Intensified values and peace education are highly touted by the Department of Education (DepEd) as being the focus of its new Matatag curriculum and yet, pronouncements coming from Education Secretary Sara Duterte belie these otherwise noble intentions. She herself admitted that her department, using the P150 million confidential fund allotted to her as education secretary, had been monitoring its own personnel, students, teachers, and educators in connection with the purported recruitment activities of the New People’s Army (NPA) in public elementary and secondary schools.
She justifies her actions by saying that “Whoever opposes my confidential funds is opposed to peace. Whoever is opposed to peace is an enemy of the people.” She must be forgetting that people still remember how, when she was still the mayor of Davao City in 2011, she punched and pummeled a court sheriff who was only implementing a court order to demolish houses in a disputed property.
During an interview with his spiritual adviser Apollo Quiboloy on SMNI television network, Sara’s father, former president Rodrigo Duterte, directly threatened the life of a sitting lawmaker of Congress, ACT Teachers party list Rep. France Castro by saying: “The first target of Inday Sara’s intelligence fund would be you, France [Castro]. I want to kill all you communists!” Last Oct. 10, he publicly admitted that he spent his own intelligence funds to carry out extrajudicial killings in Davao City while he was still its mayor.
I shudder to think about what values Sara Duterte’s Matatag curriculum will be promoting and propagating to our children!
The DepEd should focus on addressing the learning crisis that currently grips the entire country by (1) immediately stopping the practice of mass promotion in public schools; (2) making sure that public elementary school students are able to read and understand simple English words and sentences BEFORE they graduate Grade 6; and (3) serving as role models to the children of this nation by living lives that show, reflect, and highlight the values of goodness, kindness, benevolence, and compassion.
Antonio Calipjo Go, Novaliches, Quezon City