Educators denounce DepEd’s plan to change ‘Diktadurang Marcos’ to 'Diktadura' in new curriculum
A group of educators denounced the Department of Education (DepEd)'s move to change "Diktadurang Marcos" to “Diktadura” in the Grade 6 Araling Panlipunan syllabus, calling it a "clear revision of history" and an "insult" to martial law victims.
This comes after a directive from the DepEd Curriculum and Teaching Management Committee dated Wednesday, Sept. 6 was shared by the agency's Bureau of Curriculum Development, revealing the planned revision under the new MATATAG curriculum.
According to the memorandum, the decision on the Araling Panlipunan curriculum was made "even after the arduous process of review and revision was done under the guidance and scrutiny of experts, the review of stakeholders, and the public and the launch of the Matatag curriculum."
In a statement, House Deputy Minority leader and ACT Teachers party-list Rep. France Castro strongly criticized the move and said it was meant to "deodorize Marcos's name" in order "to erase the culpability of Ferdinand Marcos Sr. in one of the darkest times in Philippine history."
"The decision to remove 'Marcos' from the term 'Diktadurang Marcos' is a clear revision of history and an insult to the countless victims of human rights abuses and atrocities committed during the martial law period," she said.
"The move to eliminate the name 'Marcos' from the term 'Diktadurang Marcos' is a blatant attempt to whitewash the crimes and atrocities committed under his regime. It is an insult to the memory of those who suffered during martial law and a betrayal of the pursuit of justice and accountability for the victims," Castro continued, noting that it's a violation of Republic Act 10368, also known as the Marcos Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act of 2013.
"Just because the current president is the son of the Dictator Marcos doesn't mean that we should erase his family's name from the proper term or name for the dictatorship," she added.
The measure was also met with strong opposition from the Congress of Teachers/Educators for Nationalism and Democracy (CONTEND), which, in a Facebook post, referred to the move as “a blatant example of disinformation, where the people are deliberately misled by manipulating historical facts.”
"'Diktadurang Marcos' as a term/phraseology used in the curriculum explicitly denotes that this period in contemporary Philippine history was an authoritarian rule by Marcos," CONTEND said.
Citing reports from the Amnesty International missions to the Philippines in 1975 and 1981, CONTEND said "a plethora of historical evidence justify the categorization of 1972 to 1986 as the period of Marcos dictatorship."
CONTEND then urged fellow educators to reject the revision in the curriculum and seek transparency from DepEd in important matters such as curriculum revisions.
The DepEd has yet to issue a statement on the matter as of writing.