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Filipinising colonial gender values: A history of gender formation in

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Filipinising colonial gender values: A history of

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A. M. Leal R. Rodriguez

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Educational Philosophy and Theory
https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2022.2128760

Filipinising colonial gender values: A history of gender

formation in Philippine higher education
A. M. Leal R. Rodriguez
Department of Sociology and School of Critical Studies in Education, University of Auckland, Auckland,
New Zealand

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

The complicated colonial history of the Philippines impacts notions of Received 15 March 2022
gender in the Islands. Specifically, institutions with strong foreign roots, Accepted 12 September
such as universities, maintain and challenge gender relations. The 2022
Philippines sees multiple gender issues in universities despite KEYWORDS
government-mandated gender mainstreaming policies for education Philippine philosophy;
(CMO-1), yet the influence of colonial values remains overlooked. This Philippine education;
article contributes to philosophising Philippine education by providing Philippines; post-colonial
the history of the country’s universities and their role in shaping gender education; education;
relations. A threefold model of gender structures, relations of power, gender culture
production and cathexis (emotional attachment), frames historical liter-
ature during the Philippines’ Spanish and American colonial periods and
contextualises the country’s gender order. The interplay of religion and
higher education during the Philippines’ Spanish colonial period reveals
why sexuality remains policed by education institutions. The gendering
of courses during the American Colonial period details the feminisation
of certain disciplines and occupations. Harmful manhood practices
adopted during this period continue to affect men in university systems
through Philippine fraternities. Lastly, private education perpetuates and
maintains power among the elite. The evolution of the Philippine uni-
versity provides points for analysis for gender issues. These become
building blocks to the discourse surrounding the Filipino philosophy of
education, by understanding facets of Filipino identity construction, and
proposing avenues to explore when decolonising the university.

Introduction
Centuries of colonial governance contribute to complicated narratives about Philippine identity.
Despite the European and American domination of the Philippines’ culture, language and tra-
dition, Filipinos are more ‘Asian in consciousness and aspiration’ (Cullinane et al., 2020) sharing
values such as strong family ties with their South-East Asian neighbours and ‘Filipinising’ traits
from the colonisers’ cultures (Abinales & Amoroso, 2005).
The higher education system in the Philippines is modelled after the education system of
its colonisers: the Spaniards (1565−1898), the Americans (1898−1946) and briefly the Japanese
(1941−1945). The history of Philippine universities shows the values each coloniser prioritised
and embedded in education structures, revealing the gender order they created. The survey of

CONTACT A. M. Leal R. Rodriguez [email protected] Department of Sociology and School of Critical

Studies in Education, University of Auckland, Level 3, 58 Symonds Street, Auckland, New Zealand
© 2022 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia
2 A. M. L. R. RODRIGUEZ

higher education’s history in the Philippines reveals the process of the country’s forced adap-
tation to colonisers’ needs, and later decolonisation and adaptation to its own needs.
Education remains a tool to impose and normalise values from colonists’ cultures, as ‘indi-
genised’ and adapted to Philippine culture. Foreign and colonial influences masked under
‘global competitiveness’ (Adeyemo, 2015) still affect universities’ relevance in post-colonial
societies such as the Philippines. Colonial values remain in universities and continue to shape
norms and values, including gender identity in these institutions. Despite this, initiatives con-
cerning gender in these institutions focus on gender mainstreaming, to address current issues
deemed ‘gendered’ in universities (Commission on Higher Education (CHED), 2015). These
overlook gender issues’ origins and serve as stop-gap measures. We must be able to reflect
on gender in education beyond these concerns. This article answers the call for a retheorisation
of Philippine philosophy of education by reflecting on the nature, aims and problems of edu-
cation and recognising the power of education institutions as normative in one overlooked
aspect of life—gender. The project maps the patterns that create universities’ gender regimes
and slowly places them in the gender order of greater Philippine society. By locating the
Filipino’s identity formation (Quito, 1978) specific to gender, we enhance our philosophising
on Philippine education.

