AN EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM ON INDIGENOUS FOODS FOR BETTER HEALTH AND BETTER ECONOMY FOR THE PHILIPPINES (ECONOMICS, AGRICULTURE)

This study explores the nutritional and economic needs of the Philippines suggesting as a solution the return to indigenous staple foods. It culminates in a Teacher Training Workshop created to bring together Philippine public elementary school health education teachers to dialogue why a state of nutritional well-being is elusive in the communities they are serving. Teachers will be trained to remedy this deprivation, a direct effect of colonizer/colonized relationship resulting in economic disorder. Chapter I presents background information, problems to be resolved, definition of terms, and gives evidence of a technologically and culturally advanced pre-colonial Philippines. Chapter II details the political and economic disorder which resulted from colonizations. A review of literature on global food production is included in this chapter. Chapter III is a review of literature on liberating curriculum by educators who reflect in their writings their concern for this disorder. The literature demonstrates that in the course of current events, and in the need to get ahead, people unknowingly or otherwise cause the exploitation of others. Nowhere is this more evident than on the issues of global small-farm conditions. Powerful Country small farmers who are today living in economic destitution are the same farmers who for decades have caused not only despair but starvation among Oppressed Country small farmers. This study identifies tools to measure the economic and nutritional value of indigenous foods. Two such instruments are introduced in Chapter IV, the Food Intake Diary, and in Appendix A, the Comparison of Nutrients in Interchangeable Foods. The Workshop, Chapter V, takes for its theme the recognition of the most crucial of needs in Oppressed Countries, locally grown foods. The materials and hand-outs included in this educational program are puzzle pieces to understand the relationship between Oppressed Countries and Powerful Countries where the two sides are not partners and not sharing equitably. The curriculum questions those in power in their traditional handling of development issues in Oppressed Countires. The teachers and later their pupils, who will be the future farmers, will decide who are the victims and who are the beneficiaries of this economic disorder