Michael Tan: Pinoy Kasi

Pinoy Kasi: the UNOFFICIAL website of anthropologist Michael Tan's Philippine Daily Inquirer opinion column. For more information, visit his official web site at: http://pinoykasi.homestead.com/

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Saturday, November 25, 2006

'Halal'

PINOY KASI
'Halal'
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 01:21am (Mla time) 11/24/2006

Published on Page A15 of the November 24, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


FOOD sensitivities aren't just allergy reactions. There are also many cultural sensitivities about food, as was dramatized early this week in Congress by the outburst of Rep. Faysah Dumarpa of Lanao del Sur province after realizing she had been served "pancit" [native noodles] with pork.

Dumarpa has called for the dismissal of the catering crew and told reporters she felt "betrayed" and "deceived" because eating pork is considered a "grievous sin" for Muslims.

The pork prohibition isn't just for Muslims; it's shared by many Jews, as well as by Seventh Day Adventists. On the other hand, most Hindus will refuse to eat beef, while many are completely vegetarian.

Public health

Christian Filipinos find it difficult understanding these prohibitions because we eat just about anything, from dogs to duck fetuses ( a.k.a. "balut"). In effect, any creature that walks, swims, flies or crawls is fair prey. Probably only the Chinese beat us with their definitions of edible food, spurring the joke that if Adam and Eve had been Chinese they would have eaten the snake and we wouldn't have all our problems with original sin.

Anthropologists study the reasons why there are these prohibitions. One explanation is ecological. For example, the prohibition on pork among Middle East cultures may have been imposed because the pig was not a cost-effective food animal to raise. In an arid environment like those of the Middle East, pigs compete with humans for food and water. Goats and sheep are hardier animals; they thrive in those environments and therefore became the preferred food animals. The pig, on the other hand, was declared dirty and even unnatural.

Public health considerations also come into the picture. Leviticus in the Old Testament is full of dietary prohibitions based on definitions of what was "clean" and "unclean." These prohibitions come together with all kinds of other rules which suggest Leviticus was intended as a kind of public health guide, warning not just about foods to avoid, but also about contact with people with certain diseases.

It should not be surprising then that Leviticus has a generic prohibition on eating "all creatures that swarm upon the earth." The prohibition is probably based on the idea that contact with the earth made them dangerous. Blood is also a proscribed food, which means no "dinuguan," which could make sense in terms of public health, considering what blood might carry.

Other prohibitions are a bit more mysterious, such as a ban on carnivorous animals. Creatures from the sea that do not have scales -- for example, shellfish -- are proscribed. The pig, too, is prohibited on grounds that it is cloven-footed, like cattle and goats, but it does not "chew the cud," meaning it doesn't eat grass, and is therefore "unnatural." Among Christians, the Seventh Day Adventists still observe the many food prohibitions in Leviticus.

Cultural competence

With so many Filipinos working overseas, and with our campaign to attract more foreigners to visit the Philippines, we need to become more culturally competent in dealing with the various dietary practices people have. Cultural competence here means sensitivity to cultures, and a willingness to accommodate beliefs and practices different from our own.

A best place to start with cultural competence is right here at home, with our Muslim Filipinos. Our schools' social studies subjects should introduce the term "halal" as early as in elementary schools, the term meaning "permitted" as opposed to "haram" or forbidden. (The Jewish equivalent is "kosher" or "fit" foods.)

Whenever I host a workshop or a dinner where I am not sure about the religious backgrounds of the visitors, I tell the caterers not to serve any pork. If it's Ramadan, I make sure to host a dinner rather than a lunch since Muslim guests observing the fast might not be able to eat if the meal is before sunset.

Southeast Asian countries, with the exception of Malaysia and Indonesia, love pork, so extra effort is needed to convince hotels, restaurants and hospitals to think of the needs of non-pork eaters. With devout Muslims, the dietary needs may even be stricter, with the definition of "halal" extended to mean the food product has been prepared in accordance with certain Islamic prescriptions. This means no pork, no pork lard used in cooking, and the animals being used were slaughtered in a prescribed manner -- with one slit across the throat.

Vegetarians

Vegetarians suffer even more grievously in the Philippines than Muslims. Part of the problem is linguistic: When you say you don't eat "karne" [meat], Filipinos think only of beef. So you have to say: "Walang baka, walang baboy, walang manok, walang isda" [No beef, no pork, no chicken, no fish]. But that's still no guarantee that the waiter will come back with "vegetarian" pancit that still has pieces of chicken, pork or shrimp.

Restaurants also need to prepare for the growing number of Filipinos who have dietary restrictions that are tied to medical conditions: for example, diabetics and people with heart disease. Again, this can be an uphill battle. I am amazed, for example, at how difficult it is to get soya milk without sugar, despite soya milk being sold with so many health claims. Nope, I explain to the vendors, it isn't healthy food when you pour in so much sugar. It's the same problem with chocolate "tablea" -- very rarely do I find sugar-free ones.

Sodium is the other major problem. If you have high blood pressure that is triggered off by sodium, you should make it a point to tell a restaurant to take it easy on salt, soy sauce and "vetsin" (monosodium glutamate).

Then there are the fatty foods, and foods cooked in unhealthy oils. I can't imagine asking a "carinderia" [eatery] to use canola oil or olive oil, but you still try to encourage them to use one of the cheaper but healthier oils like peanut. (I'm not convinced yet about virgin coconut oil, but if you think it's healthy then ask them to use it.)