Philosophising gender, the gender order and education in the Philippines

The gender order of society describes the overall structural inventory of gender. Gender, short
for gender relations, is a social structure that orders social practices constructed by social norms
and co-constructed by persons in a gender order (Connell, 1987). The gender order (Connell,
1987) anchors the framework within institutions, unearthing the present and reproduced values
as part of a shared symbolic system (p. 25). The gender order’s dimensions, specifically power,
production/labour and cathexis or emotion, along with symbolic dimensions (Connell, 2002,
2005; Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005) frame our understanding of significant phenomena in
the history of Philippine universities.
Filipinos have a binary way of thinking about sex and gender, focussing on differences
between men and women (Valledor-Lukey, 2012) reinforced by a colonial education system. We
note that gender ‘is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space
through a stylised repetition of acts’ (Butler, 1990). While Philippine LGBTQIA + advocates pro-
gressed this thinking to include the LGBTQIA + community, a further troubling of the binary
must take place.
Gender’s troubling can come hand-in-hand with the re-theorising of the Philippine philosophy
of education. The Philippine philosophy of education must remain context-specific (Opiniano
et al., 2022) and consider Philippine universities’ colonial origins. Understanding the development
of gender through a history of Philippine universities enhances our exploration of gender con-
struction’s context. These, in turn, enrich our understanding of various possibilities for change
for a philosophy of education that is truly Filipino.

Pre-Philippine society and culture

Knowledge of pre-colonial Philippine society shows the radical shifts in gender order and may
inspire possibilities to challenge the existing gender order. The early communities who lived in
the Philippine Islands shared their society’s characteristics with other South-East Asian societies
of the time, under what Oliver Wolters (Wolters, 1999) calls the multicentric form of society in
Southeast Asia. Kinship ties, or ties between blood-related family, were central to social organ-
isation, though non-relatives could be claimed as kin through fictive kinship, or kinship creation
through rituals, making alliances amorphous (Abinales & Amoroso, 2005). The kinship system
 Educational Philosophy and Theory 3

extended to education; through this system, tradition and knowledge passed from one gener-
ation to the next.
Women in pre-Philippine society held more power and sexual freedom. One traced their
kinship through both the male and female lines (Eviota, 1992) with inheritance rights bestowed
to both sons and daughters. Women freely chose their sexual partners. Female spiritual healers
or babaylan remained integral to community life. Older women performed this role, though
some reports include feminine men who dressed as women to perform important village ritual
practices (McCoy, 1982). These babaylan bore the community’s culture, showing the value and
power delegated to special women or women-like persons, making the Spanish colonisers’
enforcement of their patriarchal gender order even more violent.
The Muslim settlers closely linked their education system to Islam. Their Imam (religious
leader) or Uleman (Islam scholar) took the lead in passing down Islam’s values and teachings
(Milligan, 2020).
The arrival of Ferdinand Magellan in 1521 started the violence of Spain’s colonial presence
in the archipelago overhauling the country’s political structure and economy and uniting numer-
ous ethnolinguistic groups (Constantino, 1975). Pre-Philippine values were subordinated by
Spain’s Eurocentric colonialism which involved the ‘direct, political, social and cultural domination’
of the conquered country (Quijano, 2007). Western imperialism led to the eventual consenting
of dominant groups within the islands to the colonisers’ values, creating a new hegemonic ideal.

Spain’s colonisation and the start of formal education in the Philippine Islands
We credit three macro developments in contemporary Philippine education to the Spanish
Colonial period: the church’s influence on education, the proliferation of single-sex schools, and
the high value placed on private education. The Spanish missionaries’ influence with religion,
specifically Catholicism (Brewer, 2004) caused this radical shift in the islands’ gender order and
educational priorities in the Philippines.

