Sen. Risa Hontiveros (File photo from the Senate Public Relations and Information Bureau)
MANILA, Philippines — Sen. Risa Hontiveros on Monday scored alleged attempts to rebrand the dark period under martial law as the “new society” as she reminded the education sector to avoid becoming an enabler in the distortion of history.
In a statement, Hontiveros called on the Department of Education (DepEd) and the Commission on Higher Education to become beacons of truth.
“Let’s take it straight from the horse’s mouth. In issuing Presidential Decree 1081, then President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. placed ‘the country under a state of martial law.’ Not a ‘New Society.’ Not anything else. Martial law,” she said.
Hontiveros made the statement after some teachers criticized a DepEd teaching module that supposedly seeks to rebrand the years under martial law as the “period of the new society.”
The module characterized 1972 to 1980 as a time when “economic progress and discipline dominated conversations and newspapers donned new forms.”
One-sided school material
Titled “Geographic, Linguistic and Ethnic Dimensions of Philippine Literary History from Pre-Colonial to the Contemporary,” the teaching material for senior high school students was reportedly being circulated in Marinduque province. It was supposedly written during the Duterte administration and produced by the DepEd regional office in Calabarzon.
“The continued existence of school material that one-sidedly frames the martial law period as a ‘new society’ is a blatant failure of our education authority to ensure the truthful, factual and complete historical narration of the Marcos dictatorship and instead enables its propaganda,” Hontiveros said.
According to Amnesty International, during martial law, 70,000 people were arrested, 34,000 others were tortured while 3,240 were killed by the military and police.
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