Ultimately, it'll be the customers and clients who will change restaurant, hotel and even hospital food-serving practices. You don't have to be as dramatic as the congresswoman, but certainly, you can speak out about your dietary needs. As food establishments get more requests to cut the salt, or sugar, or vetsin, they will change their menus and cooking methods.

Cultural competence makes good business sense. Some of the finer restaurants are already offering vegetarian selections. Some Filipino food firms are now producing halal products; once certified by a special board that checks the companies' facilities, these firms can export their products to Muslim countries.

Business interests aside, we just have to keep reminding ourselves that food is at the core of our cultural identity. We crave for Filipino food when we're overseas, "Filipino" defined by rice, or "adobo," or pancit. We just have to remember that for many cultures, avoiding certain foods is also a way of affirming one's beliefs, one's faith.

'Ampon'

PINOY KASI
'Ampon'
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 00:06am (Mla time) 11/22/2006

Published on Page A15 of the November 22, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


MADONNA, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie. Ask people on the street and there's a good chance they've heard about these celebrities' adoption of children, and the controversies around Madonna and the child she wanted to take from Malawi.

There have been questions raised about Madonna's adoption: Should she have adopted a child who still has a father? Why the ease with which she could adopt -- would this make it easier for people with less noble intentions, for example, child trafficking? Couldn't she have adopted one of the many orphans and abandoned children in the United States or in England?

When you think hard about all these questions, they all boil down to a core issue: there are motives and power relationships underlying each adoption. Celebrity parent or not, in New York, London or Manila, those motives and relationships have to be sorted out.

Uniquely human

Adoption, in which a child is taken in and raised as one's own biological offspring, is uniquely human. There are some animal species, notably female cats, wild and domesticated, that sometimes adopt each other's offspring, but for most species, the mothering instinct is reserved only for one's own offspring.

But not all adoptions are entirely altruistic. In many countries, the Philippines included, children from poorer families are sometimes taken in -- even bought -- so they can become unpaid servants.

A more benign but still questionable motivation for adoption sees the child as a form of old-age insurance. It's really an extension of biological reproduction: in poorer countries like our own, people have more children because they want to be sure someone will care for them in their old age. I've even heard of parents who already have their own biological children but will adopt a few more because they feel that these children will have a greater sense of obligation to care for the people who adopted them.

What we're seeing today, in developed countries as well as in more economically stable households in developing countries, is a move away from this concept of the adopted child as a future caregiver. Instead, the trend is to take in one of the many deprived children in the world and give them a better chance in life.

I have friends in the States, England and the Netherlands who have taken this option, some even deciding not to have biological children of their own and adopting instead. It's an intriguing, if not noble, idea: there are enough children in the world that need a home and parents, so why not take them in?

During a recent trip to Hanoi, I was billeted in a hotel where, every morning, our dining room would fill up with French and American parents who had just adopted Vietnamese babies. I asked some of my Vietnamese friends how they felt about such adoptions and most were quite accepting, but would smile and add: "Guilt." What they meant was that the adoptions were, in a way, making up for France's colonial occupation of Vietnam in the 19th and 20th century, and America's bloody debacle in Vietnam during the 1960s and 1970s.

Which isn't a really a bad thing. In a way, I think we need more of that guilt too in the Philippines, seeing adoption as a way of making up for previous generations' neglect of social problems, including poverty.

Secrecy

Adoption is quite widespread in the Philippines, often done informally: unmarried aunts taking in a nephew or niece, grandparents taking grandchildren, even neighbors taking the kids next door. In this age of the Filipino diaspora, more kids are probably being raised by several sets of caregivers and calling all of them "mama" and "papa."

In some cases, the process may be more complicated. I learned recently from some doctor friends that some women will go through "simulated birth," a legal term referring to an alteration of the birth certificate to make it appear that someone gave birth to a child they had adopted.

I suspect one reason this is done is that adoption, despite its being so widespread, is still stigmatized. "Ampon lang," people will whisper, meaning "only adopted." Many adoptive parents will try to postpone, for as long as possible, telling the child that he or she is not their biological child. Some parents wait till the child reaches adolescence before disclosing the adoption. Given that adolescence is such a difficult time for many children, having to deal with their being adopted could lead to a major crisis.

We will need to change this practice of keeping adoption a secret. Child care experts now recommend telling the adopted child as early as possible and explaining that an adopted child may actually be loved more than a "natural" one.

All ours

Another reason why adoptions are often done without going to court is that the process is tedious and time-consuming. Besides, one urban poor mother told me once, legal adoptions are there for inheritance purposes, and with the poor, there's nothing to inherit.

Except maybe a lot of love. I recall an American tearjerker movie when I was a kid called "All Mine to Give" in which the eldest son has to give away his seven siblings after their parents die. In our urban poor communities, there are similar cases happening all the time, a brood of siblings suddenly orphaned, or abandoned. In these cases, it isn't the eldest child who has to look for homes; instead, the neighbors come in, no questions asked, distributing the kids among themselves. Someone should make a movie titled "All Ours to Give."

All that says a lot about our Filipino term "ampon," which isn't quite like the legalized process we think of. Jose Panganiban's Tagalog dictionary defines "ampon" as more of a process of taking someone in to protect.

We're bound to see Filipino adoptions changing in the future. A friend of mine, Boy Panganiban, is vehemently against this idea of adopting a child so you'll have a caregiver when you're old. A banker by profession, Boy says that if you want security in old age, work out a good retirement plan. The children? You give them the best opportunities in life and raise them to be good people. Later they can "pay back" by being good parents to the next generation, maybe to include adopting as well.

