There really is something fundamentally wrong with the way Filipino kids are being educated. We are made to believe, for example, that campus “activism” represents the pinnacle of student life, to the extent that medals are hung on students who express their “dissent” by walking out of class and participating in street rallies. Challenged as to what educational value these street rallies add to the average 17- to 21-year-old universtity student and we get subject to the shrill makabayan rhetoric peppered with notions of “revolution”, “social justice”, and other “woke” platitudes. One wonders though, how, in an age when a society’s technological prowess and innovation faculties are strong determinants of its future prosperity does the old campus “activism” spiel remain relevant.
All of the above, of course, is from the perspective of those “woke” SJWs (social justice warriors) who represent the shrillest cliques populating the political chatter in social media. It raises the question of how much value parents and taxpayers — people who actually fund the education of these students — put in their kids gaining the “activist” experience while in university. Who speaks for these parents and stakeholders in the future intelligence of today’s youth? Can their voices of reason compete with the shrieking outrage fads and calls to “dissent” issued by the armies of SJWs that infest media (both social and traditional)? It seems there is a huge injustice that demands consideration here.
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If politicians are responding to what “trends” on Twitter and Facebook, then we are in real trouble. This is because those spaces are dominated by no-substance “woke” SJWs and not by the scientists and engineers who actually build stuff of enduring value. Who after all can muster enough head space to appreciate the rigour required to build a bridge when one can simply wax outrage over people dying while crossing the raging river such a bridge would have spanned. See, “activists” play into that easy space where ill-thought-out emotionalism provides enough sensational content to fill headline news. Under that light, it is easy to see why, in a system of governance such as “democracy” where popularity trumps sense, all the wrong arguments win.
Circle back from all this to the whole idea that campus “activism” is something stakeholders in the education of the youth ought to be tolerating and we gain better perspective. The simple take on all that is kids are better off attending their classes, reading their textbooks, and studying their lessons at that stage of their live than allowing themselves to be led by a bunch of terrorists to the front lines of their nebulous “revolutions”. To pitch the latter as “practical” experience is dishonest at best and criminal at worst. After all, campus “activism” is not something the average grad could proudly sport in the CV she presents to a potential employer. Boasting the number of times you pumped your fists and shouted Makibaka! while marching down Vito Cruz will not fly in an interview for a job that pays enough wages to raise a family of three.
Every university student deserves to be advised well before she decides to march off the edge and into the abyss of communist “activism” in what should be the best and most fun years of her young life. To leave “woke” SJWs and, worse, communist elements to monopolise supply of that advise is borderline criminal.
It is high time Filipino parents and taxpayers think through what kids really sign up to when taking the hand offered by communists thinly-disguised as campus “activist” organisations infesting the Philippines’ university campuses. The future of the Philippines does not lie in the false “revolutions” being invited by quaint Cold War relics. It lies in technological progress on the back of citizens’ competence in the sciences. “Activism” in the form we see today offers no pathway to get us there.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
If Filipino parents, like for example parents in the West, (US, UK, or even Sweden, ect) will be finding out the hard way when you let the State/Government/Department of Education filled with Leftist drivel and propagandists, indoctrinate their children will garbage like this.
It’s amazing back then, I remember Elementary students being shown the “Inconvenient Truth” by Al Gore, remember how his prediction of Mt. Kilimanjaro melting by 2012 or such? wonderful, or maybe when I saw a full class in College being shown documentaries by Michael Moore and being assigned to write a passionate essay on whatever flavor of the mouth communist garbage.
Fact is, these Leftists have cornered the whole education system, there’s no avoiding them and when you have so-called Academia writing their “Truth” as the gospel of history that cannot be challenged, then you’re gonna want to make sure to teach your children to resistant to indoctrination. Less you want to have 30-40 year old activist failures who are professionals in being paid as useful idiots to indoctrinate gullible young naive kids who will be told they can shoulder everything and save the world, and protest whatever targets they deem appropriate for their Eternal Revolution, that’s what has happened in the West and has happened in the Philippines, just ask those NPA-CPP recruiters who are being protected by the Leftist Coalition here as “Educators” when they get caught and arrested, or take a good look at the Teacher and Student partylist groups, because they seem to care more about a certain side in the political spectrum than advocating for the whole of their groups without care about political beliefs.
“Youth is wasted on the young”…they usually say…
It was the success of the EDSAs, promoted by the : U.S./C.I.A., Aquino Cojuangco political axis, oligarchs, feudal oligarchs, psuedo (Mafia) CPP/NPA; “liberation theology” Roman Catholic Church priests, nuns, bishops and cardinals ; communist front organizations ; political opportunist politicians ;etc…that used these young activists enthusiasm to foment revolutions, in order to remove the late Pres. Marcos…EDSA I was followed by EDSA II, and they are trying to have another EDSA against Duterte.
