Mandatory ROTC

YOU’LL know how much the political pendulum has shifted to the right by the proposals some influential sectors in government are making and the people’s reception to it. Some wise guys, for example, are proposing to revive the Marcosian idea of making the planting of trees a requirement for graduation in schools. Then you have the revival of mandatory Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC).

Let us discuss mandatory ROTC first.

Much of my formative years was spent under Ferdinand Marcos’s rule. I was transitioning from the elementary grade to high school when martial law was declared in 1972 and was in college when military rule was lifted in 1981, when the hold of the Marcos dictatorship on the people had started to weaken.

Marcos implemented what he called as a “revolution from the center” and used the school curriculum to attempt to produce malleable youths. We were, in this sense, subjected to experimentation, and that started even before Marcos declared martial law. Consider that he was president since 1965.

There was a time when grades in the elementary years were not in numbers. Under the continuous progression scheme, nobody failed. Pupils’ learning were assessed via such vague rating as US, S, VS and E. That stands for unsatisfactory, satisfactory, very satisfactory and excellent. The grading system that ranged from the 70s to the 90s was jettisoned.

Not satisfied with the ROTC in college, the Marcos dictatorship introduced the Citizen’s Army Training (CAT) in high school. Military training was in excess under Marcos, thus the dislike of a big number of students for it. I was active in CAT and soon sought ways to evade actual ROTC time in college.

Military training, especially in ROTC, was supervised by the Armed Forces of the Philippines, which eagerly submitted the youths to military indoctrination. ROTC commandants were military types. That introduced the youths to a military culture that had its pluses and minuses.

CAT commandants, especially in remote schools, were simple teachers and instructors some of whom didn’t have actual military stints. Military training in high school was therefore less rigid, enjoyable even. Our CAT commandant