Four gods

The other week, I wrote about research conducted by Baylor University on the four different types of God that Americans believe in. Reader Goldelino Chan wrote to point out that I had described only three. I'm afraid I did delete the description of the fourth one while editing. Here again are the four Gods:

Baylor University says 31 percent of those surveyed see God as an Authoritarian God, who influences global as well as personal events and is often angry. Another 24 percent believe in a Distant God, who sets the laws of nature in motion but doesn't intervene in the world. Following closely are the 23 percent who believe in a Benevolent God, who is equally active in daily life but less likely to be angry or punish people. Finally, 16 percent see a Critical God, who watches rather than interacts with the world but will mete out justice and punishment in the next life.

Friday, November 17, 2006

Raising babies

PINOY KASI
Raising babies
By Michael Tan
Inquirer
Last updated 02:07am (Mla time) 11/17/2006

Published on Page A15 of the November 17, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

THE booklet was lying in a corner of the antique store, but it caught my eye because it had photographs of babies on the cover. Inside the booklet were babies from all over the country, from Aparri, Cagayan to Jolo, Sulu, interspersed with pictures of tourist spots such as Manila's old Congress building, Palawan's underground river and the bamboo pipe organ in Las Piñas. There was no date of publication, but I suspect it was before World War II. What was so intriguing was that the entire booklet was clearly promotional material, each page of the baby photographs accompanied by a caption: "Reared on 'Milkmaid' Sweetened Condensed Milk." The babies were cuddly but I realized, too, that many of them had "moon faces." They looked well fed but some were actually suffering from edema ("manas" in Filipino), induced by all the sugar in their condensed milk. Yet that moon face was, and still is to some extent, the standard for a healthy baby. I bought the booklet right away, seeing how useful it would be for lectures with health professionals, a reminder that our concepts of health change all the time and are often shaped by commercial interests. Today, condensed milk remains popular among urban poor communities for infant and child feeding and, together with improperly prepared infant formula as well as junk foods, put many Filipino children's lives in jeopardy. Those raising children are often bewildered by the barrage of publications and, lately, films, claiming to give expert advice on childrearing. From parenting experience, I've learned to be extremely critical about these materials, but it also helps to recognize that even "scientific" childrearing can sometimes be faulty, sometimes biased by vested interests. ColonialismLast year, the journal American Anthropologist published an article by Bonnie McElhinny with a kilometric title: "'Kissing a Baby is Not at All Good for Him': Infant Mortality, Medicine and Colonial Modernity in the US-Occupied Philippines." It described the American colonial administrators' attempts to change childrearing practices in their new colony. The Americans had good reason to be concerned, given that we had one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world. McElhinny says that at the turn of the century, about 40 percent of babies born each year died before the age of one. It's hard to have accurate figures, but there can be no doubt the death rates were extremely high, posing formidable challenges to both Filipino and American physicians. Not surprisingly, they tended to blame "ignorance," especially among the poor, as the cause of these deaths. In 1921, the colonial government organized the First National Conference on Infant Mortality and Public Health, which produced a list of 40 "superstitions" associated with childrearing. The campaign to eradicate these "superstitions" extended into public education materials and "mothercraft" classes. Quite a few of the "superstitions" that were identified related to religious practices, which the physicians felt would spread disease. They were apparently horrified at the practice of mothers kissing religious statues and the children. Even baptism of babies, some physicians felt, meant "unnecessary exposure" of infants. The public health administrators also tried to discourage what they thought was excessive indulgence in child-rearing practices. The title of McElhinny's article came from advice in a manual about kissing babies, with one physician conceding that if parents needed to kiss their infants, it should only be on the cheek. One manual said that feeding on demand (which we still do) would "predispose the baby to diseases of the digestive system" and "make him nervous and spoiled." The manual also discouraged "rocking the baby, lulling him to sleep, and dancing him up and down." Sleeping with babies was also discouraged. The 1921 conference proceedings had a photograph of Filipino adults and children sleeping together, with this advice: "Human beings are not cattle and should not herd as such." HabitsMany of the "superstitions" about childrearing are still around, but I've learned to be more critical in assessing whether these practices are harmful or not. Our practice of having babies sleep at our side may actually have protective effect. I've never ceased to be amazed at how parents will suddenly wake up in the middle of the night sensing something's wrong even without the infant crying out. The triggers can be a slight fever or fever, irregular breathing, or quite simply, hunger. Check the bookstores these days and you'll find entire books on toilet training, all with different advice. The most rigid is to have children sit until they do it, but I am also familiar with anthropological literature claiming that societies with such rigid toilet training also tend to have "anal" people, meaning terribly obsessive-compulsive. In the end, I chose to stick to our local practice, which is to go with the pace of the child, who will eventually ask to use the toilet, often because they want to imitate older people. Science and medicine are affected by the times. Several historians and anthropologists note how, in the early 20th century, American child-rearing practices began to replicate policies in industrial factories, with an emphasis on time schedules and developing correct "habits." We see that in this piece of advice from a Filipino doctor during the American colonial period: "Do not put the little one to the breast every time it cries. Fifteen to twenty minutes should be the limit for every nursing period." Even taking children to fiestas was frowned upon because it meant children sleeping late. The advice was to develop "regular hours" for the children as early as possible. In effect, childrearing became part of the attempt to "tame" and "civilize" the Filipino, creating a new "native" who was more conscious about such civilized concerns as cleanliness and time schedules. Alas, today we still have problems with sanitation and punctuality. At least, the infant mortality rate in the Philippines has dropped to about 30 per 1,000 live births, but I wouldn't credit it to the "anti-superstition" campaigns. More important were the immunizations, access to safe water supplies and, most of all, a general improvement in living standards. But that current infant mortality rate still means several thousand deaths each year. I worry that we will continue to lose babies not so much because of traditional beliefs than because of modern superstitions. Someday, historians will look back at our advertisements for bottle-feeding formulas, filled with claims of brighter, healthier children and the ads pushing all kinds of junk foods for children, again showing happy toddlers at play. They will question these modern "superstitions" and wonder why we were so easily deceived, even as we paid dearly in terms of young lives lost.

