I’m a big supporter of educators and especially of my sons’ teachers. I believe that my children should be raised to respect their teachers, school administrators, and school policies. I am the first to question my sons’ excuses for disciplinary notices or other reports of disobedience, et cetera. But lately, I have been a little unnerved by a particular school policy that’s been in place since my son started attending his school. Yes, I am partly at fault for being so resistant to this policy, but I think this policy bears false witness to what I’m assuming must be its goal.
Every Friday, the students at this school are required to wear “Island Wear.” This has been a long-standing tradition and one that I have done my best to adhere to in the four yours that my older son has attended this school.
Being the 8-year-old that he is, Matua Ånghet thought it would be cool to wear his t-shirts that identify him with his CHamoru roots—phrases printed in CHamoru… images of the åcho’ latte… the images and names of chiefs—elements that I think are worthy for “Island Wear” days.
But one night, my confused son took a few minutes to scold me for not paying attention to his school’s rules and told me that I wasn’t supposed to make him wear those kinds of shirts. He told me he was embarrassed to go to school the following Friday, because his teacher told him that he’s only allowed to wear “button-down, island print shirts” with any bottoms that aren’t denim. To avoid risking his feelings and further embarrassing him I have adhered since, but every now and then I dare to allow him to wear his CHamoru Language Competition t-shirt which he wears very proudly since their school took 1st place last year.
At first, I didn’t put too much thought into the rule; I shrugged it off like many other parents probably have. But every Friday morning, I have felt more and more disturbed by the rule instead of feeling that good ol’ island pride!
For many, many years the culture of the indigenous people of Guam has come close to utter suffocation from other influences; we have come to fuse ourselves with every other group of people in this world—from the Spaniards to the Japanese to the Filipinos. And sadly enough, many of our people market this and buy into this concept as though it’s cool and hip to be anything BUT CHamoru.
Barring the fact that so little of our history is known to us or that we have been prevented from learning more about who we were, why do we subject our culture to every mediocre opportunity of what we commonly refer to as “preservation” or “perpetuation” when it’s not even our culture we’re preserving or perpetuating?
Is it possible that we can manage to exist solely as CHamorus without lumpia or Hawai’ian print patterns?
It is my firm belief that we are a legitimate people who come from a very rich, deep, and meaningful past that we are still learning about, but if we continue to use other cultures to demonstrate ours, we will push ourselves further from learning and closer to aping what was likely never ours to begin with.
If it is truly cultural, ethnic pride that my son’s school and every other institution on Guam is attempting to achieve with their requirements to wear “island wear,” I would really like to know how their efforts have helped people to appreciate the culture that is known to us as the CHamoru culture.
