DATU GUMBAY PIANG
Letter from Gumbay Piang addressed to the parents and relatives
Cotabato, P.I.
November 20, 1934
The Moros of _________:
I am writing to you on a matter that is of utmost importance to you, your children, and your grandchildren. It is
about your children's going to school.
I shall begin my letter by requesting you all to send your children to school if you really love them and if it is
true that you are interested in the future welfare of the Moro people. Understand that only those who will possess practical
education that will fit in the needs of the time will be able to live well in the future. If you will but just look around you,
compare things as they are today with what they were a few years ago, then try to perceive the future, you will agree with
me that only the educated man - the man who will have attended school - will be able to compete successfully in the
struggle for better living. The children of today who will not go to school will be the cargadores, the poorly paid laborers,
the tenants and the insignificant farmers of the future.
There are still very many persons who dissuade you from sending your children to school. They claim that
the school system tends to Christianize the children and breaks the Moro customs and traditions. I wish to tell you frankly
that those persons who prevent you from sending your children to school do great harm to you, and the Moro people as a
whole, because by so doing they attempt to obstruct the cultural and material progress of your family and the Moro people.
They attempt to deprive your children of the many good things that only the educated person may acquire.
There are many good datus and other leaders of the Moros who are working sincerely for the betterment of
their people. These leaders not only encourage the children to go to school, but they actually send them to school. To those
leaders the Moros will be greatly indebted for their good services to their people. These are datus that really love their
people. There are also some datus and other Moro leaders who sincerely believe that our schools are useless, and that
they think that when they fight against our school system they are doing good for their people. These datus are not bad, but
they are leaders who do not yet see that our means of living have been changing rapidly within the last few years. In the
future, these datus will certainly repent for their folly of today, in the same manner that those who attended school years
ago, but did not continue their studies, are now repenting for having neglected their school work.
On the other hand, there are datus and other leaders of the moros who send their children to school but are
either indifferent to the education of their people's children or actually prevent their people's children from going to school.
These are the leaders who want to see their children progress, but they do not want their people to be educated. They are
the datus who are afraid that they would lose their old-time powers and privileges if the common people get educated.
I want to say a word or two about these datus who are afraid of their people's education and progress. All
datus must have realized by this time that, inspite of their people not having gone to school, they have already been
deprived of most of their old powers and privileges as datus. In the very near future, these datus are bound to have no
more power unless they are educated or unless the people who will accept them as datus are educated.
If I were a datu, enjoying the political privileges that are still accorded the old datus, I should not hesitate to
send the children of my people to school. Instead, I should be proud to have all my people educated. My strength as a datu
would depend on the strength of my people, for an educated populace is a great power.
Of course, for any man to be a datu of an educated group of people, he must have a place above everything
else the welfare of his people. He cannot work for his own pocket alone. Datuship in an educated community will be a
matter of reciprocity - a question of give and take: the datu to get from the people what is to be justly due him as a leader
and, in turn, he gives to them his unbiased and sympathetic attention. For, after all, the datu was primarily instituted for the
good of the people - not for the people for the personal welfare of the datu. There are those persons who maintain that they
did not go to school, yet they are able to live well today. That is true, but don't they realize that they would have better off
today had they gone to school when they were young? You must all understand that the means of acquiring a living is
getting to be harder and more complicated as the days go by. You must all relize that living conditions today are different
from those of a few years ago, and it will be more so in the future. Some of those who lived luxuriously in the past are living
moderately today because they have been able to use at this time what they were able to save during the previous years.
Even then, those persons are not living as good, and not as free from worry, as before. How many so-called "rich" persons
of former years are now scantly making their living from hand to mouth? On the other hand, how mahy children of the so-
called lowest class of the common people are now gradually rising up simply because they were able to acquire some
education from the schools?
Here are a few facts to show you more clearly how time is changing. Formerly you transported your products
up and down the River in bancas; today you use motorboats - not only ones (sic) a month as the case was ten years ago,
nor once a week as it was five years ago, but daily as it is today. Yesterday the carabao was used all over the island of
Mindanao for land transportation; today, the trucks and automobiles are very common and you have already seen the
aeroplanes which will be as common, within a few years, as the trucks and automobiles are today. You all still remember
how we objected to injections, vaccinations, and medicines; but now, whenever something is wrong with our body, we
think of doctors, practicantes, and medicines - even if we have to pay to them. The datus used to have the power of life and
death over his people, but who is the datu today that may kill a person without answering for his act in the government
courts? Your leaders were never chosen by the people because the datuship was hereditary; but, now, you have started
the election, a means for the people to select their leaders for a certain length of time - the leaders to be re-elected if their
administration prove to be good, and to be changed if they prove to be incapable of handling their work well for the good
of the people. All these facts certainly show that we are coming to a new order of things, and the school is the only way to
prepare our children to face the problems they will encounter when they grow up to be men and women.
