We are Great by Isagani R. Cruz

I am reprinting Dr. Isagani R. Cruz's article "We are Great" (without his permission but I hope he won't mind). For people not in the know, IRC has one of the most brilliant minds in the country. Okay, I may be biased but I can't help it, I love the man. I had him for CONTLIT (Contemporary Literature) and TEACHLI (The Teaching of Literature) when I was an undergrad at DLSU and I worked for him briefly just before I started teaching. Needless to say, he molded many of my ideas and maybe without him meaning to, I've always considered him as one of my literary fathers.

We Are Great by Isagani Cruz

Many of us Filipinos think that we are like Americans.  We are not.  We may look American, with all the American food chains around or the American movies in our malls or our trying-hard American English, but we are not American in the way that matters most.  Americans are Americans not because of the food they eat nor the movies they watch nor the language they speak.

Americans are Americans because they love America. Americans are proud of who, what, and where they are.  That is the one way in which I wish we would be like Americans.

You will find it difficult to find an American who will say that the United States is nothing compared to, say, France. Americans may shy away from the junk food served in fast food chains, but they will not say that fast food on the streets of, say, Thailand is more nutritious.  American may say their movies are junk, but they will never say that the movies of, say Hong Kong are better. American educators may publicly lament the way their high school graduates mangle the English language, but they will never say that the English is spoken better by the youth in, say, Australia.

To Americans, America is the best country in the world.

In contrast, what do we think in the Philippines? It is very difficult to find Filipinos who think that the Philippines is the best country in the world.  A survey many years back found that most Filipinos would like to have been born in the United States. Ten percent of our population have actually left for other countries, and the remaining 90 percent almost certainly wish they had left just as well.   Even our "nationalist" rebel groups often think that China is better than our country.  Most Filipinos may think that Filipino food is much better than any other kind of food, but not very many Filipinos think Filipino movies are much better than American movies nor that Cebuano, Ilocano, Tagalog, or any other Philippine language is much better than English.

Many foreigners point out that we Filipinos like to bash our own country.  Nowhere in the world do we have media that paints such a grim picture of their own government or economy. Dissent is one thing, but negativity is another.  It is very difficult to find news in a Philippine newspaper that says, for example, that the Philippines is doing much better than any other nation. That is in stark contrast to any American newspaper, which routinely makes it appear that no nation on earth is better than the United States.

I am not talking about the truth.  The United States may not be the best country in the world. The Philippines may or may not be the worst country in the world. I am talking about perception. In the perception of most Americans, America is the best country in the world. In the perception of most Filipinos, the Philippines is the worst, if not the worst, then only a little better than, say, Bangladesh.

That is why I literally jumped for joy when I read this bit of news in our newspapers recently—Filipinos are the fourth largest group of readers in the world.  Yes, that news from GFK NOP was buried in the inside pages, but it appeared anyway.

The German firm GFK NOP is, according to its website, "among the top five largest market research organizations in the world.  In addition to 13 subsidiaries in Germany, it has more than 120 subsidiaries and affiliates in 61 countries.

What does GFK NOP say about us Filipinos? On June 15, "NOP world announced results of its Culture Score Media Habits Index offering a global perspective on the time consumers report watching television, listening to the radio, searching the Internet and reading.

The Philippines ranked second only to Thailand in number of hours spent watching TV.  We watch TV 21.0 hours a week, compared to Thailand (22.4) and the US (19.0).  That makes Filipinos the most electronic media-savvy (except for Thais) in the world.  Should we not be proud of that?

Of course, if you are one of those that think TV is the end of the world, you may other feelings about this finding, but I happen to be one of those that think That TV is a sign of progress. That we are up there with the rest of the world when it comes to electronic media is, to me, something to crow about. Even those, however, who think watching TV is bad for children because they might no longer read should think again.

NOP World also discovered that Filipinos spend 7.6 hours a week reading. That makes us a very literate people, beaten in this area only by Indians (10.7), Thais (9.4), and Chinese (8.0). Americans, by the way, rank below the global average in reading.

And how about this finding?  As far as using the internet outside the workplace goes, Filipinos are much better than Americans! We spend 9.8 hours a week on the internet, ranking 11th in the world.  In contrast, Americans spend only 8.8 hours a week, ranking 18th.  (The Taiwanese rank first)

We Filipinos are a great people when it comes to literacy, whether book literacy or media literacy or computer literacy.  Now, why in the world would we want to live elsewhere?