The Department of Education’s memorandum of the Bureau of Curriculum Development — changing ‘Diktadurang Marcos’ (Marcos dictatorship) to simply ‘Diktadura’ (dictatorship) in the Grade 6 Araling Panlipunan curriculum regarding the facts and circumstances of the Martial Law regime — is a clear effort to revise Philippine history.
This is a clear violation of Republic Act 10368 or the Marcos Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act of 2013, specifically Sec. 27 of RA 10368, which mandates the Human Rights Violations Victims’ Memorial Commission to coordinate and collaborate with the DepED and the Commission on Higher Education to ensure that the teaching of Martial Law atrocities, including the lives of the victims, are part of the basic, secondary, and tertiary education curricula.
Several Catholic bishops have since urged Filipinos not to forget the lessons of Martial Law — which was declared by the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1972 — amid charges that the Marcoses are bent on revising history through social media to erode its real horrors.
“We have to learn from Martial Law, and live its lessons that we should never let it happen again,” said Balanga Bishop Ruperto Santos.
Retired Sorsogon Bishop Arturo Bastes likewise said: “This ignominious period of our history must be taught as a subject to our young students to warn them that never again should Martial Law be imposed in our country.”
House Deputy Minority Leader and ACT Teachers Party-List Rep. France Castro said: “Just because the current President is the son of the Dictator Marcos doesn’t mean that we should erase his family’s name from the proper term.”
Why is this development not surprising? Why should the name of the Dictator Marcos be removed when documenting the Martial Law regime when BBM has been painting the Ferdinand Marcos’ dictatorship as the “golden age” for the Philippines through tweaked facts and selective morsels of events?
BBM, his family, and Marcos loyalists are mainly using social media as a platform to foist their version of history on the rest of the nation.
This is far from the truth as thousands others consider the Marcos years as the darkest time of the country, through Proclamation No. 1081 declaring Martial Law.
Prof. Judy Taguiwalo, convener of the Campaign against the Return of the Marcoses and Martial Law, said, “Our collective memory clearly remembers” what the more than 20-year dictatorship inflicted on the Philippines.
Records show that from $0.36 billion in 1961, the external debt of the Philippines skyrocketed to $28.26 billion by 1986 — the year when the Marcoses were booted out of the country.
“A debt-driven growth is growth that sacrifices long-term benefits for short-term gratification, and [which] ultimately leads to more burden than boon for the future generations that must pay these debts,” the Martial Law Museum said. It likewise said that because “power was in the wrong hands,” the declaration of Martial Law and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus “opened the real possibility of the violation of civil rights.”
The writ, which in Latin refers to “having the body”, is a protection against illegal imprisonment. The media, extremely essential for any democracy, were likewise silenced by the dictatorship.
NEVER FORGET!
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Author’s email: whelmayap@yahoo.com
