Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte on Thursday, May 11, revealed plans to integrate the Scout Movement into the country’s K-12 curriculum as a way to help shape the values of young Filipino boys.
Speaking during the Boy Scouts of the Philippines 66th Annual National Council Meeting (ANCM) at the Leyte Academic Center in Palo, Leyte, she lauded the Scout program for its role in the growth and development of young Filipino boys.
“This is something that we have been discussing within the Office of the Secretary of the Department of Education (DepEd) on how to bring back the mandatory scouting as part of the Filipino Peace Culture that we want to embed in the K to 12 Curriculum,” she said.
True to the Marcos administration’s goal of bringing up Filipino youth with “enduring love of country,” the Vice President stressed the need for the Boy Scout organization to enable “young Filipino boys become strong, confident, skilled, reliable, responsible, and productive individuals.”
She also called on the Boy Scouts of the Philippines to support the DepEd’s advocacy for all Filipino children to be able to go to school and obtain degrees.
“Education, as we know it, is a powerful weapon against poverty and a strong shield against forces that aim to manipulate, control, or poison the minds of the Filipino children and youth,” Duterte, who is also Education chief in a concurrent capacity and recently appointed as co-vice chairperson of the anti-insurgency task force National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), said.
“Which brings me to my other call for Boy Scouts of the Philippines to help us protect our children from sexual abuses, slavery, the lure of illegal drugs, and the deception of the terrorist Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed terrorist group, New People’s Army, as well as recruitment into extreme religious violent extremism,” she added.
Duterte lamented how these groups “steal the innocence of our children” and destroy the future of the country.
“The values that young Filipino boys learn from the Scout Movement — honesty, integrity, respect, and service to others — are necessary for our pursuit of a strong, secure, and stable nation,” she noted.
These, Duterte stressed, are the same values “crucial” in the realization of DepEd’s MATATAG Agenda.
The MATATAG Agenda pushes for transformative, concrete, and targeted reforms in our basic education system.