Teach history with feelings
All I was going to do was cook myself noodles for lunch. Waiting for the water to boil I turned on the TV set. That’s how I got tuned into the hearing against Senator Leila de Lima, a person I do not know personally but I personally do not like. She hasn’t done anything to me but when I see her, my hair stands on end.
I think I decided to stay tuned because once in my professional life I had to attend congressional hearings like that one and maybe I just liked being reminded. All that ceremony. Witnesses just reading their testimonies. Nevertheless the testimonies were somewhat interesting to me because it involved a prison I had visited. Images replayed in my head. Then they were served lunch, and my noodles were cooked so I had lunch, too.
In the meantime the TV set kept going. Then suddenly there was a show titled On the Record — or was it Off the Record — there to discuss martial law and to settle the question of whether or not it was being taught properly in school. It was, after all, Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2016, the 44th anniversary of martial law.
The program had three guests: Juan Ponce Enrile, representing himself; Robert “Obet” Velora (?), who was imprisoned because he was a student activist during Martial Law; and Raffy (can’t remember his last name), a young UP law student, representing today’s youth.
Juan Ponce Enrile (JPE) talked about the political crises that he was trying to control in Mindanao then when he was Secretary of National Defense, the upheavals that in his opinion led to Marcos’ declaration of martial law. I however remembered that one of the immediate reasons for the declaration of martial law was an “ambush” of his car with him in it, an ambush that much later on (in 1986 after the Marcoses left and the country was in almost hysterical transition from the dictatorship to what next) I remembered he admitted was staged. Of course now he was sitting there smugly defending martial law. It was only JPE’s name that I fully retained because I knew him when I was young and it stuck.
Obet, white haired, was an activist who got arrested and tortured. He wrote about his life and suffering during martial law. I have many friends like him and I was on his side. I didn’t know him but liked him much better than JPE, who to me represents and epitomizes this clique called politicians, who have a special talent for scrambling my brains. Obet said he thought Marcos installed martial law because he was reluctant to let go of his power. He had already served two terms and could not be reelected under our constitution. I agreed with that. But my input is what Marcos probably did not anticipate, was unable to predict, was the over-the-top spending of his wife that contributed much to the end of his regime.
Raffy, a young UP law student, admitted he had to do much research on martial law and that’s when it became real for him. But how many students do that, he asked. So he thought the history books should dwell on martial law more to give the young students a feel for what those years were like.
JPE adamantly insisted on considering the “what if” scenario. What if martial law was not declared? What kind of a country would we have? The debt Marcos left behind was only $26 million, he claimed. Isn’t that better than today?
Well, for one thing, I thought, maybe JPE and people who worked for the Marcos government would not be as rich as they are today. How about that for starters? But I just half agree with JPE when he said that the best historians could write about martial law after they were all dead. I agreed with the portion that said after they were all dead. I thought: the sooner, the better.
Here’s my point of view. I think all our Philippine history textbooks should be rewritten. They should include people’s feelings to make them more interesting to the young. History books should not exclude how people felt at the time. History is nothing more than the story of people’s lives during those times. I remember studying for my history tests in high school by just scanning the history book during the break memorizing dates and items like the Laurel-Langley Act. I would pass the test and quickly forget. History was a boring subject then because it did not come to life.
Like Coca-Cola, let’s add life to our history because it’s a story about life and death, pleasure and pain, in our country. Then the youth will perk up to their history teachers, then they will feel their history, then they will learn it.
And that’s the last time I will turn on the TV while I’m cooking noodles.
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