Youth’s ignorance of Edsa I history not amusing

The story written by Linda Bolido titled “What the kids say about Edsa I” (PDI, Feb. 25, 2014) included the “thoughts” on the People Power Revolt (PPR) of select public elementary and high school students who joined the recent English/Filipino writing contest on the topic of “Should we celebrate Edsa I?” The contest was part of the selection process of the 29th Teodoro Valencia-Department of Education Search for NCR’s Ten Outstanding Campus Journalists and School Publications.

Here are some of them:

Ex-President Ninoy Aquino was seated in the presidential chair. One day he traveled using a helicopter. When they landed, in Ninoy’s few steps, a bang of a gun was heard. Ninoy died. Since Marcos was his vice, Marcos wanted to be president. The PPR was led by the wife of Ninoy who was then gunshot by the military member of Marcos.

The PPR started when Ninoy was assassinated. After the goose-bumping happening, Marcos was beaten and Cory became the first girl President of the Philippines.

Marcos declared martial law after Ninoy’s assassination. They were planning to destroy the military camps that were already built when we were being attacked by other countries. That’s when people got pissed off.

A snap election is made. Cory is declared as the President of the Philippines and Marcos as the President of Malacañang.

During the PPR, many innocent people were put in jail, tortured and killed.

Marcos made every person an idiot and ignorant on issues.

Ninoy was assassinated by some people who did it purposely.

The celebration of PPR can encourage lawmakers to exercise well-executed justice in cases like the pork barrel scam.

We can do the revolution anytime to end malversation.

Without the PPR, hindi tayo makaka-computer, Facebook at Twitter.

During martial law, going home late at night was forbidden.

The PPR was established for the Filipinos who were mourning the death of Cory.

The PPR was established to kick out Marcos because he cheated Ninoy.

We shouldn’t celebrate Edsa I because we will just be wasting a day of schooling for students and a productive day in the office. We are just turning a blind eye to the manipulations of the Aquino clan.

Ms Bolido found the “wise sayings” hilarious; I was not amused. These “nuggets of wisdom” rather gave me a most antsy, icky feeling, not unlike the one a person gets when, instead of harvesting produce from his garden after months of toil, he finds nothing there but burrs and brambles.

This harvest of weeds made me realize two things. These students (who, it must be assumed, belong to the “cream of the crop”) know next to nothing about the topic they were asked to discuss. They were completely ignorant about what happened during the PPR, what triggered it, who the protagonists were and what its impact and implications were/are to our past and present history.

This pathetic lack of knowledge is compounded by the fact that these students also cannot articulate, in either English or Filipino, what they want to say. They cannot express themselves clearly, correctly, sensibly and logically.

What this shows and proves to me is the utter and abject failure of the Philippine public school system (The contestants came from both public and private schools—Ed.) to impart correct facts and information, to teach the lessons of history and to create, nurture, strengthen and promote a body or system of core values, sensibilities, attitudes and general mindset, which will give the students a clear and unequivocal picture of what a Filipino living in the Philippines is or should be.

The contestants have no sense of history, totally unaware that, as time unfolds, it gives off either perfume or stench, like a flower in bloom. History gives out lessons and we are supposed to take note and to learn.

The PPR was a momentous event which happened just 28 years ago. How did it come to pass that it has been almost completely forgotten, relegated to the dustbin of history, when some of its main players such as Imelda (Marcos), (Juan Ponce) Enrile, (Fidel) Ramos, the children of Marcos and the children of Ninoy and Cory (Aquino) are still living among us?

This collection of the most inane and insane pronouncements highlights a basic defect in our present crop of students, who love everything that is crass and crappy about other cultures (“gwiyomi,” “twerking,” cybersex, etc.) while rejecting the very traits that people of other nations admire about us.

In that one bright shining moment that was the PPR, Filipinos rose as one to topple a dictator and a dictatorship, something even the “superior” race of cultured and educated Germans failed to do in their own land in Hitler’s time.

Despite the massive infusion of government funds and resources (P337 billion), the Philippine public school system obviously isn’t working. It is sad and tragic that these students are ignorant and clueless about issues that are of grave importance to our destiny as a nation.

These students clearly did not learn anything in school. How did it happen that when asked about their assessment and understanding of the PPR, these students now point to the Aquinos as the oppressors? What have we been teaching them? We should rage against the dying of the light of memory and remembrance.

If this disturbing trend is not reversed, we will one day witness the proclamation of Ferdinand Edralin Marcos as a martyr and a hero!

That, for me, would then be the loudest “bang of a gun” heard round the world, a “goose-bumping happening” of the most epic proportions. Pray it doesn’t happen, or else “hindi tayo makaka-computer, Facebook at Twitter!”