Four gods

PINOY KASI
Four gods
By Michael Tan
Inquirer
Last updated 00:09am (Mla time) 11/15/2006

Published on Page A15 of the November 15, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

MOST political commentaries on the recent elections in the United States focused on the victory of the liberal Democrats over the conservative Republicans. But my American friends, most of whom are, well, liberals and Democrats, have been pointing out that you can be a conservative Democrat (which many of the winners were) as well as a (sort of) liberal Republican. Which is why I thought readers might be interested in the results of a recent survey by Baylor University in Texas, where an Institute of Religion has been conducting public opinion surveys for several years now. Baylor, incidentally, is a Baptist university. The latest survey, released in September, focused on American concepts of God, which the social scientists found to relate to political views as well. Big pictureLet's get a big picture first of the four concepts of God that came up in the surveys. As we run through the concepts, you might want to think of your own notions of God. The researchers found that 31 percent of their respondents see God as an Authoritarian God, who influences global as well as personal events and is often angry. Not surprisingly, these are the ones who also tend to believe in the death penalty, who support the war in Iraq. The ones who believe in an Authoritarian God are the biggest group, which might explain why George W. Bush got reelected in 2004 and why his policies on Iraq were so uncritically supported -- until recently. The survey did find that 24 percent of respondents believe in a Distant God, someone who sets the laws of nature in motion but does not actively intervene in the world. Obviously such a God would not be angry or punishing. The Distant God believers are about the same in number as those who believe in a Benevolent God, one who does intervene in our daily lives, but not in anger or in retribution. The Benevolent God believers accounted for 23 percent of respondents. As you might have guessed, the Distant God and Benevolent God believers are less likely to support the death penalty. People with higher incomes, and higher education also tend toward concepts of a Distant God and Benevolent God, which makes you wonder about how religion relates to the sense of control we have over our own lives and circumstances. Votes and religionI was constantly tuned to the US National Public Radio during the last election campaign and I could see new variations and configurations in the interactions between religion and politics. An example comes with the "conservatives" that Bush and the Republican Party had pinned their hopes on. Usually, the conservative agenda, which links to the notion of an Authoritarian God, is associated with support for the death penalty, American intervention in Iraq, opposition to abortion and gay marriages. But fissures began to emerge in the recent elections, such as conservatives who were opposed to abortion but felt more compassion was needed for gays, including possible support for gay marriages. There were, too, conservative evangelical Christians who were beginning to wonder if their involvement in politics, and their acquiring power, was beginning to corrupt Christianity. Rick Warren, who was in the Philippines recently, is one of those conservative Christians who is talking more now about involvement in social issues. There was more then to all this than the type of God that Americans believe in. The votes definitely related to broader concepts about how one translates one's religious values into political involvement. It's not surprising then that religious conservatives also speak out now for environmental conservation. A campaign initiated two or three years ago, "What Would Jesus Drive?" speculated that if Christ were here today, he wouldn't be driving a gas-guzzling Ford Expedition or one of the other SUVs. The campaign said he'd drive a smaller vehicle -- or take public transport and walk. PluralismThe Baylor study reminds us that there are many different types of beliefs in God, and in the supernatural. If similar studies were conducted in Asia, we'd find even more variations. Buddhism, for example, is basically non-theistic: It does talk about a creator God, or about a God intervening in people's lives. The buddhas are not gods; they were humans who have managed to break free from the cycles of reincarnation by cutting off all attachments to the material. Now, at the level of popular culture, many Buddhists do pray to the buddhas much as Christians would to God, asking for help, so there we see some kind of an intervening God. The Social Weather Stations has conducted surveys in the past on how Filipinos perceive their own religiosity and, as expected, many do see themselves as very religious. But I'd like to see surveys on specific beliefs and practices, including our perceptions of God, and how this might shape our behavior in non-religious spheres of life. I suspect the majority of Filipinos believe in a somewhat distant but intervening God, literally a "tatay" [father] in the stereotyped sense. Natural disasters and personal misfortunes are often seen as "gaba," punishment from God, but we also tend to see our relationships with that God as negotiable. We bargain all the time, vowing to do several novenas or have ourselves nailed to the cross in Lent, on condition that a certain favor is granted. I'd be curious to see what we bargain for as well. From admittedly unscientific eavesdropping on people's conversations, I've heard it all, from patients asking to be healed from a serious illness, to students asking to pass a particularly difficult subject, to sex workers praying for more customers. We are monotheistic, but we also believe in all-powerful saints. I suspect the belief in the Trinity allows us to believe in an authoritarian distant God the Father, and a more intervening benevolent God the Son, including the tiny but terrible Santo Niño, or Holy Child. Then, too, there's the Virgin Mary and a plethora of saints, who act as intercessors or go-betweens. Our patriarchal society might be reflected in our beliefs in an Authoritarian God, but we are, too, a matricentric society where women can be very powerful, and that is reflected in our Mama Mary complex. And we haven't even gone into Filipino animist beliefs that see the human world as constantly interacting with other worlds of supernatural and preternatural spirits, benevolent and malevolent. Perhaps ultimately, we need to understand not so much how the Filipino looks at God as how we interpret morality, what is right and what is "kasalanan" ("sin" or wrong-doing). Maybe the tension isn't so much between an Authoritarian and Benevolent God than between ideas of "personal" and "social" sin. When we see sin mainly in terms of having missed Mass, or using the contraceptive pill, then we lose sight of the need to address social sin, such as cheating in elections, stealing through corruption, failing to provide decent social services for fellow Filipinos.