These “students” are sent by their parents, to have good educations; so that they can compete to earn good living, in the Real World…But, what do some do ? They are attracted to the False Ideology of the communists and leftists fronts. Not knowing that these fronts are controlled by opportunistic politicians and oligarchs, to advance their own selfish agendas…
These students still have no experience in how the Real World works…they want to change the world with their inexperience and stupidity !
Looks like these kids are being taught that if you believe your way is right, than you have the right to make it a hegemony and force it on the world. If someone disagrees with your way of goodness, then get rid of them. The feeling of invincibility of youth makes it easy for them to believe this. The irony is, they often join such “activism” saying their parents are “dictators,” but when they go out and do their thing, they are dictators themselves. They’re so out of touch with reality that they call living a normal life “adulting.”
Why does everyone seem to think that getting a good education and joining rallies are mutually exclusive? You can, in fact, have both. And if you guys think joining rallies is a waste of time and automatically makes kids “communists” then you’re honestly missing the point of why rallies are held in general
Then explain and articulate your views and experience then , it’s also not mutually exclusive to both get an education and not be indoctrinated into joining leftist groups, I know plenty of parents from Chinese-Filipino families who would threaten to drop their kids out if they dare waste their time playing “Political Revolutionary” and not get a useful Degree or Doctorate, also ask those dumb kids who got shanghai’d into joining the NPA and regretting it. Also doesn’t help the fact that higher education here in the Philippines, especially in Universities and Colleges, specifically the ones like Ateneo or Santo Thomas or Diliman are breeding grounds for the next generation of Leftist-Socialists, if it’s not Communists like the NPA who want to take power through violence and force , it’s Socialists like the many Leftists groups who want to over by voting.
And I know plenty of dishonest Leftists who claim that only they have the monopoly of protesting and having rallies, not like the Communist-Leftist alliance here in the Philippines has managed to monopolized and claimed ownership in fighting for Human Rights, the Lumads, Education, Poverty, and more, while advocating for more power for the Government of their choice,while ignoring especially the long list of mismanagement and corruption in having only a centralized government, that’s one way to fix the country and have the ego to think you “saved the world”.
And if you think having “rallies” by really bored kids who lament about the “Political Ignorance” of the average Filipino who works 5-6 days a week to provide for himself or his family, and hasn’t have time to waste in rallies or social media political cat fights, then they can just do the one single thing, join the process and dialogue, work with Government and the community, understand each other and help everyone get informed honestly in civics, but guess what? the education system is broken, why understand the process when you can just blame a singular group for all the ills and the lack of Utopia that the Communist keep telling everyone that the Philippines can if they have all the power. That, that is what I witnessed and experienced in your so-called defense for worthless protesting and rallies, impotent screeching and demands for someone else to do it for them.
Those are all very valid points, but also just anecdotal.
For every parent that would threaten to disown their child if they participate in activism, there are just as many parents who would join them. Your argument that those who do participate in rallies are just wasting their time by not focusing on their schooling is moot. Their are kids who don’t participate and rallies and have shit grades, but there are also kids who partake in rallies that are also part of the dean’s list. You keep trying to equate activism with being a bad student, but part of being a student is being educated enough to know when to fight for your and everyone else’s rights.
The point of rallies isn’t so a group of bored students can go out and cause a nuisance so they can feel like the helped “save the world” Rallies are there so the government can hear the voices of the disadvantaged, and people, students included, participate in activism because of the empathy they feel to the marginalized and the dissatisfaction with the process of just talking things. Rallies happen because the higher officials will not listen , and would rather choose other issues. Rallies are there because people have tried to partake in the process and handle it in a civil manner, but to no avail.
Same could be said with your anecdotal romanticize stories, of what Leftists think that hundreds of days wasted doing rallies and protests are, little to no permanent effects are made while the same very people who’ve been protesting “change” since the 70s and 80s are still preaching to the choir with a different set of words but the same messages, and I’m also sure those who are on the dean’s list who perpetuate this very long cycle are gonna become educators themselves in the future and recruit and indoctrinate students to do the same thing, because I’ve seen it, maybe add in a few who are gonna be come lawyers but most engineering or nursing students are not gonna waste time and money rallying for god know’s what flavor of the month cause.
Do I think Rallies and Protests are a civil right? yes, but do they affect change for the better any longer? no, but you’ll see it being used as political pressure by groups like PISTON or entities like ABS-CBN to defend their own interests, just wait till February 22, we’ll have another year of rallies and protests by people who think it’s still the 80s or who have monopolized and made a partisan event into their personal mythological political branding. And if anyone wants change, go ahead and vote, because elections always have consequences and people elect the politician they deserve. But don’t proselytize your romantic version of what rallies are, call a spade a spade, because I’m 100% sure that dumb failed Oust Duterte protests by a certain political bloc because of the Coronavirus, is and will always be a dumb point of protest and a waste of time.
