If the youth is the nation’s hope, then what kind of future awaits the Filipino society when the current system deprives the youth of their basic rights and welfare? What future generation would be borne out of generations of youth steeped in ignorance and in the belief that education is a privilege? In the midst of these conditions, it is just and right for the youth, their teachers and educators as well as the entire Filipino masses to fight for adequate and immediate reforms to the national educational system. This is a step towards attaining a genuinely pro-people, scientific and national education for all.

NDF-Bikol wholly supports the education sector’s demand for the US-Marcos regime to address pertinent issues besieging the sector. Some of these are the issue of returning the academic calendar to its previous cycle, increasing the funds for the construction of classrooms and schools as well as for other student needs, raising the salaries and ensuring the benefits of teachers and the elimination of red-tagging against progressive students, teachers and academics.

Unlike the reactionary government that treats schools as factories of cheap labor and the youth as commodity, the revolutionary movement regards education highly. It is an integral part of forging a progressive and pro-people culture that serves the people and the future of the nation. The advancement of a free and universal education for all is part of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines’ 12-point program – no matter one’s class, race, age or status in life. The revolutionary movement aims to eradicate the culture of submission and to free every Filipino’s minds from ignorance, feudal and reactionary way of thinking.

To take their struggle for an educational system that serves the youth and the entire nation forward to a higher level, NDF-Bikol enjoins all nationalistic and progressive youth, teachers and academics to take part in the people’s democratic revolution. Only in its victory and in the construction of a truly independent, democratic and just societal system can long-term and substantial reforms and development to the educational sector be given way.