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Thursday, March 28, 2024

A great danger to young minds

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"Only a certain kind of government tells its citizens what they can and cannot read."

 

Commission on Higher Education chairman Prospero de Vera III said University of the Philippines officials should be “more prudent, circumspect, respectful and discerning” in issuing statements about its ban on “subversive” books and other documents from university libraries.

On Oct. 21, the Cordillera office of the commission released a memorandum urging private and public universities and colleges in the region to remove “subversive” materials from their libraries and online information services.

Regional Memorandum 113, series of 2021, said the office supported President Rodrigo Duterte’s institutionalization of the whole-of-nation approach to combating the communist rebellion.

According to the memo, subversive materials were “literatures (sic), references, publications, resources and items that contain pervasive ideologies of the Communist-Terrorist Groups.”

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The CHED-CAR added that exposure to such information affects individuals’ consciousness. If left unprocessed, they may radicalize the mind.

“It is our moral consciousness not to allow our youth to be engrained with peace-detrimental ideologies that could turn them as subversive (sic) and become communist-terrorist (sic). It is a public knowledge that these materials are also used in the infiltration and recruitment of students in our respective institutions,” the memorandum said.

Earlier, Kalinga State University, Isabela State University and Aklan State University removed publications related to the peace talks between the Philippine government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines from their libraries. This was done at the behest of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict.

De Vera said these schools were merely exercising their academic freedom.

As a result, UP issued a statement on the matter:

“UP Diliman categorically protests and condemns the military purge of what they call subversive books, documents, and materials from state universities. This is a violation of academic freedom to teach, research and expand knowledge freely and without prior restraint,” said Chancellor Fidel Nemenzo.

In a forum, Nemenzo also said that such efforts on the part of the government constitute a clear stifling of academic freedom, and that molding students to have a free, open and intrepid mind is only possible when they are exposed to the widest range of cultures and perspectives.

“We have faith in critical thinking,” he said, expressing confidence that our young people can make good decisions to discern between right and wrong.

Another response to the government’s action was the launch of Aswang sa Aklatan, a “free and easily accessible resource of endangered books and material” that the government has deemed subversive and mentally unhealthy.

Censorship or any attempt to control what people can or cannot read, watch, or listen to has no place in a civilized and enlightened society. Only the most insecure leaders will order a ban on books and other documents that provide readers information to help them make sense of their world.

Instead of trying to dictate on our young people what they can and cannot read, officials should instead work harder at helping the population with the “how” of reading, enabling them to separate facts from propaganda and fabrication, and allowing them to take principled positions based on the merit of what they observe — not based on what they are told to believe or mouth.

Keeping people in the dark by forbidding access to information is a move of the desperate. It is the greatest threat and danger to the development of a thinking people — unless our officials precisely do not want us to be such, so that we can be malleable and acquiescent to their every whim.

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