No one said here those are mutually exclusive. But if the children are rallying for a government’s overthrow, they are probably not serious about their studies. They are probably not serious about “good change” either, since they probably want power or just unlimited permissiveness on wasteful and wanton lifestyles, which they mistaken assume government is blocking.
Not everyone who participates in rallies is even directly affected by what the rally is even about. A burgis rich kid could show up to a rally about the Lumad killings, but that doesn’t make him an Aeta does it. People participate in rallies because they have a sense of responsibility to stand for those who can’t do it by themselves
Then we go to what rallies accomplish. These days, little to nothing. They are akin to passing wind. Students best graduate instead and do other more effective things, for example, manage a project or company that helps Lumads and Aetas.
Ah yes, it’s not just about rallies. I’ll take it from the article’s title and answer it this way: some parents indeed do not want their kinds participating in “activism” that goes to the mountains.
Parents’ group denounces NPA lies on ‘Tacloban 5’
https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1093645
Careful, citing those NPA recruitment testimonies and PNA articles will get you a rejected response from many people who support this lunacy, especially since this particular person just ignored my examples about NPA recruitment and just cited some counter-propaganda nonsense. When you point out that these advocacy protest groups tend overlap with each other and cite examples of their political leanings and subsequent kidnap-recruitment, they’ll answer “Not all of them….” in regards to this.
Add in this, the multiple Renato Reyeses and Juana Change who work as living as professional protesters and have effectively monopolized and many of a time made protests a joke because he’s been face front and people do not equate “Success” with a man whose been protesting, in his words, since he was 16 years old while not having any professional income, and a so-called Comedienne who gave a pass to the last administration and pretends no scandal happened.
They have been protesting for years and have nothing to show for it, nothing changed, people who are in the middle do not equate their fervor with success, but when you have 40-50 year old something protesters who do not have income other than “donations” from their fellow citizens is nothing but grifting, their new favorite word.
And here’s a funny thing, equating “Protesting” with “Responsibility”? delusional, as much as Renato Reyes and BAYAN Bayarin muna doing their yearly protests.
Lemme just get this out of the way and say that I don’t know enough about the NPA to support them either. I am not in favor of kids going through the process of abandoning their homes to live in the mountains. That’s honestly just as stupid as equating activism to wasted education.
You keep trying to argue that rallying doesn’t do anything. How short is your memory that you forgot about the Hong Kong protesters? Granted their battle is not over but they have made major waves against the PRC as is.
But if you want something more local, how about the People Power rallies? Did those not impact any change?
So you’re anti-China and one who’s delusional enough equate to equate protests here to protests in Hong Kong, and you’re informed enough about the Hong Kong protests but not the long record of the CPP-NPA here? who’s being ignorant and naive in this whole conservation while “not knowing enough” about the Communist Insurgency here.
And “People Power”, now that’s funny enough only brought a change in “Regime” as people like yourself say, no matter how romanticize and revision it in history, and if you’re not “informed” enough to know the long dissatisfaction of people over close to 40 years post-EDSA and how those who made it big during the heydays of those protests who are either now lawmakers or still protesting but with a very large coalition now, then you’d say there was “permanent change” for the better. This is how you show your utter ignorance and constant sidestepping of the issue, when Teachers/Professors who are paid to educate students are instead using their spare time to indoctrinate them to either playing protester and join the Leftist Coalition here or go to the CPP-NPA in the mountainside, you’re as blatantly ignorant and naive to think there’s no correlation between the two or overlap while yapping about “Student Activism is not equal to Wasted Education” while being utterly obtuse about the history of “People Power” while romanticizing protests here and equating them to Hong Kong, wait till February 22 and we’ll see if the whole nation mobilizes to your delusional expectations, just like Renato Reyes who has wasted his entire adult life.
Ibagsak ang rehimeng US-
LOL!
Looks like that clenched fist comes really handy nowadays whether you’re pro- or anti- Duterte.
It’s an ironic joke that state university students call on the fall of the administration that paved the way for taxpayer’s money to fund their education.
This misguided lot probably ingested too much of Hollywood movies which portray rebellion to be a noble and heroic endeavor.
Star Wars, Hunger Games, Divergent… yeah just fight the system because it feels great, it’s exciting, and it gives the perfect excuse to skip the monotony of classes.
Well good luck with that! Coz with that kind of mindset these students will need truck loads of it to succeed in life.