What has happened to the political alliance of the two dynastic families? Well, they are now separated (ala Kathniel breakup) and their conflict is getting worse. Next question: How are those who supported their candidacies? Ipit at gipit. They forgot that any support given is done because it is right, not entirely because of the person. What if the person commits too many wrongs, especially the one drunk on power?
At home, magkapatid will support each other no matter what. Is that support the right thing to do? When supporting a sibling with drug addiction, what will ultimately happen to relationships within the home, as well as outside?
At school, the teacher will correct the student’s paper and give a follow-up lesson and this will be reflected in the low or failing grade. If the wrong is not corrected, it will not be learned; rather, the student will later learn to cheat himself and others inside the school, as well as outside. Puno’t dulo ng problema: supporting people even when they are wrong.
In “The Poverty of Our Freedom: Essays 2012-2019” by Honneth (2023), educating “good citizens” is key. The new book continues: “Some appeal to the constraint of state neutrality to caution against overburdening school education with political values alien to its purpose; others, for example concerned parents, complain that placing too much emphasis on the theme of democracy might get in the way of promoting career skills. When these kinds of well-worn reservations meet with unexpected public support owing to the growth of multiculturalism, which does in fact speak in favor of removing certain ideological relics from our schools, we are faced with a vague mixture of truths and falsehoods that leads to the rejection of all forms of partiality in school education as equally harmful or objectionable. The political constraint of state neutrality is thereby extended to the point where even the very idea of a democratic education is no longer a matter of normative common sense.
“To be sure, these radicalized conceptions of state neutrality have not yet become pervasive in contemporary political philosophy. There is an ongoing debate about how to properly adapt this part of the legacy of liberal thought to the increasing heterogeneity of cultural values in present-day societies.”
The Filipino people ratified the 1987 Constitution prohibiting political dynasties, among others. Have we learned from this? The involvement of the powerful clans in the two branches of government is now pegged at a whopping 70 percent.
“The considerations I have advanced so far have been of a negative sort. The criticism of some tendencies in contemporary democratic theory has already revealed the premises on which we will have to rely, if we are looking to understand the public school system as a necessary complement of democratic decision-making, and in fact as an integral and prior part of it. We have seen that we must neither sacrifice the guiding hypothesis that it is possible for education to foster the capacity for public deliberation even outside the specific contexts of early childhood socialization and traditional ethical communities, nor must we jeopardize the authority of the constitutional state to infuse democratic goals into the educational structures it sets up. Viewed from a positive angle, we can say that foremost among the tasks of a democratic constitutional state is the task to provide educational opportunities that will equally enable each of its future citizens to participate in the public legitimation of his or her own choices ‘without fear or shame.’” Honneth is just being honest, especially in the all-is-not-lost case of the Philippines.
Viewed again from a positive angle, all we are saying is the need to remind ourselves, at the height of massive disunity after the EDSA People Power Revolution ousting the 20-year Marcos dictatorship in 1986, that we need to critically think of finally answering the question: Why is it that after countless elections, our standards have not gone up?
In “Understanding the Self,” Cely Magpantay and Riza Rowan-Danao (2018) allotted a 10-page book chapter on “political self,” its perspectives, and an activity assigned for the UTS co-learners. Vote! Vote! Vote! is the chapter’s battle cry.
Undeniably, our political as well as socioeconomic commitment to substantive values matters more. That is how we thank ourselves when we spell out unity (with T.Y.). Not by name.
DC Alviar
Professor DC Alviar serves as a member of the steering committee of the Philippine International Studies Organization (PHISO). He was part of National University’s community extension project that imparted the five disciplines of a learning organization (Senge, 1990) to communities in a local government unit. He writes and edits local reports for Mega Scene. He graduated with a master’s degree in development communication from the University of the Philippines Open University in Los Baños. He recently defended a dissertation proposal for his doctorate degree in communication at the same graduate school under a Philippine government scholarship grant. He was editor-in-chief of his high school paper Ang Ugat and the Adamson News.
