If we are serious about education reform, we must start with our textbooks

Originally published in Manila Bulletin

In the long and winding conversation about education reform in the Philippines, much has been said about curriculum, pedagogy, infrastructure, and teacher training. Yet one of the most insidious roots of our educational woes remains largely untouched — our textbooks. These silent authorities in classrooms across the country continue to reproduce a version of history that undermines our identity and reinforces colonial narratives. If we are truly serious about meaningful reform, we must confront the problematic content still being taught to millions of young Filipinos — especially the notion that our history began with Ferdinand Magellan “discovering” the Philippines.

To be blunt: the Philippines was not discovered by Magellan. Our ancestors were here for thousands of years before European ships cut across our seas. We had thriving communities, sophisticated maritime trade routes, and cultural systems that connected us to neighboring civilizations in Asia. When we tell children that Magellan discovered us, we not only perpetuate a falsehood — we also reduce our ancestors to footnotes in their own land, erasing agency and dignity from the story of who we are.

This isn’t just a semantic issue. Language shapes identity, and when textbooks continue to center the colonizer’s gaze, they condition generations to see their own past as inferior, their own cultures as peripheral, and their own agency as nonexistent. The enduring image of the brown native “graced” by European arrival teaches students to see colonization as a beginning, rather than a violent interruption. It’s not just inaccurate — it is dangerous.

A post-colonial education must begin with the decolonization of knowledge itself. We need textbooks that tell our children the truth: that before the Spanish arrived, our ancestors had their own systems of governance, their own arts and literature, their own sense of the divine. We were not blank slates waiting for civilization. We were already a people, interrupted.

Revising textbooks is not merely about changing a few words or swapping out offensive images. It is about re-centering the Filipino experience and dismantling the mental scaffolding left behind by centuries of colonization. We need historical accounts that introduce students to the complexity of pre-colonial barangays, the richness of oral traditions, the navigational genius of our seafaring ancestors. We must show our children that the Philippines did not begin in 1521, but in the many centuries that came before it — and that our story does not belong to colonizers, but to us.

There will, of course, be resistance. Some will argue that changing textbooks is too costly or controversial. Others will say that history must not be rewritten. But this is not about rewriting history — it’s about finally writing it from our point of view. Colonizers wrote their version of our history centuries ago. It is time we wrote our own.

The Department of Education, policymakers, historians, and educators must come together to conduct a nationwide audit of existing textbooks. This should not be a mere bureaucratic exercise. It must be grounded in the principles of historical accuracy, cultural sensitivity, and national pride. Scholars from our indigenous communities, cultural historians, and progressive educators should be included in this effort. Reform is not reform if it only scratches the surface. To truly shape a generation that knows and values its identity, we must teach our children the truth — even when it is uncomfortable, even when it challenges long-held myths.

In the end, education reform is not about shiny new programs or flashy metrics. It’s about what we choose to teach our children about themselves. If we continue to teach them that they were discovered — instead of reminding them that they were already here, already whole — then we have failed them before they even begin.

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