“THE OLD NEW CRITICAL”: A RETROSPECTIVE VIEW ON KRITIKA, NEOLIBERAL EDUCATION, AND PHILIPPINE K TO 12 CURRICULA IN 21ST CENTURY LITERATURE FOR SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL

Abstract

This article reflects on literary and humanities education in the current Philippine K to 12 senior high school literature curricula, through tracing the position of Philippine literary theory and criticism, or Kritika, in its objectives. It seeks to problematize whether its presence or absence is symptomatic to the “disastrous neoliberal” architecture of contemporary Philippine humanities education. While this study relates the literature subject to Martha Nussbaum’s claim that “the imaginative, creative aspect, and the aspect of rigorous critical thought” are indeed “losing ground as nations prefer to pursue short-term profit and skills suited to profit-making”, this paper also locates her idea through Constantino’s “miseducation of Filipino people” with the aim of decolonizing from the educational ethos that was never intended to promote democracy, freedom, and equality. Toward that objective, locating Philippine Kritika in the literature education is essential since it speaks to Isagani R. Cruz’s concept of “the other Other of Western literary theory”, which describes the education that Filipinos have inherited as impoverished because of its “ignorance of half of the world’s literary texts and theories.” The poverty it brought via colonialist hegemony is “unconsciously shared by Philippine literary thought” as evidenced by New Criticism being “the ruling paradigm in Philippine literary circles today” despite the emergence of newer critics and recent positions in Philippine postcolonial studies.