Studying overseas

PINOY KASI
Studying overseas
By Michael Tan
Inquirer
Last updated 01:22am (Mla time) 11/10/2006

Published on Page A13 of the November 10, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

WITH the economy the way it is now, you might be wondering why I'm bothering to write about the possibilities of studying overseas.
First, I'm still getting inquiries about the Times Higher Education Supplement's World University Rankings, which I featured last week, from friends who want to know where to send their children. OK, so those are the rich ones and therefore does all this have relevance to the average Filipino family? It does.
The other reason I'm doing this column is that I've learned, over the past few months, that there are few takers for several scholarships being offered by Japanese, Australian, Singaporean and European universities.
Filipinos tend to get intimidated by these scholarship offers, thinking they have to be at the top of their class, excelling in all fields. You'd be surprised at who gets scholarships: quite often, all it takes are average grades accompanied by a strong dose of self-confidence as you write your resumé and your reasons for applying. But don't overdo your self-confidence; many of these agencies also practice affirmative action, meaning they will give preference to those from poorer families, those living outside Metro Manila and those belonging to minority groups, particularly Muslims and indigenous communities.
Now, please, please do not write me for more information about whom to contact. You need to exert some initiative here and prove you know how to look for the scholarships. Your best bets are to write the embassies, but you can also check the Internet for other scholarships, for example, by looking for the Erasmus scholarships offered by European countries.
For upper-income families, you might be surprised to find out that the cost of studying in some of these countries isn't actually quite as high as you think. The way private schooling costs have soared in the Philippines, it may actually be cheaper to study overseas, even with the cost of living factored in.
Why overseas
We do have good universities here, but there may be cases where an overseas education might still be useful. First, and this applies more for graduate studies, foreign universities might have courses that we still don't have here. That was what happened with me: I took medical anthropology at the University of Amsterdam since we didn't have that in the Philippines.
Second, living overseas allows an exposure to other cultures, and that itself can be a learning experience. That might even include the university teaching styles. I still remember the excitement I had as a college undergraduate in the United States, thrilled by the much freer discussions that teachers allowed, and the range of subjects one couldtake.
Third, overseas universities (even those in neighboring countries) often have better facilities and learning environments. My parents always told me, when I was in college, that it didn't really matter which university you studied in as long as you had the right environment and the right teachers. Most of our universities have that, to some extent, but it's becoming more and more difficult to survive with underpaid, overworked professors who vent their frustrations on students. Paradoxically, it's the brighter kids who end up most alienated without the proper environment. An overseas stint, even for a year, might be an option.
Which universities?
OK, so which universities? I will go back to the Times Higher Education Supplement's World University Rankings that I mentioned in previous columns to give you the 10 best universities for each of several countries you could consider. Note that these rankings are based more on peer review among educators, and among employers.
Also remember that there will be language proficiency requirements for Japanese and Chinese universities. It also tends to be very competitive getting into the undergraduate programs of some of these countries, where education is subsidized by the state.
Finally, don't limit yourself to the universities listed here. Do more research to figure out where you can go. For American universities, check the US News and World Report's annual ranking. I paid only P189 for a 2006 edition in Books for Less! That yearbook has very detailed information. For example, with business programs, they break down the best universities for a range of specializations, from accounting and entrepreneurship, tointernational business and real estate.
Here now are the best universities for certain countries, with their ranking among world universities:
United States: Harvard (1), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (4), Stanford University (6), California Institute of Technology (7), University of California Berkeley (8), Princeton (10), University of Chicago (11), Columbia (12), Duke (13), Cornell (15).
Canada: McGill (21), University of Toronto (27), University of British Colombia (50), University of Alberta (133), McMaster (155), Queen's (176), University of Waterloo (204), University of Western Ontario (215), University of Calgary (266), Dalhousie (270).
United Kingdom: Cambridge (2), Oxford (3), Imperial College London (9), London School of Economics (17), University College London (25), University of Edinburgh (33), University of Manchester (40), King's College London (46), University of Bristol (64), School of Oriental and African Studies (70).
Australia: Australian National University (16), University of Melbourne (22), University of Sydney (35), Monash (38), University of New South Wales (41), University of Queensland (45), Macquarie (82), University of Adelaide (105), University of Western Australia (111), RMIT (146).
Japan: University of Tokyo (19), Kyoto University (29), Osaka University (70), Tokyo Institute of Technology (118), Kyushu University (128), Nagoya University (128), Hokkaido University (13), Waseda University (158), Tohuku University (168), Osaka City University (232).
For the bold ones willing to study a European language before applying, here are the best besides the British ones: Ecole Normale Superieure (18), ETH Zurich (24), Ecole Polytechnique (37), Sciences Po Paris (52), University of Copenhagen (54), Ruprecht-Karls-Universitat Heidelberg (58), Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (64), University of Amsterdam (ahem, ahem, 69), University of Basel (75), Catholic University of Louvain (76).
To cap off this listing, here are the other higher-ranked Asian universities. Note how they rub shoulders with the best of American and European institutions: Beijing University (14), National University of Singapore (19), Tsinghua (28), University of Hongkong (33), University of Auckland (46), Chinese University of Hongkong (50), Indian Institute of Technology (57), Hongkong University of Science and Technology (58), Nanyang Technological University (61), Seoul National University (63).

