EVER wondered why Quezon City has all these areas named ?Project,? as in Project 4, Project 6, Project 8, etc.?

Those were government projects that provided low-cost houses and lots for members of the civil service. The perks were not limited to Quezon City; all over the country you find all kinds of reminders of better times when government recognized the contributions of public servants. Baguio City, for example, was meant not just as a summer capital but also as a rest and recreation area for government officials and employees. Teachers Camp is iconic, providing low-cost lodging for the country?s educators.

We have to credit the American colonial government with setting up the machinery for the civil service, which was originally based on merit. To staff the civil service, the Americans invested heavily in educating the ?natives.? American teachers (the Thomasites) were shipped in to help develop basic education.

The Americans had very specific visions that guided the educational system, mainly to ?remold? Filipinos around these colonizers? ideas of progress. The first tertiary educational institution set up by the Americans was the Philippine Normal School, established in 1901 to train Filipino teachers.

The Manila Business School was established in 1904 to train Filipinos in commerce and business, mainly for government service. That school is now the Polytechnic University of the Philippines.

The Philippine Medical College followed in 1905, eventually assimilated into the University of the Philippines, which was founded in 1908. Human resource requirements were factored into the departments and colleges for the University of the Philippines. My anthropology department was one of the earliest units to be set up, with the idea of producing graduates to work with the Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes, as well as to prepare students for other professional courses like medicine.

The Americans also sent Filipinos to study in the States, the so-called pensionados, some of whom did so well that they ended up being hired in the US.

The American system of developing human resources has been described by one American historian and scholar, Kenton Clymer, as ?humanist imperialism.? It was based on liberal ideas of some of the early American colonial administrators, notably David Barrows, the first head of the Bureau of Education. Barrows was an anthropologist who believed that the main reason for the Philippines? ?backwardness? was the feudal system introduced by the Spaniards. Barrows and other like-minded Americans had nothing but contempt for the Spanish friars and the Filipino ?cacique? or landlords, who they blamed for keeping the Philippines in primitive bondage.

Barrows and other humanist colonial administrators saw education as a way to develop Filipinos and emphasized the development of white-collar workers and professionals. The opportunities for education filtered down to some extent to the lower classes, allowing them social mobility, which was now identified with white-collar jobs. Agriculture was looked at with disdain, as was manual labor, and had an impact on many aspects of culture, from having to dress up as proper ?gentlemen? and ?ladies,? all the way up to a reinforcement of discrimination against dark skin, which was associated with agricultural and manual laborers and their exposure to the sun.

What started out as part of benevolent colonialism on the part of the Americans has produced unexpected adverse effects. The agricultural sector (which includes fisheries and animal husbandry) is underdeveloped, with young people avoiding college courses in this area.

Unfortunately, while the Americans disliked the feudal system, they did little to dismantle it. The huge tracts of friar lands were left untouched, and peasants remained impoverished, under almost absolute control of the landlords. After we regained independence in 1946, our own Filipino presidents resisted land reform, fearful of the power of the landlords. No wonder rural life became even more stigmatized, quite correctly associated with misery and poverty.

Not surprisingly, young people try to leave the rural areas. If they have some money for education, they flock to courses that produce more white-collar workers ? it used to be ?commerce,? renamed ?management? or ?marketing.? Many of them end up as sales clerks.

Despite the deterioration of civil service, government jobs are still desirable for the lower and middle classes because once they become permanent, there is a lifetime of benefits. For clerical work and certain professions, like teachers and even nurses, government actually pays higher wages than many private institutions.

Often overlooked, too, is the way a ?white-collar mentality? actually stifles entrepreneurship. Why risk scarce capital for a new business venture when you have the stability of civil service employment (plus the occasional opportunities for ?rackets?)?

Perhaps the worst consequence of the white-collar mentality is class discrimination, often a lack of appreciation for the dignity of manual labor. This perspective affects us in more ways than we are conscious of. Even the desire for white glutathione-induced skin, for example, is not just an imitation of the westerners? white skin but a way of saying, ?Look, I?m fair because I work in an office, not under the sun.? ?