time the same achievements generated a whole new way of looking at life which to the detriment of humanity has even recruited the human being to serve the edifice put up and institutionalized by science and technology. A total reversal of the original blue print of Renaissance Humanism: Science and technology serving the interests and purposes of humanity.

Now, it’s the other way around. The whole situation saw the emergence of positivistic philosophy that has placed philosophy beneath the wings of science as well as the rise of physicalistic science that has reduced all sciences to the mold of physics. In other words, physics had dominated the sciences. So that if a discipline claimed to be a science, it should be able to translate its propositions, claims and theories in the language of physics. Failure to do so made that discipline a pseudo-science.

But this is not the end of the story. The spirit of philosophical resistance has continued to move onwards. And now, we are in the post-modern era. Modern science and technology has suffocated the very human in us. The defiance has been issued and articulated.

We are now poised to reclaim the spirit of the Renaissance—the spirit of human greatness and the Humanities are strategically on the spot.

THE EARTH IS ALIVE

Ruel F. Pepa


The Earth is alive . . . yet.

The Earth is alive and yet she is in a very serious condition.

The Earth is alive, yet she is likewise dying.

The Earth is dying and unless we do something imminent at this point in time, we shall surely perish with her.

This is the most pressing and present reality we face in the 21st century. Unless we reverse this tragic flow of events, we are heading toward disaster.

A foreboding atmosphere of impending devastation dominates the landscape for we have gradually systematically poisoned the Earth: prevalent pollutions of the air and waters; holes in the ozone layer; massive destruction of the flora and fauna. We—Earth and humans—are in the worst of times.

Through generations, we have failed to acknowledge the fact that the Earth is a living Super-Organism—a macro-mirror of our own delicate humanity that should have been taken extra care of with the best of our tenderness and protected with the resoluteness of a kindred spirit always ready to defend one of its flesh and blood.

The Earth has always faithfully sustained the most basic of our needs, wishes and desires. The Earth has constantly been a trustworthy patron of our sacred humanity making her the source of that very sacredness.

Yet, we have not positively responded to her loving kindness with sincere gratitude. Instead, we have become purveyors of abuses and exploitative acts. In the modern era, humanity has declared war against nature. In the process, modern technology has been harnessed for exploitative purposes leading to heavy environmental devastations and ecological imbalance to the detriment of the human species. In the final analysis, we humans are at the losing end.

Now is the most fitting moment to reconcile with nature. Now is the most proper chance for us to bow down in humility and accept the magnitude of our misdoings with repentant hearts and total mindfulness of a new worldview that will at last redeem us from the mire of an impending destruction. Now is the era of a new world order pushed and carried by a responsible humanity with all the willingness to renew what is yet renewable on Earth.

The challenge before us therefore is to work together and let a new Earth—now an eco-system where humanity becomes a part of nature—evolve and metamorphose to create a new humanity that does not only appreciate the spiritual but also the natural for they are not two but a unity.