A project by Franco Reyes
Restringing Manila
Our Mission
To foster a greater Filipino youth through the outlet of music.
To provide aid to the overlooked music programs of today.
To preserve subsequent generations of Filipino culture and our centrality on the arts.
About
RESTRINGING MANILA is my determined effort to preserve what I know to be true about the Filipino youth. The 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) found that the Philippines spends 9 times less than the average amount on primary to middle school students – a mere $11,030 allotted for one student, from when they are in first grade to when they are just about entering high school. $11,030 for textbooks, pencils, cafeteria lunch, among other necessities. PISA had also found a striking correlation up until a certain threshold that found that this poor student-expenditure indicated poor performances in math, with the Philippines occupying the low end of either axis, alongside the nations Guatemala, Palestine, Uzbekistan, among others. As textbooks are barely afforded for an estimated 21,697,000 pupils, policy-makers from the Department of Education (DepEd) have a near unchecked capability to determine what is essential and non-essential (the 2024 budget targets programs that support classroom renovation [BEF], elementary-school lunches [SBFP], even STEM equipment [LTE-SME]) – funding for the arts takes, considerably, the largest blow.
RESTRINGING MANILA is the vessel of proof – that arts are an inarguable element of the primary school curriculum.
I can speak to my own experience. Moving to America at 10 years old was simply daunting, interacting with the faces of White-Americans, faces I’d only previously seen in Disney Channel original programs and memories from living there (made fuzzy via infantile amnesia). I embodied the essence of the newcomer – that initial suppression of self-expression; it was better for me to remain closed off so as to carefully craft my impression onto small-town-America children (the college-town of Gainesville, FL, of course). I was the quiet kid until our The Lion King production, that is. Years after, Mr. Mills still recounted to his students about this one unnoticable, quiet kid who moved mid-year… and wow did he blow the audition away… it was like a transformation… he would say. As you may have gathered, I went on to play heck out of Rafiki. This self-expression that had been unlocked within me is absolutely the essence of the arts I desire to instill onto other, similarly, closed-off children – a social skill with evidently broad societal implications; participation in the arts have been found to increase civic engagement, greater social tolerance, and reductions in other-regarding behavior. The arts have provided me and others an undeniable skillset; I seek to prove its inarguable utility to society.
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