MANILA, Philippines—It all began when a publisher offered Antonio Calipjo Go a Mitsubishi L-300 van in exchange for a three-year textbook supply contract.
The academic supervisor of Marian School of Quezon City was incensed that learning materials not only were being treated as commodities bundled with special offers but were also shot through with errors.
Go decided to mount a campaign against what he called “sick books,” writing protest letters to the Department of Education (DepEd) and lawmakers, appearing in congressional hearings, giving interviews to reporters and sending articles to newspapers and magazines.
His was a lonely crusade that angered DepEd officials, academics, publishers and authors with strings of MAs and PhDs to their names.
After a 12-year campaign that included pulling out newspaper advertisements worth P1 million paid out of his own pocket and four court cases filed against him by angry publishers, Go is throwing in the towel.
He has decided to abandon his advocacy and resign from Marian.
The trigger was an apparent well-orchestrated campaign against him by newspaper columnists questioning his integrity. This coincided with the reopening by Phoenix Publishing House Inc. of an extortion case that a court had thrown out previously.
The columnists’ assault and the court case followed a DepEd order directing Phoenix to withdraw its books being used in private schools after finding merit in Go’s exposés that they were defective and detrimental to students’ intellectual growth.
“The articles created the overall impression that I am a victimizer, a blackmailer and an extortionist,” Go says in a letter to the Philippine Daily Inquirer announcing he was through with his crusade.
“My name, which acquired its patina of respectability over 12 years of a one-man crusade, had been irremediably, irretrievably tarnished for all time,” he says.
Libelous articles
In an interview in his sparse office in the small school tucked in a working class neighborhood of Novaliches, Go says the articles were libelous and showed “an almost word-for-word fidelity to the dictates of an unseen yet ever-present hand.”
“They kill the messenger, they kill the message. That’s why they are destroying my reputation, to kill the message,” he says, the message being that defective textbooks are one of the root causes of the decline in Philippine education.
“I became depressed. I cannot eat, I cannot live, I cannot function the way I used to,” he says. “I didn’t go to court because I don’t want the money. I just need to restitute my honor.”
He subsequently went to the Philippine Press Council, protesting the columnists’ campaign of vilification.
The press watchdog directed Go to write a rejoinder and asked the newspapers concerned to publish it. They have yet to comply with the directive.
Leaving his crusade and his post as academic supervisor is like “losing an eye” for Go. “This is what gave purpose to my life,” he says.
But the apathy of the public served as his main reason to give up and stop critiquing textbooks.
Cum laudes can’t write
“The system is corrupting everything and people don’t care, they allow it to happen,” he says.
To illustrate how bad the educational system has become, Go says cum laudes who had applied for a teaching position at Marian school could not even construct a sensible paragraph.
“Because we are teaching them what? Stupidity, mediocrity, idiocy,” he says.
“Defective textbooks are exactly like contaminated milk,” Go says, referring to the melamine-tainted imports from China which has killed at least four babies and caused kidney ailments in more than 50,000 children.
He says that while melamine-tainted dairy products caused physical damage, error-filled textbooks created mental and emotional damage.
“Unlearning is even a more difficult process than teaching,” Go says.
While some lauded his initiative, it also earned the ire of the affected publishing houses.
Quixotic mission
Go had been slapped with two libel suits by authors of Vibal Publishing Inc. and two cases—light threats or extortion and a civil suit asking for P3.5 million—by publishers of Phoenix. All of the cases have been dismissed.
The extortion case, dismissed in September 2007, was re-filed this June.
“I am saddened that Mr. Go should give up on being the textbook crusader. I am sure he was aware that his advocacy was a quixotic mission. He may be frustrated, but at least he had raised public consciousness about the quality of textbooks we have for our students,” says Neni Sta. Romana Cruz of the NGO Sa Aklat Sisikat Foundation.
Mariano Piamonte, party-list representative of A Teacher (Advocacy for Teacher Empowerment through Action, Cooperation and Harmony Towards Educational Reform), adds: “I feel sad that he’s giving up because at least there’s one person concerned with the quality of our textbooks. But if what he points out are true, then he should bring them up.”
As to the lack of support, Piamonte suggests that Go seek the help of the private school organization to which Marian School is affiliated or the Congress’ committee on basic education and culture.
The 57-year-old Go rues that several resolutions have been filed in the Senate, and he has even testified in a Senate hearing regarding the defective textbooks but it was all for naught.
Nothing has changed
“Nothing has changed. The present crop of textbooks mock me with the sense that mine had been a battle fought to no avail,” he says. “I am fighting an uphill battle that leads to nowhere.”
One result of Go’s advocacy is the issuance of DepEd Order No. 39, which directs private schools to immediately stop using “Simply Science in the Next Century” and “Harnessing Arts for English Today” by Phoenix.
But the error-riddled textbooks remain in use.
Also, due to Go’s exposé of its errors, “Asya: Noon, Ngayon at sa Hinaharap,” a social studies textbook, was recalled by then Education Secretary Florencio “Butch” Abad in 2004.
In June 2007, the DepEd issued a 21-page errata guide to correct the factual, grammatical and other errors in 11 newly released social studies textbooks and teacher’s manuals.
According to a Senate resolution, however, the guide “failed to substantially correct the errors found in the books.”
Fight must continue
“Big Bad Business, personified by corrupt publishers, working in perfect harmony with corrupted public officials and, now, a corruptible media, have conspired to see to it that the gains of my advocacy are curtailed and neutralized,” Go says in his letter.
By leaving, he hopes that the advocacy would be insulated from what he deemed as his damaged reputation. “I want to make a plea for people to take it up,” he says.
“Though I’m no longer good, the advocacy against defective and substandard textbooks continue to be the good fight that must be waged by all right-minded and well-intentioned members of society.”
Go plans to live quietly and go into farming. Like the Lone Ranger he was portrayed to be in one magazine article, the textbook crusader is riding off in the sunset—and not in an L-300 van.
Copyright 2009 Philippine Daily Inquirer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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