Power and religion: The Spanish hegemony through formal education

The Catholic Church’s vision of evangelisation caused a violent upheaval in the lives of the
Islands’ natives, whom the Spanish referred to as indios. The Tagalogs in Manila were converted
by Spain, with others following suit after numerous bloody rebellions. The colonisation expanded
to Luzon and Visayas residents, these new converts comprising a majority of the colony’s pop-
ulation. This Christianisation excluded the Muslim group in the South of the Islands and the
people of the Cordillera mountain range in northern Luzon, as these people remained uncon-
quered until the start of the American colonial period in 1902 (Abinales & Amoroso, 2005).
Spanish friars became primary agents of ‘conquista espiritual (spiritual conquest)’ (Abinales
& Amoroso, 2005), preaching the values of the colonisers and controlling every aspect of edu-
cation, from the curriculum, the medium of instruction, and the implementation of educational
decrees. Schools were established alongside formal town settlements and churches (Bazaco,
1953) further linking education to religion. However, the friars themselves hindered the indio’s
education. The friars did not implement numerous decrees from the Spanish crown (Hardacker,
2012) objecting language teaching for religion and enhancing education, an objection repeated
for 1770, 1772, 1774 and 1778 decrees on establishing primary schools in the Philippines Islands
(Cardozier, 1984). Instead, friars focused the curriculum on religious topics and morality (McHale,
1962). More decrees would be ignored, neglected, or rejected, including a 1714 decree on
creating a secular university.
Religion was marketed as a tool for spiritual liberation, but in reality, it became a means to
instil subordination on the indio population. The Spanish friars’ hostility to indios learning Spanish
4 A. M. L. R. RODRIGUEZ

lay in the fear of indios gaining knowledge (Abinales & Amoroso, 2005). Learning the coloniser’s
language would allow access to knowledge, and therefore power, and would allow the indios
to defend themselves from the abuses of their colonisers (Santiago, 1991). Preventing this
maintained the friar’s image as the dominant force. Control of knowledge creation and produc-
tion reinforced Eurocentered colonial domination (Quijano, 2007) seen in different colonised
countries during this period.
Race barred indios from accessing education, which started the coloniality of power under
a Eurocentric, specifically Spanish, world power (Quijano, 2007). Despite decrees mandating
access to education, indios were only admitted to secondary school in 1645, eight decades after
the formalisation of the Philippines as a Spanish colony (Santiago, 1991). The students of primary
and higher education were male Spaniards or male children with Spanish parents who grew
up in the Philippines—‘secondary and tertiary levels of education were set up in the colony
for the exclusive benefit of Spanish youths’ (Santiago, 1991, p. 136). At the beginning of the
17th century, only those with ‘purity of [Spanish] blood’ (limpieza de sangre), were awarded
Baccalaureates from the only university in the Philippines at the time—the University of Sto.
Tomas (Santiago, 1991, p. 139). The policies eventually relaxed in 1674, when students from
other racial backgrounds were awarded baccalaureates. However, these still excluded indios and
Chinese mestizos (Santiago, 1991).
The supposed turning point for Philippine colonial education under Spain came with the
1863 decree of the Minister of War and Colonies. This document ‘laid down the legal basis for
a system of universal primary education, encompassing every single pueblo in the Philippine
Islands’ (Hunt & Mchale, 1965, p. 64). A shortage in the Spanish crown’s workforce made the
1863 decree include secular topics in the curriculum. However, the decree fell short of imple-
mentation, as Philippine public schools remained focused on reading, writing and memorising
devotional texts, with little to no attention to analytic thinking (Hunt & Mchale, 1965). Despite
this, ‘the Philippines had proportionally, a larger number of schools than almost any country
in the world excepting Europe and some Spanish dominions of South and Central America’
(Bazaco, 1953, p. 48). Only the sons of the principalia class could afford private tutors to learn
Spanish and prepare for higher education in Manila. (Abinales & Amoroso, 2005, p. 93). Women
did not continue to university, regardless of their race.

Labour and Cathexis: The start of single-sex education

The origin of single-sex schools in the Philippines has a hand in the distinct sex-role segregation
in the colony. A 1582 law established two primary schools in each parish, one for boys and
one for girls. The schools were supported by parents’ fees and encomenderos fees (Hardacker,
2012), allowing anyone to attend. In reality, most of the students were children of the Spanish
or indio elites, with a few scholars in every class. Each gender received a different curriculum.
Male instructors taught boys grammar, philosophy and natural science. A female instructress,
often a religious sister, taught domestic sciences and arts to girls, with geography and algebra
as their only science (Bazaco, 1953). This separation carried on to higher education, with women
being sent to religious institutions after secondary education and men carrying on to university
if they had the means.
Elite Spanish women were sent to religious institutions called beaterios to learn domestic
skills and religious values and protect their virtue, or chastity. Established in 1589, the Colegio
de Santa Potenciana became the first beaterio in the colony where Spanish inhabitants ‘could
leave the womenfolk when necessary and entrust their daughters’ education ‘en toda honestidad
y Virtud’ (in all modesty and virtue)’ (Camacho, 2007, p. 59). These beaterios catered strictly to
Spanish clientele during their initial establishment. Attendance was evidence of one’s high social
standing, reinforcing racial, gender and class divides. ‘The ideal of womanhood was intimately
 Educational Philosophy and Theory 5

