COTABATO CITY—Elementary and secondary school students will soon have a deeper understanding of the Bangsamoro struggle to attain genuine peace and order in Mindanao with the scheduled integration of its history in the Department of Education’s K-12 curriculum, a peace process officer said here recently.
The K-12 curriculum, introduced nationwide by DepEd in school year 2011-2012, consists of Kindergarten, six-year elementary education, four-year junior high school (Grades 7, 8, 9 and 10) and two-year senior high school (Grades 11 and 12). Grade 11 was initially enforced last June 13, 2016.
A report received here by the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao Gov. Mujiv Hataman from the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Secretary Teresita Deles said incorporating the history of Bangsamoro in the K-12 curriculum “is part of the government’s continued initiatives for transitional justice and reconciliation (TJR) which is a major dimension of the Bangsamoro peace process.”
Deles said OPAPP had worked with DepEd even before the TJR Commission report came out, adding that “the template for the pilot integration into the K-12 curriculum would be finished before the start of next SY.”
She added that OPAPP earlier held a seminar-workshop at the Cotabato City-based Notre Dame University for the government bureaucracy on the Bangsamoro narrative which later was piloted in several areas of Southern Philippines.
Deles said other initiatives of the Aquino administration “to help heal the wounds inflicted by the decades-long Mindanao conflict were also undertaken.”