Let ideas flourish

There was a Senate budget debate regarding some textbooks printed by the Komisyon ng Wikang Pilipino labeled as “subversive” by some senators. A least, Sen. Bato dela Rosa thinks so. Whether left or right leaning, our taxes should not be used to promote any slanted causes in children’s textbooks. I have not read them, but we can give the senator the benefit of the doubt. However, I cannot agree with him that those with access to such materials can become subversive, violent undesirable members of Philippine society, just by reading them. That is stretching it too far from practical reality.

It is the family that rears the child, and the village. “Teach a child the way he should go and he will not depart from it,” says the Bible. In this context, how do we explain what has become of our country? Warts and all: Corruption in government unmitigated from the top, estimated at 20 percent of the government’s annual budget, or P800 billion a year. Where did we learn all this? From textbooks?

The family, we must admit, is where all lessons on morality starts. Psychology tells us that formative year is age 5 when children start imbibing life’s values: Teach them not to lie. Teach them not to cheat. Teach them not to kill. Teach them not to steal. Not to take what is not theirs. If all these ills prevail in our society now, then we have failed miserably – as a family, as parents.

Let everyone freely express their God-given right to think, write and live life, at their expense. Not out of our taxes. But let opinions be allowed to flow freely, of every kind within legal bounds in a democracy, and not be threatened or curtailed, least of all, by legislation. – M.K. Tan, Quezon City