linked to the preservation of a social-racial hierarchy and was constructed based on a

religious-spiritual core’ (Camacho, 2007, p. 60) further enforcing women’s subservient role to
their husband, and women to the church. Understanding the links between the beaterios and
their control of women’s emotional energy, sexuality and sexual desire (cathexis) reveals another
dimension to the tapestry of colonial Spain’s gender order. Eventually, these beaterios would
open to non-Spanish, and eventually non-elite women through scholarships (Camacho, 2007).
These beaterios directly implemented the patriarchal church’s authority over women. Soon, the
colonial standards for women from beaterios imposed a ‘peninsular feminine ideal’ not just for
these institutions’ attendees, but for all the women on the islands (Camacho, 2007). Indios
searching for power desired entry into these institutions, given the institutions’ ties to prestige.
The formal restructuring of morality through these beaterios served as one way to colonise the
indio mind, the population consenting to these foreign values for power and status, further
inculcating the sexually repressive values of the church in the colony’s gender order.

Cathexis and the Philippine elite

Spanish colonial policy and European class structure formalised the Philippines’ social structures
and created class and gender structures that still hold power today. The datus (village chiefs)
who submitted to Spanish forces became local political elites or principalias (landed elites). The
imposition of Western gender order became successful only with the consent of the Filipino
elite (Eviota, 1992).
The Spaniards and the new principalia class worked the newly formalised tax system
(encomienda) and the private land ownership system (hacienda), to their advantage. The prin-
cipalia utilised the concept of owned land and forced their fellow native indios to provide labour
in their farmlands under the Spanish Crown (Constantino, 1975). The encomienda system gathered
tithe and labour from unmarried Filipino adults and smaller family units (Eviota, 1992) and
fuelled education (Bazaco, 1953).
The creation of private education institutions resulted from the principalia’s ‘social frustration’
(Abinales & Amoroso, 2005) with low-quality government-sponsored education. The indio elites
accessed education and knowledge through different means: trade schools to night schools,
art schools to schools of commerce. ‘In the 1860s and 1870s, Philippine society essentially
educated itself’ (Abinales & Amoroso, 2005, p. 94). While initially catering to the rich, both the
elites and non-elites benefitted from private education.
A foreign education became the indio elites’ method to maintain their wealth and rank, both
within their own elite circles and in greater Philippine society. By the 19th century, it was en
vogue for rich indios to send their male children to Europe for advanced degrees, professional
training in medicine and the arts and law (Hunt & Mchale, 1965) mediating a more ‘filipinised
Hispanic culture’ (Abinales & Amoroso, 2005, p. 99). By going to Spain and Europe for their
education, young principalia men learned of life outside their colony and realised an alternative
vision for their identity. They saw the numerous shortcomings of Spanish leadership, especially
in comparison to other European nations (Abinales & Amoroso, 2005). One particular group of
foreign-educated young men decided to push for social reform. These young principalia men
called themselves the Ilustrados (the enlightened ones) and started the Propaganda Movement,
which lobbied for reform against the Philippine islands’ poor conditions under Spanish oppression.
Spanish colonisers systematically studied and utilised pre-Spanish Filipino languages to
evangelise the colony. Instead of complete erasure, the colonists vilified some indigenous prac-
tices while simultaneously adapting different animist rituals to Catholicism, creating a ‘conjunction
of conquest and conversion’ (Rafael, 2018). Judeo-Christian values changed the gender order
and promoted the father as the family’s head. The Catholic Church’s dominance created a
patriarchal culture, especially in schools (Abinales & Amoroso, 2005), while racial barriers
6 A. M. L. R. RODRIGUEZ

prevented the colony’s native inhabitants from entering education, including university education
(Santiago, 1991). The popularity of religious institutions called beaterios reinforced women’s roles
at home and further removed them from access to power and resources (Camacho, 2007).
Sex-segregated school with special curriculum for men and women created distinct roles per
gender. By the 19th century, the imminent change in ideology brought by the Spanish coloni-
sation instilled patriarchy and machismo values in various aspects of Filipino life (Rafael, 2018).

