For the Department of Education (DepEd), information awareness is one of the ways to keep Filipino youth from being “deceived” by terrorists.

Given this, Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte lauded the efforts of DepEd local offices such as the Schools Division Office (SDO) of Aurora, especially in its partnership with the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ 91st Infantry Battalion (91IB) to launch an information awareness campaign against the recruitment and infiltration of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) among learners in the province.

“Providing information and education to the youth about local armed conflict is a critical step to keep them from being deceived and recruited by terrorists and communists,” Duterte said in a statement.

Duterte said the effort of SDO Aurora and 91IB in establishing a whole-of-nation approach to address the root causes of the armed conflict is “worthy of emulation” by more educational institutions nationwide.

“We trust that our schools and their partners will efficiently implement the information campaign while still adhering to the Department’s policies on gender sensitivity, safety, and peacebuilding, among others,” she added.

DepEd Spokesperson Michael Poa, in a recent presser, also commended the efforts of SDO Aurora for “forging a pact with the academe as part of the whole approach of the nation to address armed conflict” in the country.

“Information awareness is really one way to keep youth from being deceived and recruited by terrorists,” he said.

Poa also expressed hope that there will be more partnerships with other regional offices on this matter.

Meanwhile, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) Philippines slammed the partnership amid the ban on extra-curricular activities among learners.

“With this initiative, the DepEd is contradicting its own policy of banning extra-curricular activities while it puts into question the priorities of the agency’s current administration,” ACT Chairperson Vladimer Quetua.

“They prohibit other activities that can help learners’ holistic development, purportedly to give focus in bridging learning gaps, but it will allow soldiers to disrupt classes for their red-tagging agenda,” he added.

For ACT, combatants should have no place in schools which are supposed to be zones of peace and safe spaces for learning.

“These supposed counter-insurgency seminars can only sow fear among our learners, and teach them that dissent is wrong when in fact it is essential in a democratic society,” he added.