There’s this Pinoy morning game show where I watched a “Miss Tourism World” titleholder make it to the final stage. The category she chose was “Itlog/Egg” – so all the questions were related to eggs. If she answers all the questions right, she brings home a million Pesos.
Most of the questions were Pinoy-culture based i.e. Ilan ang (minimum) na itlog ng tandang? Anong ibong ang nangingitlog ng penoy? Sinong Pinoy na komedyante ang ipinangalan sa pinakamaliit na ibon? Sa (Pinoy) sports, anong laro ang sinasabing “bawal mangitlog sa shaded area”? Saang kumbento nagdadala ng itlog para hindi umulan?
She only got to answer one question and it was fill-in-the-blank: “Don’t put all your eggs in one _______.” BASKET! SURE NA! And then she forgot that the ostrich lays the largest egg in the world (she recalled it when they were reviewing her answers).
I am certain that she’s a smart girl and she holds her ground. From what I saw, she just wasn’t aware (perhaps, immersed in or conscious) of Pinoy culture. Or maybe “culture” is a strong word (too academic in this case?) – maybe we can say, way of life, Language, Background, Pinoy-ness… whatever the term, I just think that if you ask a student from the street, more or less he (she) would hit a lot of the questions right.
If you asked me, I would have gotten only one answer wrong. I forgot Pugo’s name. I kept thinking of Kuhol and Bembol Roco (think short man and the other, bald). So yes, there goes the PHP1 million for YTRiP…
Anyway, this isn’t about who is smart or stupid or genius. It’s just about basic things – simple things – from your own culture, your own language. The reason why a lot of game shows are deemed “easy” to win (what makes it hard is that it’s all a matter of chance and elimination) is because the questions are almost always related to daily life, local culture, and local knowledge. It’s fashioned that way to make sure someone does win, and it is not the least bit wrong.
Personally I love that their questions are homegrown basics. It’s a way of letting the viewer and the contestants learn, too.
I read that there’s a level of cultural literacy that a nation needs to really work (E.D. Hirsh’s Cultural Literacy – although it focused on children’s education as an essential foundation for functional literacy and national communication). Cultural Literacy is composed of words, languages, and literature that the majority of a nation knows (actually, needs to know) – necessary for them to communicate with each other and take part in the modern world. These are shared symbols and shared descriptive information that would enable people to participate and communicate within their community.
Building on that, I think it’s also a matter of self-knowledge and experience. This kind of literacy – or say, knowledge – is gained from experiences and exposure within the family, school, community, and workplace. Essentially, it’s externally influenced but I would like to think it could also be internally driven. I also think that it’s that set of information that lets you understand a newspaper article and read between the lines; it’s the set of concepts that lets you get the joke (i.e. ampalaya: gusto ko sana ikwento ang love story ko pero wag na lang… masyadong mapait. Bentahan kita ng original Rolex, 300 lang pero ang battery yung Motolite).
As a kid I wondered where the penoy came from because I ate it; I heard from old women about bringing eggs to Santa Clara. Most of my sources were local and within reach – my family, our caretaker, my teachers, Funny Komiks, the newspapers, school books, and my book of Filipino legends. Back then I had access to non-Filipino sources, too and it helped widen my mental and cultural horizons.*
Perhaps Ms Tourism World grew up in another country, or her environment is a lot different from most of ours. Maybe her school had standard speak-English rules. And it’s OK. Her game show appearance is a fine example of how different we all are as it also showed how connected and similar we – including the studio audience and the home viewers – all are, too.
Hirsch’s book gave the technical terms that verified my belief; the whole game show thing just reinforced what I have been thinking about for the past few years.
If a nation’s people were more culturally literate (and this term I use freely and beyond the book’s focus on literature), then maybe things would work better because we know and understand deeper.
That kind of knowledge could help us better comprehend our neighbors and our reality; it could help us improve the way we relate with each other; it could help us create and re-create our world.
It can also make you win a million Pesos.
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* Still, I know squat relative to the number of books I want (need) to read to know more about Pinoy culture. The high-level language Pinoy academics speak easily overwhelm me, too. But don’t get me wrong, this insistence to self-study is primarily because I WANT to know more and to understand deeper. We don’t need to explain to people why and who we are – but we do need to understand and move on from there. BUT apart from studying, I still go for experience – traveling, speaking with people (living artifacts included), and just being around and aware.