The Ilustrados and their new aspiration

The knowledge brought by education, specifically university education abroad, became the
foundation of the Philippine’s revolution. ‘Many Filipino intellectuals and revolutionary leaders
of the late 19th century were, in the least at part, products of the existing education system’
(Hunt & Mchale, 1965, p. 64). Having broadened their mind from the strict teachings of the
Catholic Church and colonial influence, the Ilustrados advocated for social reform and the removal
of unjust practices against the indios through the propaganda movement. Alongside adminis-
trative reform and the ‘assertion of the dignity of the Filipino’ (Abinales & Amoroso, 2005, p.
106), they also advocated for the ‘the secularisation of mass education, civil supervision of
public schools, Spanish-language instruction, and vocational training’ (Hardacker, 2012, p. 22),
all who had yet to manifest despite the 1863 education decree.
The Ilustrados’ experience abroad showed the Spaniards’ less-than-ideal identity and helped
the Ilustrados craft their vision of the Filipino identity. Most of the highly educated Filipino
revolutionaries were men, ingraining the masculinity of the elites into the Philippine ‘national
identity’, or ‘the societal self-image perpetuated by the ruling elite’ (Owen, 1999). This integration
existed for several reasons—‘most Propagandists’ efforts to define Filipino identity, except for
their political strategy and tactics carried well into the 20th century. This was due in part to
the relative lack of alternative visions by other ‘heroes’ (Owen, 1999, p. 44). We see remnants
of the Ilustrados’ vision of national identity in the current Philippine society, where their heroism
became an aspiration. The propagandists, specifically the national hero Jose Rizal, were instru-
mental in shifting the indio identity to the Filipino identity (Schumacher, 1975), which was
synonymous to Filipino manhood (Owen, 1999).
While the Ilustrados protested against the Spanish colonisers’, they also aspired for equal treatment
under Spanish rule. Under further scrutiny, their demands could be seen as consenting to Spanish
values, despite explicitly resisting the Spanish colonisers. These Ilustrados, much like those colonised
by other European powers, were seduced by the dominance of their colonisers and aspired for
Cultural Europeanisation (Quijano, 2007). Perhaps the Ilustrados origins from the principalia class, as
consenting elite, explain their acquiescence to colonial values. This contradiction inspired the com-
plete rejection of Spanish rule by other heroes such as Andres Bonifacio. This rejection led the 1989
Philippine revolution that pushed for the Philippines’ complete independence from Spain.
The Propaganda Movements’ ideas fuelled the 1989 Philippine revolution, which led to the
Filipinos’ first short-lived government. The Filipinos valued education so-much-so that there was
a push towards creating a secular education system during the First Philippine Republic, dating
from 1898 to 1900. The Philippine government had taken steps to create the Universidad Literaria
de Filipinas in October 1898 as a state-supported institution of higher learning (Alcala, 1999, p.
118). However, the vision of Filipino nationhood was cut short when the Spanish ceded the
Philippine Islands to the United States in the 1898 Treaty of Paris.

Browning American education

American’s form of colonial domination came with a more systematic effort to reform and
incorporate American values in the Filipino way of life, shifting the Philippines’ gender order.
 Educational Philosophy and Theory 7

The ceding of the Philippines to America through the 1898 Treaty of Paris frustrated the
revolutionary leaders’ efforts towards independence. The Americans saw the Filipinos as unfit
for self-government (Hoganson, 1998), which justified the American’s policy of ‘benevolent
assimilation’—a policy instigated by the then-American president, William McKinley. The
Americans professed the Spanish regime’s incompetence and the supposed mental infancy
of the colony they left behind. They took it upon themselves to lead the Filipinos, their
newly acquired ‘little brown brothers’ (Kramer, 2006) about American life and imbibing
American values.
The Americans used education and military pursuits to mould men’s minds (Constantino,
1966). This technique rapidly expanded the reach of higher education during the early part of
American colonial’s rule. Massed education, military kinship, the feminisation of specific indus-
tries, and the colonial narrative espoused about Filipino men became the American’s legacy for
Philippine university education. The ideal result was a Filipino people who would become
subservient to the Americans, so the imperial agenda of capital expansion and wealth accumu-
lation could continue unquestioned (Eviota, 1992).