Ecological footprints

PINOY KASI
Ecological footprints
By Michael Tan
Inquirer
Last updated 01:14am (Mla time) 11/08/2006

Published on Page A13 of the November 8, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

HOW MANY hectares of natural resources, on land and sea, are needed to support you?
It’s an intriguing question, and a simple way of restating what an “ecological footprint” is. Just to give you a rough idea, each person on earth today needs about 2.0 hectares of land and sea to support his or her lifestyle. The problem is that the planet’s biocapacity, the total available resources, comes up to only about 1.8 hectares per person, which means we are incurring an ecological deficit.
Those figures are global averages, representing wide differences among nations and, within countries, among economic classes. I’ll get around to giving some of the current estimates, including those for the Philippines, but let’s first examine this ecological footprint in greater detail.
Lifestyles
The footprint (I’ll use this term from here on to save on space) is calculated by looking at different aspects of our lifestyles: food, housing, mobility, energy. It looks mainly at consumption, but also accounts for the resources needed to take care of the wastes we generate. Each country has a calculated bioproductive resource base, meaning land and sea resources that can be used.
The footprint becomes an educational tool for individuals and households by making you conscious about how your choices determine its size. For starters, you might want to try www.myfootprint.org, which has a simple questionnaire to help you determine what your footprint is.
Taking the footprint quiz got me alternating between euphoria and depression. One moment, I was quite proud that my largely vegetarian diet was minimal in terms of ecological impact. On average, you need about 0.78 hectare to produce a ton of crop-based food (cereals, grains, vegetables); on the other hand, you would need 2.1 hectares to produce a ton of animal-based food.
But that pride gave way to shame answering the questions on mobility. I do drive a lot, often alone, and chalk up several thousand miles of air travel each year.
In terms of housing, I can claim some conservation measures, from using solar heating to recycling and composting, but my footprint grew because I’m still largely reliant on traditional sources of energy. Not that I haven’t tried, but even my solar heating supplier couldn’t come up with a system to support even emergency energy needs in the house.
National footprints
I nearly choked when I finally got my footprint calculation, which I’ll share with you shortly but let’s look first at national footprints. The Global Footprint Network’s latest calculations list the following five countries as having the largest footprints, expressed in hectares per person: the United Arab Emirates (10.5), the United States (9.7), Canada (7.5), Kuwait (7.3) and Australia (7). In contrast, the five smallest footprints are those of Pakistan and Zambia, each with 0.6, Bangladesh and Cambodia each with 0.5, and Somalia with 0.2.
And the Philippines? We needed about one hectare per person. For my urbanite readers, one hectare is 10,000 square meters.
The footprint concept should give us a new lens for looking at the environment. All that land we see in rural areas isn’t really “empty” -- it is needed for food production, for shelter, for erosion control, for landfills. Most importantly, it is land we share with all kinds of animal and plant life that keep a precarious ecological balance. Talk with fisherfolk and they’ll tell you about their frustration with going out to the sea an entire night, casting nets over wide areas of ocean and yet hauling in tiny fish catches.
The footprint figures also alert us to the issue of equity. Note that each American needs 10 times more biological resources than a Filipino would. Here’s another catch: even within countries, the differences can be quite wide. I try very hard to be eco-friendly with my lifestyle and yet the ecological footprint quiz I took, however rough, estimated that I needed 14 hectares. Shame, shame!
I figured that if I need 14 hectares, then people in developed countries would need easily more than 50 hectares each. It’s mind-boggling, especially when you think of the lower end of the spectrum -- the people living on 0.2 hectare of resources.
Responsibility
It all boils down to a question of responsibility. There are many publications now, and Internet sites, giving suggestions for individual decisions that will make a difference: using bikes rather than cars, drying clothes out under the sun rather than the electric dryer, even, gulp, foregoing that liquid plasma TV.
Some of the Internet resources talk more about collective action, for example, as a guide for public policies. For example, one estimate places London’s footprint at 21 million hectares, yet the city itself has only 170,000 hectares of land.
Cities, not surprisingly, tend to rack up a larger ecological deficit and public policies need to complement individual decisions. You can’t get people to bike more if you don’t have more bike lanes.
The bottom line then is that cities thrive at the expense of the countryside and, globally, rich countries in a sense live off poor countries. Just look at the recent controversy over the Philippine-Japan free trade agreement, and the possibility that we might end up being a dump for Japan’s wastes.
The footprint can become a powerful educational tool, raising public awareness about the choices we need to make for more sustainable development. The footprint calculations, which date back to the 1990s, have already shown some decreases in footprints for countries that are more ecologically conscious, with the Western European countries leading the way.
The footprint statistics also show us that development need not involve large consumption like those of countries in North America and the Middle East. The Netherlands, for example, has a footprint of only 4.4 hectares per person, half that of the United States and the United Arab Emirates.
The Philippines shouldn’t be complacent about our small footprint. Even at 1.0 hectare per person, we’re still running a deficit of 0.4 hectare per person because of our limited natural resources and large population.
We will need to figure out how we can develop in dollar and peso terms without continuing to rack up an ecological deficit. In a sense, we’ve already gone into debt with nature, and the interest costs will build up. We see these “green” costs with landslides and other ecological disasters. Eventually, these could easily wipe out the small gains we’re making in the economy. Worse, we may end up surviving only at the cost of using up resources that were meant for the future. As one African proverb goes, the environment was not given to us by our parents; rather it is lent to us by our children.

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Why state universities?

