Sara Duterte, DepEd secretary, loses the last bits of respect that teachers and the entire Filipino nation has for her. She has verbal diarrhea and spouts nothing but nonsense. She cannot even answer the simplest questions regarding her department’s projects such as public wifi but has the gall to spew malicious disinformation attacking the public’s civil rights. She lays the blame on mass protests on why there has been a two million drop in enrollees for this school year. Clearly, the wildly inept Duterte is divorced from reality and knows nothing but to cast prejudiced personal attacks.

For Duterte’s information, the leading reasons why Filipino youth are not inside classrooms are widespread poverty and hunger. Since 2017, not less than 59 million Filipinos are already suffering from hunger. Because of this, the age at which the youth are forced to work gets younger and younger. Since 2021, there has already been 1.37 million young Filipinos aged 5 to 17 that are forced to work because of extreme poverty. Among all countries in the whole world, this is the first time that child labor was reported to increase in magnitude. This figure is certainly worse in the countryside and hinterlands where poverty rates and starvation are more deeply felt.

There is also the aggressive commercialization of education. It is a great feat to afford tertiary education especially now that public universities and colleges continue dwindling while private schools asking for exorbitant matriculation thrive. In 2022, college drop-out rates were more than half – only 41.16% or four in every 10 students were able to finish their studies. But instead of strengthening the program for free education, DOF Sec. Benjamin Diokno is proposing the revision and gradual removal of funds for the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act. Thirty out of 1173 state universities and colleges will also suffer from billions of budget cuts for next year. In this direction, the youth’s lack of access to free education will worsen.

Amid all these problems besieging the educational system, is it not just right for the youth, their parents, teachers and the whole nation to protest and speak up? Duterte must not turn this into an issue since protesting and expressing their demands are part of the citizens’ rights. Obviously, Duterte’s intention is to attack the civil rights of the people and blame them for the fundamental problems that she cannot resolve. She also wants to gag the people so they cannot hold her accountable for her inutility and fascism.

Present conditions demand further strengthening and expansion of people’s struggles for quality and affordable education that is scientific, nationalist and mass-oriented. The inept DepEd Sec. Sara Duterte ang the entire reactionary government divorced from the realities and demands of the Filipino nation must only be exposed and repudiated.