Sin of the flesh

LAST Tuesday Mary Ellen Vogt, president of the International Reading Association, addressed the Foundation for the Upgrading the Standards of Education (FUSE) in Manila and she hit a sensitive nerve because the questions and reactions from the floor were quite interesting. FUSE is composed of senior academics, retired university presidents, deans and professors, as well as a handful of former education secretaries, and it was significant that they were concerned about modern technology -- (cable) television, e-mail and text messaging, which have revolutionized our daily lives. FUSE members noted the effects of these three new media on the youth in general and reading/writing in particular.

Dr. Dionisia Rola remarked that we should see these as tools rather than problems, adding that we should not compete with the new technology but use them to stimulate reading and much more. For example, when I was a boy we were not allowed to watch television on school days. There was not much worth watching during the martial law years, but the same cannot be said today as much can be learned from cable television that has at last given viewers a wide range of choice. The Internet is also something that can be a distracting waste of time, but it can also be an educational and enlightening tool for young people.

When I look back on the days when my television viewing was restricted, I see a generation gap. I cannot imagine young people today being deprived of TV and the Internet. Reflecting on the different ways old and young see TV, e-mail and text messaging, I realized that these are not just tools for learning and communication but they can also be seen as a new medium, a new language that requires knowing a new way of reading.

Text messaging is the best example. The shortcuts we use are intelligible to Filipinos but not to others who do not share the same sense of humor and seamless crossing between English and Filipino that are natural-born in us. I read somewhere that some teachers require that students not only speak in English but also send text messages using whole sentences in English. This is not the way to do things. Do not compete. Use the technology. Unless teachers acknowledge this new language and master it, they will never bridge the generation gap.

The way students read today is also fascinating because when you give them a text, they read but their attention strays toward parts that the teacher may have overlooked. I teach a general Philippine History course, and one of the readings is a selection from Antonio Pigafetta's account of the Magellan expedition. One would think that students would be interested in the way the Battle of Mactan was fought, perhaps they would take a second look at the many uses of a coconut or study the Visayan words compiled and translated by Pigafetta in 1521. Instead my students, being in their late "teens," note the sexual habits of the people interviewed by Pigafetta who vainly tried to coax the Visayans to show and tell him how they used penis implants to enhance sex. There is a text description of the object but no illustration.

Some curious students went to the library and found transcriptions of an anonymous manuscript of 1590 known to historians today as the "Boxer Codex," after the eminent historian of Asia, C.R. Boxer. This wonderful manuscript, now preserved in the Lilly Library in the University of Indiana at Bloomington, contains illustrations of 16th-century Filipinos. The text quoted below comes with a drawing:

"Finally, in the sin of the flesh, they are used to a thing which is the newest and never hitherto seen nor heard -- which seems to be the guide to vice and bestiality that they have in particular. The men commonly place on their genital member and ordinarily carry in it a certain wheel or ring with round spurs in the form [drawn] on this margin, which they make of lead or brass and some of gold. They have holes in the round part of the wheel or ring, one in the upper and the other in the lower through which they put a small pin or nail of the same metal as a ring, and with which they pierce the lower part of the prepuce, and thus the wheel or ring is placed on the very genital in the same way that a ring is put on the finger. Thus, they have access to the women, with whom they remain for a day or a night in the way dogs do a similar act, after completing which they remain immensely satisfied, especially the women. Some wheels or rings are very large, there being more than thirty kinds, each with a different name, and in general a name sacred in their language. The Spaniards have had special care after coming among these people to abolish this abominable and bestial custom, among the natives, punishing with beatings those who wear them, and in spite of this they continue to wear and make them; and it is very common for them to carry the comb or nail which enters through the holes of the wheel or ring, and placing [the nail] in the member of the man continuously therein, so that the hole may not close or in order not to be bothered with the time in putting the ring or wheel -- a custom invented by the devil so that men may offend more with this vice our Lord God."
Are these accounts true? Or maybe some 16th-century Filipino joker made it all up and got it recorded, providing hours of fun for historians.

Comments are welcome aocampo@ateneo.edu.