Power the state: Mass education or missed education

American colonists saw literacy as the foundation for democracy, which they pushed through
mass education. The focus of education turned from religious to industrial; Schools were made
to create good citizens, industrious and in-line with the coloniser’s economic vision. Elementary
and secondary education became free and compulsory, regardless of sex (Torres, 1993), through
the 1901 Education Act (Sobritchea, 1990). In June of that year, more than a thousand volunteer
teachers came to the colony. Dubbed the Thomasites after their maiden vessel, the USS Thomas
(Musa & Ziatdinov, 2012), these volunteer teachers educated the Filipino to educate themselves
and move towards self-rule. In 1902, the colonial government prioritised Normal Schools in
Manila for teacher training, with Medical Schools and other professional and technical schools
following in 1905. Students in these secondary level institutions would become the first-generation
American-taught Filipino teachers through these Normal schools (Abinales & Amoroso, 2005),
trained to continue America’s legacy in education (Sobritchea, 1990). Despite the growing
number of Filipino teachers, Americans remained in control of the education system (Alcala,
1999, p. 120), including what values were taught and what was passed down.
The massed primary and secondary education created a social demand for higher and
private education. The University of the Philippines was created in 1908 to supplement
America’s labour needs (Sobritchea, 1990), yet it ‘could not meet the increasing social demand
for higher education’ (Alcala, 1999, p. 120) leading to an increase in private university insti-
tutions. These private colleges were said to promote Filipino values so that the Filipinos were
not completely Americanised (Alcala, 1999). In truth, the lack of regulation on and the high
demand for higher education made some degree-granting institutions more commercial ven-
tures. Other colleges and universities were religious institutions turned private, a far cry from
their government-mandated nature during the Spanish colonial era. However, these religious
higher education institutions were often single-sex and exclusive, catering to the upper class
(Sobritchea, 1990). Numerous Protestant universities were created during this time, with
Catholic universities resolving to preserve their faith and student clientele against these
Protestant schools (Gonzalez, 1989).
The Philippine legislature’s Act No. 2076, or the Private School Act, of 1917 would even-
tually regulate private institutions, mandating that education be monitored by the Department
of Public Instruction’s secretary (Alcala, 1999, p. 120). ‘[By] 1947, there were about 500 private
colleges and 128 special and technical schools all over the country’ (Sobritchea, 1990, p. 80).
Private education remains as popular as ever, both in primary and higher education.
8 A. M. L. R. RODRIGUEZ

Labour in the latticework: Formalising women’s domestic role in the public sphere
The democratisation of education gave women more opportunities, yet literacy and gender
stereotyping plagued their experience. During primary education, girls were more literate than
their male counterparts. However, less women entered secondary and higher education than
men due to the belief that a woman’s life would be reflected by her husband’s educational
attainment (Sobritchea, 1990). Schools strongly emphasised women’s role in the domestic sphere,
reinforcing women’s role as good wives (Sobritchea, 1990, p. 79). Women included in the econ-
omy had their spheres of influence limited to household management and vocational activities
relating to care, weaving and crafts.

Cathexis and Filipino masculinity: Marginalised or militarised?

