A WOODEN rifle at 13, a Springfield at 16 and a Garand at 17. I learned to carry each one of them on my frail shoulders in my my youth. During training or in parades, in the rain or under the blistering sun, in khaki or in fatigues.
I went through the whole training process that, advocates say, aim to develop a patriotic youth and prepare them to fight for honor and love of country. I had Preparatory Military Training or PMT in high school and the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) in college. I would like to believe that my training helped shape my adult life. Alas, that opportunity is not available to all anymore.
I was 15 when I entered college but because I was sickly, it was not until the following year that I enrolled in the ROTC. The experience shocked me but only initially.
Most people look forward to Sundays but not those my age. We dreaded the weekends, hated them in fact, because they meant haircuts, ironing starched uniforms, reciting the general orders, crawling under imaginary barbed wires on earth that smelled of human waste and listening to officers who perversely delight in barking incomprehensible orders such as “Produce Water!” when they wanted you to sweat by doing push-ups or squats.
I lasted only half the term in the field on my second year because I was appointed the unit’s press relations officer. Sundays were no longer dreadful but boring. Many times I wished that I was with the rest of the guys, exposed to rain and sun, unintelligible orders and the smell of humanness in the soil. I watched them in envy during Christ the King parades, still erect and on attention even when they were not holding rifles but candles in their hands.
The ROTC was a significant part of our college life. It was a rite of passage just like circumcision when we were young: painful when it’s being done but shameful if you have not gone through it. And like circumcision, the ROTC is now voluntary but unlike it, there is no peer pressure to undergo college military training.
They’re talking about reinstating mandatory ROTC training. Actually, they have been talking about it for many years now but it was only recently when the proposal got a major push from a very powerful source. Mandatory citizens’ training is a campaign promise that President Duterte appeared to have forgotten until recently when he asked Congress to scrap the law that made the course voluntary.
As expected, there is opposition to the plan, mostly coming from the same quarters that lobbied against the passage of a single national identity card. I wonder if these people have even undergone the ROTC because they talk about militarization when there is none. They’re not blaming the ROTC for the Marcos martial law, are they?
Let’s revive the ROTC. If it does not succeed in making its graduates more patriotic and civic-spirited, it will at least teach them the value of sacrifice.