RM Awardee Blasts New 'Thomasites' in Anti-Terror War

U.S. Ambassador to Manila Francis Ricciardoni, a known anti-terrorism specialist, last year said his government will send missionary teachers to teach English and American democracy in ARMM. As expected, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has agreed to the plan and the new Thomasites – referring to ex-cons, mercenaries and rifle-brandishing teachers who tagged along U.S. troops in the 1900s to colonize the Philippines in exchange for war booty and farm lands – are being opposed by the country’s leading educators.

By Alexander Martin Remollino 
Bulatlat.com

A Ramon Magsaysay awardee and noted educator and writer has accused the U.S. government of sending American “teachers” to back its “war against terrorism” and war exercises in southern Mindanao.

Dr. Bienvenido Lumbera, a Ramon Magsaysay awardee for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts in 1995, described the deployment of the American teachers as “dangerous.”

“This is dangerous because this comes alongside the Balikatan (03-1 exercises),” Dr. Lumbera, who is also a long-time professor of the University of the Philippines, told Bulatlat.com this weekend. “The relation of the American teachers to the Balikatan exercises is easily obvious.”

Lumbera was reacting to an announcement by Mona Dumlao-Valisno, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s assistant on education, last Feb. 7 that the new American missionaries will be deployed in “madrassas” or Muslim religious schools in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

Valisno said that aside from English, the “volunteer American teachers” will teach “democratic
values and the rule of law as part of the U.S. and Philippine fight against terrorism.”

But the Malacañang official herself admitted in a recent letter to the Philippine Daily Inquirer that the idea was floated in a meeting with U.S. Ambassador to Manila Francis Ricciardoni.

Ricciardoni, whose bio-data reveals expertise in anti-terrorism and previous assignments in strife-torn Middle East, was quoted in the July 20, 2002 issue of The Weekend Australia, suggesting that the deployment of American teachers in Mindanao is linked to the “war on terror.”

‘Forces of radicalism’

 “We'd like to see if we can help maybe revive an English-language teaching program...that's another way of fighting terrorism,” Ricciardoni said. “We think education is very, very important to promoting and strengthening democracy and defeating the forces of radicalism.”

Lumbera said the American volunteer teachers would prove useful in information-gathering for Washington and the U.S. defense establishment. “Here are the American teachers and they will be ‘helping the disadvantaged Muslims learn English.’ Though not every individual teacher will be an intelligence agent, they will have this orientation that, ‘Well, you gather information on the pulse of the people and then tell us how they feel, what they think.”

The noted educator said the information-gathering may be done under the guise of “cultural exchange”. “The work of the Peace Corps volunteers was like that,” he said. “They were sent out to the Third World to make friends for America and, at the same time, learn about the people, what they think and what they feel.”

He said he found it suspicious that the volunteer teachers will be sent to Muslim schools.

“Before, their enemy was ‘communism’; now they are fighting what they call ‘terrorism’. Why will the volunteer teachers be sent to the Muslims? Why not to Tondo, why not to Pampanga? Why the Muslims? That immediately makes the plan very suspicious,” he said. “The Philippines and the U.S. have not had such cultural relations for a long time.”

Ridiculous

It is not only ridiculous but also sinister, the UP professor said, that the American teachers would really get into the heart of Muslim culture in order to teach people English.

“The idea is that this is a service, because it is said that under globalization we need English; now it seems they are targeting the Muslims ‘because they are the ones who are disadvantaged,’” he said.

The plan, Lumbera added, reminds him of the Thomasites, the soldier-teachers sent by the U.S. aboard the SS Thomas in the 1900s. “At that time, there was armed suppression of dissent, and there was a soft approach,” he said. “The soft approach served mainly to win over young people to support the rule of the Americans.”

The Thomasites came on the heels of the Philippine-American War that left more than a million Filipinos dead. But many of the American mercenary troops who figured in massacres were also recruited as teachers.

Lumbera said however that the purpose is not the same today. “The idea is no longer to soften the young,” he said. “There is now the idea that their entry is a way of propagandizing against whatever it is the young believe, which becomes a basis for their actions.”

On the possibility of the government having to spend for the needs of the American volunteer teachers, he said that it would be “ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous.” He finds it curious that the government would be employing Americans, not Filipinos, if the sole intention would be to teach good English, since there are many capable Filipino teachers.

Indoctrination

The spokesperson of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) also reacted to the Malacañang announcement. MILF spokesperson and lawyer Eid Kabalu said the American teachers will conduct indoctrination in Muslim communities. “We should know what kind of indoctrination they are going to make,” he said.

Kabalu criticized the government for making moves to take in teachers from abroad when in fact the country has thousands of education graduates without jobs. “There are thousands of Filipino education graduates who are willing and able to teach in Muslim Mindanao. Unfortunately, the Arroyo administration has chosen not to provide funding for the hiring of new teachers next school year.”

Also opposed to the plan is the chair of the militant Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT). In a recent press statement, UP Prof. Antonio L. Tinio said, “GMA allowed the return of U.S. troops on our soil. She wants to restore English as the medium of instruction. Now she wants Americans to teach in our schools. Does she intend to transform our country into an American colony all over again?”

Tinio said the arrival of American volunteer teachers must be seen as an extension of the so-called “war on terror.” “This is another form of direct U.S. intervention especially if viewed within the context of the continuous military operations of U.S. troops in Mindanao and against Muslim and other peoples who oppose U.S. foreign and military policies around the world,” the ACT chair said.

U.S. intelligence agencies have used the Peace Corps and other similar volunteer programs as cover for intelligence-gathering, Tinio added.

Cause for alarm

Prof. Dennis Andrew Aguinaldo also agrees with Lumbera and Tinio. Aguinaldo, a Philippine Studies graduate of the University of the Philippines who now teaches at a state college in Pateros, Metro Manila, finds cause for alarm in this.

“Some things that should be recalled now have all been rendered far better by the late Renato
Constantino in his treatise, the ‘Miseducation of the Filipino.’ What should alarm us is the fact that these concerns are still alive and well, wearing different names and colors but propelled by the same oppressive spirit,” Aguinaldo said.

He also finds it suspicious that the United States should send teachers over to a third world country when it itself is reeling from a shortage of teachers. “The stark irony that strikes me here is the fact that the U.S. itself is in sore need of teachers!” he said. “Teachers are just a couple of notches behind nurses in this regard. Despite the xenophobic paranoia that is promoted among the Americans, qualified teachers are drawn as soon as the papers would allow. This is the extent of their need.”

Aguinaldo believes the American volunteers will be sent here not to teach but to indoctrinate. “In a sense, it is right to think that what are being sent aren't teachers,” he said. “They are soldiers in the fact that they are playing a leading role in the war. The war is for the conditioning of the mind. They will not teach critical teaching, I think. What they impart is something more of a doctrine, a mentality fit for slaves, he said. Bulatlat.com

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