Alleba Politics

Our national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal, once said that for a nation to be able to move forward to its future, it is necessary to study its past.

The reported defective Asian and Philippine History textbooks are syptomatic of the countless maladies afflicting our public education system. And although we might see it as a petty concern, it can, undeniably, significantly affect our nation’s development (or lack of it). Unless the present understands fully its past, it can never move towards a better future.

There are two kinds of lies, one is the denial of the truth and the other is the omission of the truth. Althought he two are distinct from one another, the two yields the same perversion of the truth. Either way, both leads to misinformation. Misinformation which lead to the belief in false truths and the education of false values and the indoctrination of flase virtues. Thus, the lack of sufficient inormation in the said History textbooks may lead to the catastrophic miseducation and formation of the youth. The youth, who are te key stakeholders of our nation’s future. If the youth are taught lies and untruths, there is not much we can hope for or expect from our nation’s future.

The objective of teaching History is not only to make the students learn and memorize facts and figures, but more importantly, it is to imparrt essential lessons from the past to attain a sufficient national identity and pride, and to avoid making the same mistakes committed in the past in order to make the future better than the present.

If there is one valuable lesson that we can learn from his mistake, it is that there is much to be wary about in our faulty education system. There are only two probable reasons why these faulty history textbooks reached the unsuspecting students. Either the people in the government are student or they are corrupt. If the goal of the Department of Education officials is to educate the students, there could have been no way that the eported faulty textbooks could have reached the students’ hands.

Something has to be done to correct the horrendous mistake or (as I see it) crime that has been committed in betrayal to our nation and its youth, lest we want to nurture a miseducated generation on whose naive hands our nation’s future is held.

One thing we are constantly taught in school is leading by example. The Hacienda Luisit stand-off, however, is a perfect but alarming example example of the opposite of the afore-mentioned lesson. Former President Corazon Aquino’s so-called centerpiece legislation during her presidency was the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). And yet, her own amily still owns a considerable amount of agricultural land, supposedly equal to more than a hundred Luneta Parks. This by virtue of loopholes in the CARP.

Moreover, former President Aquino is known as a humanitarian, a pious and compassionate person. However, the bloody confrontation beween the striking laborers of their hacienda, and the police and military authorities and the events leading to it betray the image which garnered for her local and international admiration.

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