DepEd: Schools teaching critical assessment of martial law

The K-12 curriculum is training Filipino students to critically assess the martial law period and the regime of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, according to Education Secretary Leonor Briones.

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.

Students learn not only the bad side of martial law, but also its supposed good aspects as claimed by some groups, according to Briones.

“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 Monday night, historian Jonathan Balsamo of the Philippine Historical Association called for an assessment of materials about 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 Mar- cos regime.

Responding to this, Briones said teachers are capable of guiding their students to 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,” the secretary said.

On the inaccurate textbooks, Briones maintained that these are not the ones produced by the department and are already outdated.

She had said earlier that they are looking at ways to ensure that textbooks used in private schools are reviewed by the DepEd prior to distribution and 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,” Briones said.