I am now going to show you that the school does not Christianize your children. Those who have observed
what we do in the schools will readily agree with me that, in a government school, we do not touch anything which will
encourage a child to become a Christian, an Islam (sic), or a Pagan. We believe that the religious training of any child is
the duty of the church and the home, but not an undertaking of a public-supported institution. In a government school we
teach the children to speak the English language - a language that is spoken all over the world; we teach the children to
read and write, to solve problems, to know the intricates of their chosen vocations, to be industrious, to be courteous, to
be physically and mentally alert, and to know many other things that will make them good and useful citizens.
I have stayed more than ten years in school, yet I believe that I am a better Islam (sic) than what I might have
been if I had not gone to school. In the school I learned to love my fellowman and family; I learned that murder, treachery,
adultery and stealing are bad; I learned good manners and right conduct; I learned to live by the sweat of my own brow and
not by begging; I learned to respect constituted authority. In short, I have learned that I believe every good Islam (sic)
should do.
On the other hand, did not the Prophet Mohammed say, "Seek knowledge even unto China," and "the ink
of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr?" As I stated to you at the beginning of my letter, another reason
given by those persons who are against sending your children to school in the assumption that when and after a child
enrolls in the school he forgets his native customs and traditions.
I do not deny that the school, to a great extent, help in the formation of habits and the establishments of
social standards among the people. But there are also other forces which, even if the schools were discarded, are factors
in changing our ideals and customs. Our contact with the Christian colonists, the roads, the hospitals, the steamboats - all
these are factors that modify our customs.
The world is moving on, people throughout the world are adjusting their customs and modes of living to suit
the conditions who will survive if they go against the course of nature. As a last recource, most of us resort to our fatalistic
philosophy, namely, that we leave our fate to God. God so loveth all men equally that He only helps them who help
themselves. We cannot sit idly and persist in clinging to age-old customs if we want to save ourselves from damnation.
As I have just said, I confess that there is no denial of the fact that the schools, the means of trasportation,
our contacts with the Christians in our homes and the markets and many more factors are modifying, if not totally changing
our customs. But, while a person may change the style of his clothes, the implements with which he works, and his means
of trasportation, does that necessarily mean that he forgets the traditions he acquired by native instinct and through the
teaching of his mother at the cradle? I leave that for you to answer.
Why lay the blame alone on the schools and our children? You all realize that it is not only children that are
being affected by the changes being effected by time, but older men are more guilty of casting aside old customs. I am
going to cite to you some instances which show to you that, after all, there is nothing wrong with our children in the schools.
When I was a little boy, I was told that I would not be able to atone for the sin I committed by eating rice which was milled
by a machine. Yet, the very person who told me that idea are the owners of rice mills today in our communities.
When I was a little boy, I was made to throw away the first pair of shoes I had because it was against our
customs and traditions to wear shoes. With due respect to them, I should say that there is practically not a single hadji at
this time who does not own a pair of shoes. I learned from my mother, when she wanted me to be a pandita, that it was
wrong for panditas and hadjis to sell anything. In fact even the mere going to market was a sin for a pandita or a hadji. As
everybody does it now, I will say with respect and congratulations that our best merchants and pedlers (sic) are panditas
and hadjis.
I can cite to you hundreds of examples which will show you that the old men, our religious leaders - not the
children alone - are changing their thoughts and customs. As the parents are, so with the children (sic). We cannot blame
anyone for present conditions. They only show us that old customs have to be discarded, and new ones made, in
accordance with the needs of the time.
Most of you do not realize yet why our girls should go to school. Some of you, because certain Moro
customs regarding girls abhor this idea of girls mingling, playing and talking with boys (sic).
When girls are in school, parents should have no more fear for their daughters safety than if they were in
their homes. Every precaution is being made by the teachers to see that no harm is done to the school girls. Accidents
happen once in a while to school girls, but I believe that more are committed to non-school girls in their homes.
Our girls must have to go to school. You very well know that, since time immemorial, the woman has been
helping the man in securing the family's daily necessities. As the boys must have to go to school to prepare themselves
for their manhood, so must the girls have to go to school also for the same reason (sic).
On the other hand, if we want to see our boys marry our own girls, we must have to send the girls to school.
I am going to tell you frankly that our educated Moro boys will seek for their mates girl who are educated, regardless of
their creed and social status (sic). Our Moro boys would, of course, prefer marrying Moro girls if they find educated ones.
Therefore, unless our girls are to be educated, worthy of the pride of our educated Moro boys, the time will come when
there will be no children of pure Moro parentage. Then, in such a case, where will you so-called Moro race be?
In closing my letter, I hope I have made it clear to you that it is only by sending our children to school that the
Moro people will progress. Let us then send our boys and girls to school and give them the chance, when they grow to be
men and women, to live better and enjoy life better than what we, their parents have experienced. God instructs us the
care and welfare of our children, so we must not commit sin by depriving them of the only means by which they will be
prepared to live well when they grow up to manhood and womanhood. I suggest that, in a community where the people
desire to send their children to school but do not have enough boys to justify opening one, the people should not hesitate
to enroll their daughters. A minimun of steady attendance of forty pupils is required to open a school. I have great faith in
your sending your children to school because I know that you want them to live well when they grow up and I know that you
love the Moro people.
Very affectionately yours,
(Sgd.) Gumbay Piang
