LIFE
My son’s stand against ROTC
“Juvenile Murderers’ Workshop: The Mandatory ROTC”
The “Reserved Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC)” program is going to shape the country for the killing done by adolescents to the country’s adversaries; disposing the students in suggestive conditions hinting the act of murder that increases violent tendencies in academic environments. As stressful as we already are, senior high school students are actually more prone to commit violence, and more. A study by Zimbardo (1997), proves how adolescents can actually misinterpret their roles and end up mistreating their fellow youngsters. The ROTC program is no different from the experiment entitled “Stanford Prison Experiment” conducted by Zimbardo. The said program would divide the cadets from the officers and that would create a condescending relationship between the adolescents involved similar to the officer and the prisoner subjects in Zimbardo’s experiment. In fact the Philippine history already proved how harmful this relationship could be for the students. The record states that a hazing scandal in the University of Santo Tomas (UST) resulted in the death of Mr. Mark Welson Chua who paved the way for the establishment of the Republic Act 9163 or the “National Service Training Program Law” by revealing the hidden agenda of the university’s ROTC units. The attitudes of the officers are easily manipulated by the ROTC program’s statuses. This hierarchy system proves to only mold and create belligerent and violent response from the youth, and as I go deeper to what the mandatory implementation of ROTC does to today’s juveniles, the realization that the program is pointless grows even stronger.
As we all must know, the ROTC program is on its way to be implemented in senior high schools around the Philippines and it’s guaranteed that the students will find this additional program to be very stressful. As senior high school students, we are obliged to join the mandatory ROTC program. Given the current condition of the SHS students, we ask the question; “Aren’t the Filipino SHS students pressured and stressed enough by the academic curriculum?” Basing it on my personal experience as a senior high school student attending in the University of the Cordilleras, technical and academic requirements are stressful enough to make us feel pressured all throughout the school year. That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m actually just using these academic requirements as an excuse to avoid doing physical activities. In fact, in our university, we take our PE course seriously. The students do their requirements in PE class very earnestly. We do requirements such as the weekly videotaping of ourselves repeatedly doing the given task until perfected, a requirement we’re obliged to comply with in order to pass the course. I could just imagine how fatigue my body gets after repeatedly doing the task for a whole day, just to achieve the goal of completing the said requirement. Considering the fact that the ROTC program has been known for its reputation of strict disciplining and harsh treatment of its trainees/cadets, adding the ROTC program in this already stressful environment would only instill more pressure and anxiety to the SHS students.
The mandatory ROTC program serves to instill patriotism to the Filipino youth as it was stated to be one of the main reasons why President Rodrigo Duterte is eager to implement the ROTC program, stated in a Rappler Article by Mendoza and Roylo (2017) and an Update PH Article by Seloza (2017), but along patriotism, the youth would be directly exposed to brainwashing turning them to soldiers that can be easily manipulated. It is a fact that war cannot be avoided; it’s always present as long as people manage to find things to argue about. It’s given that a country as small as ours would need to strengthen their military defenses to handle an outbreak of war and other types of similar crises. This eventually resulted to the implementation of ROTC, but this mandatory program could actually be considered as just a pointless brainwashing program.
There are students such as myself who thinks the ROTC program could actually be helpful in improving the country’s military defense, but is not significant enough to be mandatory to the extent of sacrificing our precious time given our hectic academic schedule. At some time in my life, I’m assuming I would eventually realize how important military work is for the sake of the country, just as everybody else does as they slowly develop maturity. And that should be the right time for me to decide to join military programs such as the ROTC, not when I’m barely surviving an academic week at school. But since the implementation of the ROTC program will be mandatory, it will not only make it harder for me to handle my academic schedules, it will also bring me and my fellow SHS students, great stress. Before implementing this mandatory ROTC program, they should have reviewed the academic curriculum of senior high schools and checked the background and condition of Filipino universities/colleges/academies that are also barely surviving in the handling of the newly implemented senior high school, especially since it’s not a voluntary program and students who would rather focus on their academic status would be forced to comply. Ensuring the amount of reserved corps produced by the program but at the same time reducing their work efficiency. Along with that, they should have also improved the country’s military equipment first. We all know actual soldiers don’t even matter in today’s current war fares. Looking into it; it is more on the capability of the technology and equipment such as the nuclear bombs, and the killer chemicals that are capable enough to destroy an entire country. Foot soldiers cannot prevent these modern war tactics, and it’s giving more reasons as to why the mandatory ROTC program is seemingly pointless. It is a very narrow-minded act to bring back a program that resulted to such tragic events, just so we can see them unfold once again in different forms, especially now since actual soldiers are slowly losing their value in the modern warfare as we move up to new generations. Taking the country’s military equipment condition into consideration and comparing them to other countries, at this point, the implementation of the mandatory ROTC program would be a process of brainwashing adolescents to be the hopeless meat shields for the country in case of a national emergency.
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References:
Felipe, C. (April 1, 2004). UST student gets death. The Philippine Star. Retrieved from
Marcela, V. (2017, February). Duterte approves mandatory ROTC for Senior High
students. CNN Philippines. Retrieved from
Mendoza, R. and Roylo, M. (2017, March). Rethinking the mandatory ROTC program. Rappler. Retrieved from
Revisiting the role of the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC). (2016, January). Pampubliko. Retrieved from
Romero, A. (2017, April). Duterte: ROTC or conscription?. The Philippine Star. Retrieved from
Seloza, G. (2017, February). Mandatory ROTC to instill patriotism to Filipino youth. Update Philippines. Retrieved from http://www.update.ph/2017/02/mandatory-rotc-to-instill-patriotism-to-filipino-youth/14215
Zimbardo, P. (2007). The Lucifer Effect: Understanding how good people turn evil. Retrieved from http://www.lucifereffect.com
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