THE CULTURAL DIMENSIONS OF TEACHING

MA. LIEZL R. DELA CRUZ

The addition of mother tongue teaching in the K-12 curriculum could be the start of a bolder emphasis on cultural preservation in every region in the country. Schools are meant to be living museums where societies deposit their cultural traditions. This means that every teacher must be able to transmit these traditions to the new generation. It is unfortunate that sometimes, even schools are bent to prefer foreign ideas rather than support the ones that they can find in their community. For instance, pupils are more familiar with giraffes, elephants, and be clueless about tarsier, pilandok, and tamaraw. The growing trend of contextualizing the lesson to something that pupils can relate to becomes also problematic when pupils are not even made aware of the existence of several resources in the community.

In math classes, is it possible to replace apples and oranges into balimbing and kaimito when studying addition and subtraction? Some of the teachers whom I have talked to would reason that pupils are not even familiar of these local fruits. Using apples and oranges is easier because everybody would recognize them. It is saddening that these teachers do not even recognize this situation as a problem in itself. Pupils are not familiar with these local fruits because they are not introduced to them. In the early grades, pupils should be able to appreciate their cultural heritage – from the food, to the traditions, and other local resources. It would be disheartening to know that our students are more familiar with video game characters than our own national heroes.

Perhaps, it is not solely the problem of the school. Cultural conservation is a community effort. While the school may deliver the content needed, students must be able to see and experience the same in their communities. With the growing influence of media to our students, the struggle to ensure that our students maintain a pride in their roots remains to a path not everyone is willing to take. However, with enough perseverance from the teachers and the school, I believe that our culture has a fair chance of enduring the test of time.

— oOo— The author is Teacher I at Doña Asuncion Lee Integrated School