MANILA, Philippines — The K-12 curriculum is training Filipino students to critically assess the martial law period and the regime of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Education Secretary Leonor Briones said
Responding to concerns that schools have become avenues for historical revisionism, Briones said the public education system is providing students with a balanced perspective of the dictatorship to enable them to develop critical analyses of the issues.
“You have to take a look at the overall framework of education right now, specifically K-12,” she said, noting that the approach to education has already changed over the years.
“Part of the new way that we are trying to teach our learners is to be able to analyze… But in the first place, you have to know how to analyze yourself. You have to teach them to read both sides,” she added.
Briones said students learn not just the bad side of the martial law, but also the supposed good sides of it as claimed by some groups.
“You have to hear both sides, whether it is the good side or the bad side,” she said. “If you say that martial law is bad but you do not see claims that martial law is good, then how do you draw your conclusions?”
Speaking to The Chiefs on Cignal TV’s One News aired on Monday night, historian Jonathan Balsamo of the Philippine Historical Association called for an assessment of materials about the martial law that are accessible to the public through the use of new technology.
He also noted instances of teachers portraying martial law positively in their classes.
“What are the accessible materials?” he said in Filipino. “There are a lot that are accessible online and are engaging.”
Balsamo also cited recent reports of textbooks that are positively portraying the Marcos regime.
Responding to this, Briones said teachers are capable of guiding their students draw their own conclusions through critical assessment.
“An effort is made at the level of the university, at the level of the curriculum, at the level of the training that we regularly give them,” she said, referring to teachers.
“We are imprisoned by our own memories of what we were taught when we were in high school or elementary,” added the secretary.
On the inaccurate textbooks, the secretary maintained that these are not the ones produced by the department and are already outdated.
She earlier said that they are looking at ways to ensure that textbooks used in private schools are reviewed by DepEd prior its use.
“Part of our efforts to make all these corrections is to look at the schools that are still using these kinds of textbooks, which have lost their relevance,” she said.