PINOY KASI

Why state universities?
By Michael Tan
Inquirer
Last updated 00:09am (Mla time) 11/03/2006

Published on Page A13 of the November 3, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


OUR oldest government tertiary institutions are the Philippine Normal School and the Manila Trade School (now the Technological University of the Philippines), both established in 1901. The Manila Business School (now the Polytechnic University of the Philippines) was established in 1904. The University of the Philippines was actually a latecomer, starting out as the American University of the Philippines in 1908.

It took years to build up a nationwide network of public tertiary educational institutions that were seen as the best in the country. Yet today, we see the quality of these schools deteriorating, as national and provincial governments cut back on their budgets.

This trend runs counter to what's happening elsewhere. Even in this era of privatization, most countries in the world continue to emphasize public education, with substantial government subsidies, so their state universities have continued to improve, and are climbing up to join the ranks of the world's best.

In future columns, I'm going to write more about different models for state universities, including corporatization, but today I wanted to run through three main reasons why our government needs to reverse the trend of abandoning public tertiary education.

Fairness

The main and overarching reason we need public education is fairness. Even in developed countries, there will always be families that need subsidized education. When it comes to tertiary education, it's not just a matter of taking in "bright but deserving" students. State universities should be giving a chance to those who thrive in the most adverse of conditions, and who would be better suited for that than those who come from disadvantaged families? These survivors of hardship are bound to become the trailblazers and innovators.

This takes us to the second reason we need public education: niche courses that encourage alternative thinking. Because private schools need to make money, they tend to cater to short-term market demands. That's why we have all these private schools offering computer courses (or facsimiles thereof) and why some of these computer schools are also now offering nursing.

State-run universities are there to transcend those flavors of the month, anticipating long-term needs for the country. Singapore, for example, identified biotechnology many years ago as an opportunity for national development, and developed this field in its state universities. All that foresight is paying off now with a corps of Singaporean experts as well as expatriates they've been able to lure in to develop the country's biotechnology industry.

I'm not just talking about high-tech courses. The University of the Philippines, for example, is the only university in the country that offers the full complement of social sciences: anthropology, sociology, geography, history, political science, linguistics and demography, with philosophy thrown into the deal. The social sciences and the humanities are there to excite students about new worlds, new ways of thinking, so that we produce scientists rather than just technicians.

We forget, too, that the bulk of our elementary and high school teachers come from public educational institutions, led by the Philippine Normal University. Private universities tend to concentrate on graduate education courses, for which people are willing to pay as a way toward promotion, but it's the public normal schools that provide much of the basic training for teachers. As government cuts back on the budgets of these teacher training schools, it's not surprising to see the entire educational system deteriorating.

Non-sectarian

One last reason we need state universities is the non-sectarian education that these institutions offer. Under the Spaniards, we only had schools operated by Catholic religious orders. The Americans came in and established the Manila Trade School, the Manila Business School and the Philippine Normal School, all essentially vocational institutions to fast-track the development of civil servants, office workers and technicians.

The American University of the Philippines offered higher education courses, such as medicine, but it was still set up around a colonial agenda, a need to produce Filipinos who, they thought, could best implement the United States' blueprint for the Philippines. To a large extent, the Americans succeeded, yet, precisely because all these institutions were non-sectarian, they were hot houses that produced the shakers and movers who would dare to agitate for independence and, later, the activists and leaders who would challenge corruption and dictatorships.

It all boils down to issues of fairness and equity. The state schools' subsidized tuition should allow poorer families access to quality education, but it is also the state schools' independence from government interference that allows for a safe and nurturing environment for inquisitive and innovating minds. In the long run, the benefits aren't just for individual households, but for the nation as a whole, as Filipinos acquire a fighting chance to chart our own development course, rather than following the whims and priorities of other nations.

More on the world's best

Last week, I featured the leading universities of the world, as listed in the Times Higher Education Supplement-Quacquarelli Symonds (THES-QS) World University Rankings. Apparently there's strong interest in those rankings, given the number of inquiries I received from friends after the article was published.

As I prepared to send the full list to a colleague at the University of the Philippines (UP), I realized that when I was analyzing the entire list for Asian universities, I had left out quite a few Australian universities, and had not counted New Zealand universities. It is difficult thinking of Australia and New Zealand as part of Asia, but I wanted to include them for purposes of comparison with the listings that the now-defunct Asiaweek magazine produced from 1998 to 2000.

Here then are some figures from the new list of leading Asian universities. Of the leading 500 universities in the world, 117 are in Asia, broken down as follows: Japan (31), Australia (18), China including Hong Kong (17), Taiwan (9), India (7), Thailand (7), New Zealand (6), South Korea (6), Malaysia (4), Indonesia (4), the Philippines (4), Singapore (2), Bangladesh (1), Pakistan (1). All those countries, except Pakistan and Bangladesh, had universities that ranked higher than the Philippines'.

The new count doesn't affect the global rankings of Philippine universities, which I'll repeat here: UP is 299th, De la Salle is 392nd, Ateneo de Manila is 484th and the University of Santo Tomas is 500th. Our regional rankings do change when we include Australia and New Zealand. Among the leading Asian universities, here's how we fared: UP is 67th, De La Salle is 88th, Ateneo de Manila is 114th and the University of Santo Tomas is 117th.

Ash to ash

PINOY KASI

Ash to ash
By Michael Tan
Inquirer
Last updated 00:34am (Mla time) 11/01/2006

Published on Page A11 of the November 1, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


CULTURE has sometimes been defined as a "way of living" or life-ways, but if we really want a more accurate description, culture would have to include a whole range of beliefs and practices that go with dying and death. Like so many other traditions, these "death-ways," if I might attempt a descriptive term, are always in flux, changing with the times.

