Retired Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio has pushed for the inclusion of the country's martial law period in the school curriculum amid waves of disinformation on atrocities and human rights violations during this era.
" should be made part of the curriculum in grade school, high school, and college. That is a very important part of our history and that should be really taught in our schools," Carpio said.
Carpio made the statement in an online forum hosted by opposition coalition 1Sambayan ahead of the commemoration of the February 25, 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution that ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr.
According to Carpio, there is a gap that needs to be bridged as lessons on martial law being taught in schools back then are "completely different" from what is happening on the ground.
"The Marcos family published a book on their own version of martial law, that it was the 'golden years' and donated it to public libraries," Carpio, who is also the 1Sambayan lead convenor, bared.
"This is why we have this problem now—our youth believe that the martial law regime was a 'golden age' for the Philippines. It is terrible," he added.
Carpio's call was echoed by Economics professor JC Punongbayan who said that there is really a need to fix the education system to help avoid a revision of history.
"This disinformation is really symptomatic of the bad ways by which martial law has been taught in our schools. In fact, there has been a growing movement to reintroduce Philippine History in high school because it was removed in the K-to-12 program," Punongbayan said during the same forum.
"Limited ang nalalaman ng mga estudyante (Students have limited knowledge) on top of the fact that some books have really neglected to discuss martial law," he explained.
Aside from the lack of martial law lessons in school, Punongbayan said that false information on martial law is also widespread in social media which targets a really huge audience including the youth.
"Kids these days don't rely so much on textbooks. They are more likely to encounter information on martial law on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, which is rife with misinformation," he noted.
"We have to make these social media platforms accountable, but it is not nearly enough to combat the tsunami of disinformation that kids are seeing these days," Punongbayan added.