DepEd urged to promote sports, culture

MANILA, Philippines - Rep. Lito Atienza of party-list group Buhay urged the Department of Education (DepEd) recently to promote sports development, aside from basic education.

He made the call as public schools are holding the annual Palarong Pambansa in Antique.

“It is high time that we bring back sports and culture in the basic curriculum of our schools, both public and private. Since the Department of Education, Culture and Sports (DECS) became DepEd in 2001, sports and cultural development became virtually non-existent,” he said.

Atienza has filed a bill to return the old DECS.

The country was a sports powerhouse in the 1970s and 80s, “with our athletes dominating various competitions in Asia and harvesting gold medals,” Atienza noted.

 “The government never failed to tap our immensely talented youth and train them into world-class athletes. Today, we are cellar dwellers. We cannot produce champion swimmers and runners even when thousands of Filipino children grow up near the sea and rice fields,” he said. 

“How can we produce champion athletes when we have no sports development program that should start from the grassroots and from grade school? Drug use among the youth also became rampant because our schools are not encouraging them to get into sports anymore,” he said.

He added that children are also growing up without sufficient orientation and appreciation of our country’s rich and diverse cultural heritage.

“We believe that the right approach to this problem should be a comprehensive program that would involve the development of sports and cultural programs to keep our youth away from drugs,” Atienza stressed.