Burial or mortuary practices are particularly interesting, with many variations across cultures. Not all cultures bury the dead; many use cremation, and there are a few cultures that leave the dead in special places to allow vultures to come in. Even burial practices vary, some cultures preferring burial six feet under while others going for tombs above ground, and still others even have hanging coffins perched on cliffs.

The funeral itself varies. The Muslims are known for their most austere and solemn ceremonies, burying their dead on the day of death, shrouded in a plain piece of cloth. In other cultures, the funeral follows a long wake, sometimes lasting several months, and the funeral itself is a drawn-out affair with much fanfare.

Jars and mummies

What's it been like in the Philippines?

Archaeological sites have yielded rich information about our pre-colonial burial practices. Many are probably aware of the "manunggul" burial jars found in Palawan. The jar is so iconic for the Philippines that it's featured on our P1,000-bill. The jars have a lid showing people on a boat. They could represent spirit guides, or probably are just a metaphor from our seafaring culture to show the voyage to the next life.

The jars are actually used for secondary burials. The first burial may be in the ground and then after a few years, the remains are exhumed, often with elaborate bone-washing rituals, before being re-interred in the jars. Secondary burials are a way for bringing clans together, and the more powerful families will also use the occasion to host a community feast.

An interesting example comes from among the ranks of anthropologists. The founder of the University of the Philippines' anthropology department was an American named H. Otley Beyer, who arrived in the Philippines as a Thomasite and stayed on. He married a woman of the Ifugao tribe and died in the Philippines. Several years after his death, there was a bone-washing ceremony, an occasion that brought people from far and wide, and where he was declared an "anito" [deity].

There were variations in the way we handled our dead. Some cultures used caves, as in Sagada town in Mountain Province. In the neighboring Benguet province, the Ibaloi tribe used to mummify the dead, using a long process where the corpses were literally smoked and dried. The mummification process was quite sophisticated, the mummies retaining tattoo details.

Sadly, the Sagada burial sites have become tourist attractions while some of the Ibaloi mummies ended up in private homes, to be displayed as curiosity items. Some of the mummies have been returned to Benguet, welcomed home with the appropriate rituals.

Our pre-colonial culture took burials quite seriously, especially when the deceased was wealthy. Burial sites have yielded all kinds of precious goods sent off with the dead. Some of the sites have also yielded corpses with masks on the eyes, on the nose and the mouth, all made out of gold. You can see these death masks at the National Museum. (The Central Bank Museum on Roxas Boulevard has a more extensive collection of pre-colonial gold ornaments, but I can't quite remember if they have death masks.)

Burials

The Spaniards did impact on our burial practices, mainly with the use of crosses and tombstones. The older tombstones used to have etched on them the letters "D.O.M.," which doesn't mean dirty old man but rest in peace, now "R.I.P." Catholic burial sites were often adjacent to the parish church, or even within the church itself.

Chinese-Filipinos preferred tombs that were above ground, with quite elaborate mausoleums that sometimes cost several million pesos. Rich Filipino families also had these mausoleums but were more restrained with the opulence.

From what I can remember, memorial parks came into vogue only from the 1960s onwards. Just as the central parts of cities, especially Manila, became congested, the older cemeteries in La Loma had reached saturation, sometimes to the point where tombs were built on top of other tombs. As the living fled to the suburbs, so too did the dead, through memorial parks. The plots often turned out to be the most valuable pieces of real estate in the Philippines, a tiny plot of about 20 square meters going for prices upwards of P100,000.

I should mention that the Chinese cemetery plots were actually leased out, and the costs could run quite high, so eventually, the Chinese-Filipinos began to set up memorial parks out in the suburbs.

Cremations

Until fairly recently, the Catholic Church did not allow cremations. The reason given to me was that the body was sacred, a vessel of the Holy Spirit. It never really made sense to me since fire could be seen as a purifying force, as many cultures do. And, to usher in Lent each year, aren't we all reminded that we all will return to ash? Fortunately, the Church has since lifted the ban on cremation and a growing number of churches now sell niches where the deceased's ashes can be interred. We're also seeing columbaria being set up, the most impressive one being the one at the corner of Araneta Avenue and Quezon Boulevard, a high-rise affair with niches, chapels and gardens.

Cremations do make a lot of sense in ecological terms. Turned to ash, the dead don't take up valuable space, and don't pose any danger of contaminating water sources. But Filipinos have been slow to accept the practice. At funerals, I've heard relatives of the deceased expressing their discomfort with cremations, from fire being so all-consuming to the bones having to be ground after the cremation.

Cremations have also created new challenges for culture. What to do, for example, during the waiting period as the cremation takes place? In the cremations I've attended, people usually passed the time eating. Others engaged in loose banter, sometimes bordering on the irreverent. At one cremation that took a bit longer than usual, I heard people whispering about the deceased, who wasn't exactly popular, "Even the flames take longer to consume the jerk."

The eating and the jesting are, of course, part and parcel of more traditional Filipino funerals. As cremations become more popular, it will be interesting to see how we institutionalize the waiting period. Will we see it as an extension of the wake, with people playing cards or singing on the karaoke? Or will we see more solemn prayerful activities? Or will we see more commemorative activities, maybe PowerPoint slide presentations reviewing the deceased's life, accompanied by eulogies?

It's anyone's guess, but whatever those activities might be, they'll have that Filipino imprint, showing how we can grieve for the dead even as we celebrate life.