The American colonists justified the need for their benevolent assimilation through three images
of Filipino men: Filipino men were savage and thus needed to be tamed, Filipino men as
child-like and needing guidance, and Filipino men as feminine (Hoganson, 1998). Filipinos as
savages justified the need to make Filipino men into soldiers: ‘If teaching Filipino men to govern
their families was one step towards instilling the rudiments of self-government, then teaching
them military discipline was another. Imperialists contended that American soldiers would turn
the bloodthirsty Filipino warriors into disciplined soldiers’ (Hoganson, 1998, p. 135). The Filipino-as-
children image reinforced the need for the public school system. The feminised Filipino male
directly battled the machismo ingrained in the Filipinos by the Spanish colonial rule. American
colonists often feminised men to their American public, associating them with what was deemed
women’s roles in America – homemakers and child-carers. They also mentioned that Filipino
men were unproductive, with women doing most of the work at home (Hoganson, 1998). Part
of America’s strategy for colonisation was to purport the narrative of Filipino men as lower than
them. Filipino men felt the constant need to prove otherwise. The perfect opportunity would
come through military pursuits.
The military links to education started during the American colonial period. An initial lack
of American teachers in 1898 caused military officers to take on the roles of school chaplains,
with enlisted soldiers becoming the first teachers. University became the vessel for American’s
military interests, which intersected with Filipino’s quest for their manhood. The American colo-
nials barred Filipinos from entering the military while removing Filipino military leaders from
their position to remove the threat of insurgency. Americans capitalised on the emasculated
Filipinos who were looking to prove themselves and their manhood. Young Filipino men who
missed their chance to fight in the Philippine revolution could enrol in the American-run
Philippine Military Academy and the Military Reserve Corps, which was attached to the University
of the Philippines curriculum. These military initiatives co-opted the ‘near-universal folk ritual
of male initiation to make military service synonymous with the passage to manhood’, (McCoy,
2000, p. 315), creating a new form of Filipino masculinity’ (p. 331). Western manhood was quickly
adapted into the Philippine context. This culture of indoctrination and male initiation played
into the kinship values of Filipinos, and ‘shaped gender roles in the whole of society’ (McCoy,
2000, p. 315) further complicating the Philippine gender order. The Filipino-created ritual of
hazing in male student organisations became a transformative exercise that signalled the tran-
sition of boyhood to manhood, fostering group solidarity and brotherhood (McCoy, 2000), all
related to the issues we see in Philippine fraternities today (Gutierrez, 2019).
Nearing the end of the American Colonial Period, the American education system’s pitfalls
came into play. The education system initially designed for Americans caused Filipino learners
to struggle, both with the language and the method of instruction. English became the language
of instruction to unify the Filipinos under a common language, but the American education
system in Philippine soil was created as ‘foreign-language handicap’, an achievement gap between
 Educational Philosophy and Theory 9

Americans and Filipino (Hardacker, 2012, p. 19). The American colonial period saw an increase
in enrolled students and the overall number of teachers. Mass education meant that those in
the peripheries, such as non-Manila cities and provinces, would finally have an educational
opportunity, specifically higher education (Hardacker, 2012). However, the 1925 Monroe Survey
on education promoted a more humanised approach to administration and materials adapted
to Philippine life. By the end of this regime, new challenges arose for American-trained Filipino
educators. They had a ‘sharply contrasting philosophy’, and needed to balance indigenous
leadership endeavours with the colonisers’ competing pressures. These educators’ goal was to
find a ‘value system most compatible with the dignity and aspirations of an independent coun-
try’ (Hunt & Mchale, 1965, p. 63).
The Japanese invasion during World War 2 delayed Philippine independence but added another
point for reflection for the country. The Americans abandoned the Philippine islands in 1942, which
formally started the Japanese occupation. These Japanese colonists brought the ‘Asia for Asian’
narrative (Abinales & Amoroso, 2005). The Japanese colonists’ reopened schools to instil discipline
in the Filipinos, using education to achieve military order. Nippongo or the Japanese language
became the priority language. Schools fostered of the love for work, and removed Western Values
such as materialism. One major shift during the Japanese’s short occupation involved teaching
Tagalog, Philippine History, and Philippine values in schools. While the Japanese colonial period
only lasted five years, these five years had given the Filipinos time to reflect on their consciousness
as ‘Orientals’, creating a Filipino for Asians policy (Musa & Ziatdinov, 2012). Their reign was short,
and the Philippines regained its freedom when the United States military assisted in reclaiming
Manila in 1945. In 1946, the Philippines was granted independence by the United States.
The article identified how colonial patterns of restructuring the Philippine gender order through
education, specifically university education, benefitted different colonial aims. Written record
(Abinales & Amoroso, 2005; Eviota, 1992) shows pre-colonial gender relations and structures were
egalitarian more prior to colonisation. Patterns of same-sex schools arranged gendered roles and
courses during the Spanish colonial period, reinforcing the assumption of Spanish men as the
golden standard for rationality (Paechter, 2018) making this identity aspirational. Conceptions of
the nation and national identity (Azada-Palacios, 2021), put forward by propagandists such as
the national hero Jose Rizal, resulted from colonial University education, creating a Filipino identity
(Schumacher, 1975) synonymous with Filipino manhood (Owen, 1999). Tracing this progression,
the American Colonial education feminised labour insofar as they reinforced a woman-specific
curriculum for women in universities who entered the work force (Sobritchea, 1990). The evolution
of the Philippine education system has led to lingering gender issues and structures we see
today. A heavily gendered education system remains harmful to identity construction of Filipinos.
This becomes the context from which we theorise the Philippine Philosophy of education.

