Is studying Philippine national heroes still relevant?

DURING my high school years, or after martial law when Filipinos’ sense of nationalism was stirred for the first time after a revolution against yearslong oppression, remembering the lives and sacrifices of our national heroes is what many people do.

But in this time and age of highly developed technologies and social media, students are no l onger interested – no longer showing effort to know the heroes who died for the freedom they enjoy today.

To know if national heroes are still relevant today, let us first define what a “hero” is. Ancient Greeks are the ones who coined the term. Any mortal who has done and went far and beyond the normal scope of human experience, left an immortal memory behind him when he died, and received worship due to gods, is for Greeks a hero.

I remember though that during my “Life and Works of Dr. Jose Rizal” class in college, heroes were easily regarded by my classmates as those who have died. You cannot be a hero if you never died for the country. What a tough prerequisite, right? Many of these first heroes were great benefactors of humankind: Hercules, the monster killer; Asclepius, the first doctor; Dionysus, the creator of Greek fraternities. But people who had committed unthinkable crimes were also called heroes; Oedipus and Medea, for example, received divine worship after their deaths as well. Originally, heroes were not necessarily good, but they were always extraordinary; to be a hero was to expand people’s sense of what was possible for a human being.

In my time, it is much harder to detach the concept of heroism from morality; we only called heroes those whom we admired and wished to emulate. But still the concept retained that original link to possibility. We needed heroes first and foremost because our heroes helped define the limits of our aspirations. We largely defined our ideals by the heroes we choose, and our ideals – things like courage, honor and justice – largely defined us. Our heroes are symbols for us of all the qualities we would like to possess and all the ambitions we would like to satisfy.

This was how it was during my high school days. But today, the students’ concept of heroes is from Marvel characters, which can give a far lesser depth of what courage, nationalism, patriotism, and honor are for. I bet they would never even realize they can become their own heroes. I bet they would never care about Dr. Jose Rizal and that studying him in-depth in college is obsolete.

It is of great importance that students understand the rationale behind having to take up a Rizal course in college. For high school students, “Noli Me Tangere” and “El Filibusterismo” are injected into the Filipino subject as part of the overall curriculum. Let it be known and let the students of today understand why there is a Rizal Law – to rededicate the lives of youth to the ideals of freedom and nationalism, for which our heroes lived and died; to pay tribute to our national hero for devoting his life and works in shaping the Filipino character; and to gain an inspiring source of patriotism through the study of Rizal’s l i fe, works and writings. ( Paid article)