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

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