I used to be merely reading my students works to spot for grammatical and syntactic errors, evaluate their logical organization of ideas and their development of thoughts as expressed in words. But that bored me a lot oftentimes, so now I tried to listen and think at the same time of what they are saying, orally and in their writing.
Out of 120 students that I listened to, this day I found out that everyone of them are saying that their family is the most precious for them. Second to this are their friends, and the third is God. Only 3 or 2.4% said that their self is precious for them. Only one said, that her future is precious for her, and she is not a Filipino but a Chinese student.
We agreed on the concept of precious to mean closest to one's heart and important in life. The same findings and congruent with my earlier observations on what makes young people ages 16-21 happy. Out of more than 500 student essays I read so far, the most recurrent concept is that of the family for Filipino students, with Korean students it is material possession and money.
We qualified the concept of happy as 1) something that makes one feel positive, 2) something that has implications to relationships, 3) something that makes one feel so good, 4) something that one does not want to miss; and 5) something that is to die for. The students listed several things which they think make them happy, after brainstorming for 15 minutes, they have to discriminate from their list to chose only the top 5, that includes all those they tagged or labeled based on the constructs of the happiness concept.
The findings are interesting and worth of pondering. Amidst the access, availability and these kids power to purchase entertainment gadgets, the corollary evidences I got reveal that for the Filipino digital natives, the thing that makes them happy and most precious for them is not really a thing after all.
The family is a priceless possession, non-material yet so valuable. It was a also a recurrent response that it is through their family that they find strength and support. Others say that they will risk their lives for their families, and it would cause them ire if any harm is done on their family members.
These are young people, as a fresh graduate student I had believes, later on they will turn to their friends, and friends will become more important for them. Perhaps, that is why friends rank second. One soda company did market survey among young people back in 1990's, and its findings were the same, family and friends are important in the Filipino young people's lives.
I have no further evidences to explain, empirically, why? Sociological explanation of the family as a basic unit says that most of what we are have been taken from our family, or that we learned the basic skills, including dependency from our family. Being young, and not being exposed much to the world outside the homes, the family is really important.
Across demography and economic status would this figure be the same? Now I turn the issue here to mature adults guiding these young people. While teenagers know what is valuable for them, and that is their family, are parents and relatives supportive to acknowledge that fact and really pay attention on spending quality time?
The order of response is also critical to consider the relationship between the two in the life of a Filipino teenager. First is family, when there are family problems, friends become the support of young Filipino. When the family finds that the young is spending more time with friends, that causes conflict resulting from envy confused with misunderstanding.
Then the kid rebels, moves away from good friends and find other groups of influence. When everything fails for that kid, that's time he goes to find the value of God in his life, and then back to his family. It's a cycle, a triadic relationship among Family, friends and God which happen to be very influential elements to the life of young Filipino.
Let's test this concept in mass media. I suspect that advertisements combining the three elements or at least two of them have great appeal to the viewers, to the Filipino family in general. Because what the young reflects is that of the shared value which they first learn from their family. Don't get me wrong, we all like to be treated in our workplace, in our organization, in our cliques as a family member.
We can also suspect that the students response is but a mere convenience, for them to have an answer. But they answered individually several other questions, included that of what is precious to them. The convenience of answering family as most precious or cause of happiness is not a mere scapegoat. The response reveals that the ideals and value of family to a young person is there in the immediate experience and their present reality, as it could surface immediately. Or does it also inform us, of the value of being selfless against being self-less?
The value for family can also derive from the absence of it not just in its felt presence. The family is another concept which is richly attached to a sense of security, comfort, guidance, strength, support, respect, understanding and most importantly love. For parents, losing their children to their friends or to other material things does not require a survey or profound research, they only need to feel that as how, perhaps, these young students felt the importance of their family.
No comments:
Post a Comment