Where dreams are born

The Dito Ako Program
is waged in the mind.

As with any product being proffered to the public, the battle is in the mind, and the battlefields are media and the classroom.

There is an initial tight focus in terms of target market: While the overall vision asks for more Filipinos embracing the country as a cause to fight for, the campaign desires to instill or awaken love for country in people whose lives have impact on others. The instructor has his classroom of students, the businessman his employees and their families, the political leader his constituency and his country.

It will require a fast-burn effort, vociferous and aberrant in form, to break through the clutter with efficiency and with minimum expense.

UniversiTV is your channel.

The programs on UniversiTV are all about you and the channel won’t exist without your participation: your videos and short films, your antics and stunts, your jokes, your photos and art, your thoughts and beliefs -- do share them.

The teacher is the culprit.

Even the most cursory of examinations will reveal that there are very few venues for building nationalistic sentiment in the curriculum of grade school and lower high school students. It simply isn’t there.

The revolutionary movement against Spain is discussed as merely part of Philippine history. Rizal’s work is touched in Panitikan and handled as literature, but not caressed.

There are innumerable examples of the deficiency, of what the system has neglected to teach, and the reader can certainly contribute a few examples. The product of our educational system can declaim, “O Captain, My Captain”, with feeling, but will fail to comprehend all the words of the Panatang Makabayan.

After realizing that the education of our youth was mapped out by people who were taught by Americans, and who grew to become Copycat ‘Canos, then we can only forgive. An entire generation is at fault. In the public school I attended, the Mababang Paaralan ng Juan Luna, I drank American milk, sang American marches, wondered what it was like “when the caissons go rolling along,” and what “my darling Clementine” must have looked like with size 9 “herring boxes without topses” for sandals.

The Task: Creating Consent

The task is to create “the desire to live together,“ the will to continue to value “the heritage” which all hold in common.

If nationhood is defined by a present tense, a will to live in it and commit family, celebrate successes, defend against detractors,

The Dito Ako! Movement lists several measurable goals.

1. It wishes to see Nationalism incorporated in the elementary and high school curricula, and young nationalists as one of the desired products of our educational system.

       a. Laws will have to be enacted to require a larger share of classroom time and teacher education.

help enhance and maintain what is good – the desire to ‘owe it my happiness’, then sowing the seed of desire seems to be the primordial task, if we are to begin righting the deficiency

Before anything, we teach.

What is commonly held about Jose Rizal is, at best, limited and diffused, at worst, biased and cultic, and, quite frequently, twisted or disfigured information.

Since Rizal, national hero, Filipino without compare, has a pitiful share of the student’s time in school, the first, logical step in the right direction is quantity. More time must be allocated to exhibiting the many talents of the country’s most talented son. The subject Rizal in college is of little value to the effort of instilling nationalism: the college student is no longer impressionable. He has cast his lot in his choice of course, and has a hint of how he will make a living, of how his life will be played out. He may have plans of pursuing studies and professions abroad (law, medicine), which already indicate that a major portion of his set of values is in place. If we are to enkindle a love for country, the time to do that is when the lad still dreams of being policeman, pilot, or astronomer, way before he is exposed to the realities of the world.

The Filipino’s value system must be placed on the anvil, and hammered into a shape that emboldens and strengthens during crises, makes a man weep for his country, and causes him to commit comfort and family to a patch of ground that he sees as relevant to his importance and being. This will take at least one generation. And it is a task that will require the minds and hands of the very people who are, at this moment, queued up at the doors of the US embassy.

      2. It intends to launch Compensatory Education on Media within the year.

a. The Movement will request Media Partners to include a nationalistic color in their broadcast.

b. Advertising and program content will be launched on all friendly media venues.

c. It will commence a strategically-designed public relations program to increase discussions and debates on television programs.

3. It will promote use of visible signs of fervor: flags outside homes, pins, bands.

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