Review the Romantics

 

              Every time I have philosophy and social science-oriented classes with my college students before, I always make it a point to discuss with them the basics of social systems. Poverty is a major topic along with the facts that make it happen such as capitalism, systemic exploitation, and class struggle.

The first step in my class is to break the ice of privilege by making students feel the dread of the system. I start with exposing the supply chain of sugar-related products and tying it to a documentary on the plight of the Hacienda Luisita farmers. I make them imagine all products related to sugarcane and reflect how each individual household (their own) has sugar (sometimes put to waste) and coincide it with the facts of the farmers’ blood and sweat (all hard work). I made them think carefully that the farmers receive below 10php as compensation for their weekly hard work. Moreover, add the fact that they have been tilling the land for years that they do not own, and the landlords continuously maneuver their ways into reducing the number of working weeks, thus, reducing the pay even more. Not to mention that the farmers were at the receiving end of the state forces’ blunt end for simply raising their concerns for decent wage and land ownership – a plea for a decent life at best was rejected. Most of them have worked more than decades yet their hard work never paid off. And the icing of this experience in class is to make the students look at their pack of sugar and how a spoonful or two gets mindlessly wasted (spilled or whatever). Imagine spilling sugarcoated with the blood and sweat of farmers. Exposing the realities of the supply chain reveals the horrors of everyday household items, thus, breaking privilege by just simply looking at what the students have.

After the local horror of sugar comes international horrors on chocolate, shoes, t-shirt, coffee, mobile phones and many more. Once the supply chain is exposed, we can see who are the most exploited in the production process and this group comprises the bulk of the marginalized in society. No matter how hard they work, they never experienced the happy endings of the fairy tales of self-help books and success stories. Obviously, the marginalized do not have the safety nets of risk-taking entrepreneurs nor the leverage of social connections and family heirlooms. Think of the average farmer and fisherman who toiled under extreme conditions and how their produce is at the mercy of the middlemen in the market. The farmer works hard to have rice yields, yet when the gate price for rice goes ridiculously down to below 10php per kilo, the middlemen can rejoice as they can buy lots to stock to resell in the market with even higher prices. Think of the average construction worker who drains his body for constructing structures who is at the mercy of contractors with deductions. Work hard does not pay off. Notice the success stories? They only happen to the few who maneuver their ways with the little chances the world has. I will only credit a success story if it happens to the majority of those who are starting from the bottom not to some lucky individual.

In classes, the notion of the lazy poor and hard work leads to success has to come to a full stop. We would even discuss Rizal’s Indolence of the Filipino to break the ugly notion of the lazy poor. True that laziness could have drastic effects, but laziness is not all the time the cause because systemic induced poverty can make laziness an effect or a “co-incidence”. When opportunities are less and you have barely nowhere to go, you are in the state of not working which is tantamount to not doing anything, thus, lazy. I cannot blame the unemployed for not trying hard to find work when they are just laid off due “contractualization”. I cannot blame the unemployed to simply sell green mangoes on the street because they do not have the capital to start a business let alone how can the banks offer them a loan when their shanties on rented land are the only property they can declare as collateral. It is a narrow road, and privilege usually gets you across or stay safe during crises.

I have no qualms about children helping their families due to the struggles of being in a particular class. This is good character building, but this is easier to say when you are privileged. I helped with my family’s buy and sell business and such business was lucrative in the early 90s which managed to provide more than subsistence. I cannot simply put other children on my shoes. These children who have to help with selling mangoes on the street, tilling the farming land, and etc. do not have the same lucrative business my family has. We had the capital and safety nets to start and manage with such lucrative business, but they do not. Think of the situations mentioned in the previous paragraphs. The featured child spending fulltime to work is a result of the conditions that pegged his family to the mire of poverty. Yes, you can praise his hard work, but the point is to eliminate the conditions that breed such situation. The point is to make their lives better and solutions are looming large yet neglected by those in power to keep power. Others are trying to discredit the plight of those needing “ayuda” by pairing it with the child’s will to work hard. These others failed to see that the main point is to eradicate the conditions that bred the child’s fulltime involvement with work and the people clamoring for “ayuda.”  If the child’s family was well off, then he has nothing to worry but to till the land only without thinking of consummating it with the security of having the next meal for the days ahead.

It is hard to teach society the dynamics that resulted to our value judgements because the prerequisite demands lots of thinking which others do not have the luxury nor even have the slightest capacity to do so. But why pursue on making the world think along with my class? If they do so, then the clamor for solutions will be more for those that address the system at large rather than band aid solutions and pointless value judgements.