Respect the youth’s autonomy
Before he causes further agitation and stirs things more that should be left alone, someone should remind Senator Ronald dela Rosa to seek educational advice before he opens his mouth about “indoctrinating” the youth.
The good senator was quoted in a news report yesterday saying that police and soldiers should be allowed to conduct “a form of indoctrination among students in state universities and colleges.” This is to compete with the so-called “brainwashing activities of leftist groups and ‘communists’ in their campuses.”
Dela Rosa’s simplistic “anti-communist” talking points may just show his desire to curb anti-government activism among the youth in campus. But the problem with Dela Rosa’s proposal is that such tack has been tried before and it does not address real problems.
Saying that youth activists are “victims of brainwashing” by “communists” or leftist groups shows a poor understanding of the social dynamics of the youth movement. Lawmakers and policy advocates like Senator Dela Rosa should learn to recognize that youth social movements do not emerge from irrational and uncritical discourses.
They are, to a great degree, products of the political conditions and social environments where youthful and discerning minds wander and start to ask: What future awaits us in this kind of society?
Young people are often key actors in powerful social movements that transform the course of human history, wrote Sasha Costanza-Chock in 2012 (Berkman Center Research Publication). “Civil Rights movement, the transnational LGBTQ movement, successive waves of feminism, environmentalism and environmental justice, the labor, antiwar, and immigrant rights movements, and more. In each of these cases, young people took part in many ways, including through the appropriation of the ‘new media’ tools of their time, which they used to create, circulate, and amplify movement voices and stories.”
Historically, the youth played a central role in the shaping of the opposition against those in power, starting with the streets protests in the 1960s. When social ills and abuses from those in power are prevalent, it is usually the daring youth who are seen in the frontlines.
We can see a recent example of this in Hong Kong where protest rallies initiated by umbrella-wielding youth protesters have stretched for weeks. The protest movement has been sparked by an extradition bill that has triggered pent-up anger against China’s apparent rush to impose its anti-democratic influence on the former British colony.
Though prone to excessive behavior which only time can temper, young people have always been recognized by scholars as powerful agents of social change. For one, they have time and physical vigor on their side. Middle class university youths, in particular, are not yet tied to the necessities of earning a living, and are in a distant yet vantage position to study society. The result is often a desire for change that comes from the heart and gut, expressed in ways fresh and creative.
If truly Senator Dela Rosa wishes to engage the youth in meaningful dialogue, he must start from a place of respect. No one is indoctrinating the youth in our campuses, Mr. Senator. Don’t insult their intelligence.
If, in my case, I chose to be a leftist activist in my student days, that was my own decision based on my own analysis of Philippine society. I thank my parents and professors for respecting my autonomy.
That I didn’t at any point join the armed struggle was also of my own choice. Yet, those who did still earned my respect because they bravely stood by their decision and made no excuses. As people say, right or wrong, let history be the judge.
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