Marian G.

Caling June 12, 2020

STS 1 Reaction Paper
“The Progress of the Unprogressive Nation”
From the earliest records of the existence of the Philippines, the country had little feats of success
throughout history. Ironically, the archipelago is blessed with natural resources most countries coveted and a
strategic geographical location. So, what went wrong that ultimately led the country to be an underperforming
one?

According to Caoili, in her paper of the history of science & technology of the Philippines, the biggest
mishap and deciding factor that shaped our country is colonization. The colonization of multiple colonizers
has controlled the mindset of the majority of the Filipino population that still runs through to this very day. It
all started with the Spanish regime wherein our ancestors were made into slaves. After ending that era, the
people vowed not to ever be placed in that position again, making them have a great disdain for manual work.
It showed in the education choices of the Filipinos where the majority would select a “prestigious profession”
namely: priesthood, law, and medicine. There was never a decline in the sciences and engineering since it was
not even in the prime choices of profession. Even with the government’s effort by handing out opportunities
to enroll and subsidize their education, it was simply shrugged off.

The 2nd major factor on the decline is the practicality of the people in terms of finances. They chose
to enroll in courses where employment opportunities prevail and it was obvious that the sciences could not
provide food on the table. It was quite prominent in the American regime. The solution for those who took a
chance with the sciences was to flock to the area where they could be compensated well and thus, reducing the
number of scientists to a minimum in the Philippines. This terminology is called brain drain. Luckily, a good
example of the avoidance of brain drain was Antonio Luna. With his wealth, he was able to attain his higher
education in Europe but returned to the Philippines and served as the municipal chemist. It was seen that in
Luna’s Time, there was a highlighted recognition of the sciences and technology that the Philippine Sociedad
was established to aid in the progression of the technology in diseases and the agricultural sector. From that
period, the commonwealth era to the present day, science and technology finally began its pendulum of progress
to become the central theme which is stated in our constitution (both 1973 and 1987). However, the pendulum
has not much momentum to it.
 Fast forward to the late 1900s, Roger D. Posadas’ comparative analysis between the Philippines and its
Southeast Asian neighbors concerning the scientific and technological capabilities and economic catch-up, we
see that the country tags belong to the last place.

There was a time, specifically in the 1950’s wherein the Philippines came to a shocking second, just
behind Japan in terms of industrial, technological, and economic development. As time passed though, the
neighboring countries surpassed the Philippines and brought it to the bottom 3. With this analysis, it shows
that the county has failed to upgrade its capabilities to the global competitive standards.

Based on an integrated framework for analyzing a National S&T System, the said country has
performed poorly in all 5 indicators. From the lack of full-time researchers, barely making 1/5th of the standard
for developing countries, it puts the country in the last place. It also had the next to the lowest Gross
Expenditure on Research and Development as a percentage of GDP. It does not fare any better when it comes
to the contribution of the country’s world share of internationally recognized publications or ISI. It only
contributes 0.04%, yes only 0.04 % worldwide and that gave the country the world ranking of 72nd. On the
last indicator which is the world share of patents in terms of US Patent Granted, the country only had 343
compared to Singapore which has 3,129. Sadly, the number turns out to be far less since the inventions turn
out to be made by foreign multinational corporations.

The introduction of technology in production systems were kept to a minimum and it can be gauged
from the exports and imports of the country. The export of low-value products and the import of high tech
products presents the dependency of the country to those who fare better in the technological aspect. Other
than dependency, there is no motive or effort done to improve any of this. Studies show that in the ladder of
technological capabilities, out of the 9 rungs, the Philippines is only in the 2nd.

Surely the government thought of ways to improve the situation, and they did by introducing 2 ways on
how the country could technologically advance.

First, is the science push, which pushes more resources into the S&T supply subsystem. It is ideal if viewed
linearly and simplistically. With the assumption that if you invest in science and research, technology is the fruit
that it will bear. But studies in Brazil and Mexico show that it is counterintuitive, since the amount of science
(ISI publications) doesn’t directly correlate with the number of technologies made (USTPO patent). In fact, in
South Korea, they did the reverse process by pouring more into the technology and they eventually mastered
making their processing of products rather than do research. In this process, it provided more funding,
ultimately making it a better scheme.
 The 2nd approach is called the market-pull wherein the solution to all the underdevelopment is for the
economic, business, and technology decisions conform to market need and the principle of comparative
advantage. The application of the principles of the market-pull is called techno liberalism. Because of techno
liberalism, it holds that a firm should not design or produce its technology if it doesn’t have the comparative
advantage to do so. It encourages to simply buy or lease the technology since it is more cost-effective that way.
This is the reason why there’s no room for growth since there is an unwillingness to produce its technology
and machinery. Filipino firms have remained technologically backward and continue to import foreign
technology. The Philippines has been using this tactic for 24 years since 1986; ironically Japan, South Korea,
Taiwan, China, and Malaysia deliberately defied the principles of comparative advantage and started to make
their tech which led them to be globally competitive today.

The approaches presented fails to see that the developing country will not succeed because it cannot
remove itself from the vicious cycle. Because of the weak resources and capabilities, the country ultimately
becomes technologically dependent on others, and then shortly after, develops an overall weak demand for
S&T, ending up with low support and low support simply means lesser resources, truly making it a vicious
cycle. To truly combat this, long term strategic national interests should take precedence over the short
comparative advantages the country thinks it has.

It was never the intention of our colonizers to see the Philippines progress, rather they used the
country, from the people to its resources as their mere supply chain, leaving us in total delay with the rest of
the world.