DepEd Illustration Of Farmer Family – No Class, No Basis, No Thanks!

Class, for today, we have 2 lessons. 
1st Lesson – Check your facts. 
2nd Lesson – Check your figures.

If to you the right panel in the main image above is a good portrayal of a Filipino farming family, this teacher who happens to be the son of a farmer, is telling you that you have notbeen taught correctly!

I declare: Not even the poorest Filipino family head & members dress in holey clothes!

That illustration is an offence both to the farmers on one hand and the government on the other. And there is the hidden, if unintended, message: If you want to be poor, be a farmer!

Above, with her half-body inset, GMA creative writer Suzette Doctolero defends the DepEd illustration in a Grade 3 virtual learning module (Jan Milo Severo, 19 November 2020, “No Discrimination? 'Encantadia' Creator Agrees With Farmer's Look In DepEd Module[1],” PhilStar.com). “Encantadia” is a TV fantasy series on enchanted people in 4 kingdoms shown over the years in Channel 7 (GMA), which proves that Miss Suzette has an independent mind.

Now, let us look at what Miss Suzette with her liberated mind has written in defending that poor DepEd farmer illustration! This is another liberated mind speaking. This is what she wrote on Twitter:

Ah e ano ba akala sa damit ng mga magsasaka at pamilya? Branded? Tama ang drawing. Miserable ang buhay ng mga magsasaka natin. Nagkakabagong damit lang ang magsasaka ‘pag may libreng tshirt sa hardware (tuwing pasko) o give away sa election.

(So what do you think of the clothes of farmers and families – Branded? The drawing is correct. The lives of our farmers are miserable. Farmers can enjoy new clothes only if there is free T-shirt from the hardware (come Christmas), or give-away during elections.)

Miss Suzette must believe what she is saying – look at her wide smile!

But I thank you! Miss Suzette for those 41 Twitter words of yours I quoted above. I have been educated. Now I know that even media people are uneducated about the Philippines!

In this pandemic lockdown since March 2020, are we in what George Orwell describes in his prescient novel 1984, the perfect imperfect situation?

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

The illustration appears in an English module for Grade 3 pupils about “proper and common nouns” that depict a farming family as impoverished. I say the illustration itself is improper! As a media person, an agriculturist, and a certified Civil Service Professional teacher, I cannot allow DepEd to continue to depict its ignorance on farmers’ lives. There are many poor farmers, yes, but they are not as poor as the drawing above is unhappily showing everyone. This demeaning depiction of the family of a Filipino farmer must be discontinued to exist on the pages of the modules of DepEd. They are teaching the wrong things about Philippine agriculture to Filipino children!

Why? Because that the typical Filipino farmer is a pauper is one of the latest fantasies of the creator of Encantadia!@


[1]https://www.philstar.com/entertainment/2020/11/19/2058024/no-discrimination-encantadia-creator-agrees-farmers-look-deped-module

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How PH’s Hybrid Rice Companies Can Increase Their Sales – But Do Farmers Have To Spray All Those Pesticides!?

Image
First, let me be clear: I am in favor of hybrid rice as a good part of the solution for the Philippines to attain rice self-sufficiency – I hope this year, 2021. I have already written about it; try “How Good Are Hybrid Rices In The Philippines [1] ?” (06 January 2021, BraveNewWorld@PH ) Today, Sunday, 10 January 2021, browsing on Facebook, I notice that the hybrid rice companies in my country are not minding their own business! I mean, they are not actively assisting the farmers taking care of their plantings. I found that out when on Facebook, I scanned the page “Usapang Hybrid Rice” (Talking Hybrid Rice), “Group by Tatang Juan” (above, top image). At this Facebook page, I read the entries and noticed that the farmers’ questions, answers and comments seemed innocent – but they were not. It has something to do with this: The hybrid rice companies in the Philippines are not providing adequate advice and information to farmers. And that is not good – it may even be dangerous. Her
Read more

“Healthy Foods Come From Healthy Farms” – Frank A Hilario

Image
Food crops destroyed by floods, forests destroyed by fires – what other signs do you want from the Heavens Above? God! “Good comes from Good” says Webstaurant Store – only healthy farming can bring healthy fields and homes! (“Good Comes” image from webstaurantstore.com , “Whatever good” from brainyquote.com ) “Climate Change“ is forcing us to redefine “Primate Change“ and I, Agriculturist and writer engaged in what today I call “Communication for Village Development in the 21st Century” (CoViD21) in the last 42 years – now preach Regenerative Agriculture (RA) in the villages. Primates, only RA will save us from climate change! That is a CoViD21 action/reaction from my BSA Ag Edu, UP Los Baños, 1965 and continuing self-study with the advent of the Internet in PH in 1991. Wide thoughts come from wide reading. Here now is my considered definition: Regenerative Agriculture is any principle, process, procedure, or practice applied that repeatedly returns, revives, resuscitates, o
Read more

01, Less Is More – How PhilRice Can Reduce A Rice Farmer’s Total Expenses By 51%!

Image
This essay arose from several Facebook comments on my earlier essay “07, The More The Merrier – P 1B From DA Supportive Of 10 Bataan Model Farms Leading PH Agriculture [1] ” (21 February 2021, BrainScapes ). This is my comment in that essay that readers mainly commented on: I don’t know why, but 60-year old foreign-funded IRRI and 35-year-old PH-funded PhilRice have advocated neither high-value crops (HVCs) after rice nor fertigation, when these technologies are not that new. Joy Duldulao said: “ PhilRice advocates HVCs thru its Palayamanan and FutureRice programs.” Eufemio Rasco replied: “ PhilRice should not limit itself to advocacy. Advocacy is for those who don’t have the resources. Show by example how the challenge of scaling up can be done in its own farms! Mainstream Palayamanan!” Roberto Acosta said: “ Joy Duldulao, maybe it’s high time to change the success measurement matrix of PhilRice – from increasing rice yield to increasing rice farmers' income and better lives
Read more