Implications for Philippine philosophy of education

Education was used as a tool by the colonisers to maintain the values that served colonial
interests or interests of the elite, but eventually, these institutions became avenues of resistance
or change. As much as colonial powers created institutions of education, as much as they
maintained and softened colonial practices of masculine domination, ‘the colonial universities
were the seedbeds of the downfall of colonialism and the emergence of independent nations’
(Altbach, 1989, p. 170). We see this in the Ilustrados and the Philippine revolutionaries who
become models for the Filipino identity.
The Philippines becomes distinct through its organic drive towards education. Filipinos see
education as a path to upward social mobility (Hunt & Mchale, 1965), showing its continued
cultural importance. Educational institutions, as dictated by the Philippine state, must ‘teach
the rights and duties of citizenship, strengthen ethical and spiritual values, develop moral
character and personal discipline, encourage critical and creative thinking, broaden scientific
10 A. M. L. R. RODRIGUEZ

and technological knowledge and promote efficiency’ (Philippine Const. 1987. art. XIV, section
3). They must also ‘inculcate patriotism and nationalism, foster love of humanity, respect for
human rights…’ (Philippine Const. 1987. art. XIV, section 3) while teaching history and proper
citizenship. The country’s education system pushes for globalisation (Adeyemo, 2015) and ‘eco-
nomic development and social progress’ as foreign interests continue to influence the topics
tackled in higher education. Foreign values have been indigenised by Filipinos (Opiniano et al.,
2022) such that a return to a pre-Philippine value system remains uncertain.
We contribute to the Philosophy of Philippine education by providing points for reflection,
specifically in terms of one’s gender. Current questions in the Philosophy of Education involve
the makings of a good life (Tesar et al., 2022). This points us to questions of gender. By locating
the Filipino’s identity formation (Quito, 1978) specific to gender, we ask, how are we gendered?
In what ways are we gendered? And who are we gendered for (Paechter, 2018)? Successful
educational reform cannot be achieved without linking gender-related issues within higher
education to broader social issues plaguing the Philippine nation. The push towards formal
education, specifically formal higher education results from outward values that aim to re-absorb
the Philippine labour force in a global market that does not benefit the country (Adeyemo,
2015). Gender issues affect access to education, quality of education, and an institution’s vision
for its ideal graduate. Philosophising about education involves a removal of assumptions regard-
ing particular bodies as masculine and feminine, removing sex-role stereotypes whose colonial
origins have a long-standing impact on learning and the economy.
We must explore avenues to decolonise the universities through reframing the Filipino phi-
losophy of education to fit our current gender order. Notions of how the Philippine gender
order was constructed by universities furthers discussions of decolonisation. Without grounding
education’s gender issues in the history of colonisation, reform remains incomplete. Interrogations
must be made on how we conceptualise reason and rationality in the Philippine context. Avenues
for educational reform include rethinking understandings of gender that impact teaching and
learning philosophy. Knowledge of the gender order’s radical shifts inspire possibilities for
change. With this, we can create an ‘education for freedom’ for Filipinos, with gender in mind.
And without troubling the notions of gender institutions put forward, we cannot explore a
Philosophy of Education that is truly Filipino.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
A. M. Leal R. Rodriguez is a PhD student currently affiliated with the University of Auckland as a Faculty of Arts
Doctoral Scholar. A product of the Department of Sociology and the School of Critical Studies in Education, her
PhD project focuses on masculinities in the global south, gender, and higher education (universities). Her work
as a feminist activist with almost ten years of experience in the development and education sector led her to
decolonial and post-structuralist theory.

ORCID
A. M. Leal R. Rodriguez http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1671-0384

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