DEPED OFFICIALS’ PARTICIPATION IN THE
EVOLUTION OF AKLAN FESTIVALS
Who says that when the Department of Education,
Culture and Sports (DECS) was re-christened as Department of Education (DepEd),
its role in nation building had been drastically diminished?
No! In fact it is a reversed. Public schools all over
the country are now more into sports, more into the promotion and enhancement
of the local culture and traditions.
In Aklan, public school teachers are permanent
fixtures of long existing and newly evolved town festivals of the province.
Festival celebrations are successfully held in every town with the public
schools system playing a major role to its color, gaiety and grandeur.
The Ati-atihan Festival of the
capital town of Kalibo is heavily attended to by pupils, students and teachers
of the public school system of the entire division of Aklan. Culminating every
third Sunday of January, public school teachers and their students has a day of
street dancing and cultural presentations. The grand participation of the
public school teachers in the entire Aklan division to the Kalibo Ati-atihan
festival requires several weeks if not months of practicing choreographed
street dancing numbers and cultural presentations by district.
In my hometown of Balete, whose
festival is dubbed as Enchanting Balete requires the full and unconditional
participation of all schools in the district. Presentations depict the
tradition, indigenous culture, superstitious beliefs and sources of livelihood
of Balete residents in every barangay.
The grand cultural presentation
takes a whole of the culminating day of the “Enchanting Balete” festival every
October.
This,too,requires several weeks
of preparation among teachers and students.
Elsewhere, in the province,
staging of the town festivals and local history commemoration are next to
impossible without the public schools’ participation. For this, the Division of
Aklan has made it a policy for public schools to fully support the evolution
and staging of festivals.
Not only Kalibo has its exclusive
version of the Ati-atihan. Batan, Altavas, Makato, Ibajay and Malinao have
their respective version of the Ati-atihan. Other towns had developed festivals
unique to its place, Nabas has its Bariw Festival, Buruanga, its Panagat
Festival, Bugna it Tanga-ean for Tangalan, Sagibin Festival of Banga, Lechon
Parade of Numancia, Fiesta de Obreros of Malay, and the Paskwa sa Malinao Festival.
During the Kalibo Ati-atihan
celebration, all these festivals are paraded and staged at the Kalibo Pastrana
Park.
Local historical events
commemorations, too, are staged with the full participation of the teachers
like the Aklan Anniversary celebration in April, the Pacto de Sangre of New
Washington, the XIX Martyrs of Aklan in Kalibo, the Juez de Cuchillo of Batan,
the Pag aeaw-aeaw of Banga, Levantamiento de Lilo-an, of Malinao, and the
Battle of Vivo of Tangalan. /MP
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