Taps [noun]

A call blown at military funerals and memorial services

Like the group of distinguished executives of several Manila institutions of higher learning, I share the serious concern about the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) program. But to abolish the program in view of its perceived faults is not a solution at all. With all due respect, it may even generate bigger problems than the original-which the group notably views as cancer.
Assuming for the moment the possibility of the serious malaise carcinoma, medical scientists would agree that at the outset rigorous and scientific diagnostics are in order. Naturally this would rely on hard empirical evidence and set aside misleading biases and false impressions.

What is the real nature and character of the ROTC program at the present? What are its problems? What are the causes and effects? Why and how?

The ROTC program exists and operates in the context of the education and defense systems - both of which are important parts of the larger system of national development and security policy. This potentially synergistic relationship between education and defense needs to be understood better, in view of the systemic link between national development and national security, a vital point relevant to a reformed and enhanced ROTC program.

There is of course no denying the profound changes in ROTC over time, including its many shortcomings which interestingly are in many respects similar to other management systems in the Philippine bureaucracy - of which ROTC is a subpart. They must, however, be dealt with resolutely, addressed directly and accurately, strengthening its management system and nourishing its crucial goal of contributing to developing better citizens.

Several points may be considered in any effort to reform and strengthen the ROTC program:

- Scientific inquiry into the ROTC management system (needless to state including its “environmental” context) to ascertain problem areas, particularly their causes and effects.

- Review of the ROTC philosophy specially in the context of new holistic understandings/theories of national development and security (e.g., recent inquiries pursued in the AFP Joint Command and Staff College, the NDCP Foundation; and the ISIP-Vanguard Foundation).

- Appointment of better prepared and suited cadres to manage and train corps of cadets in campuses across subcultures nationwide.

- As a discrete course required in a tertiary degree program, ROTC needs to employ modern teaching-learning technologies and while managed by military cadres (as faculty members) must ultimately submit to the final authority of university officials in the institutional hierarchy.

- Malefactors in the program dealt with properly via the administrative system, or the criminal justice system as the case may be.

Indeed as the above mentioned group of academic elites rightly contend: “There must be a way” to meet constitutional imperatives of national defense and citizenship training. Already there is abundant and helpful evidence on the correlation between education and development. Perhaps we need only to inquire more into development and security as mentioned earlier.

Significantly, there seems to be an even more potent educational system that effectively combines and mobilizes society’s teachers, namely: parents-classroom tutors- government officials-religious-mass media working synergistically together to make good citizens of society’s members.

Against this backdrop, it is evident what role a reformed ROTC program may play in helping cultivate desirable qualities in the modern Filipino: love of country and mindful of the public or national interest; rational and disciplined; entrepreneurial and risk taker, selfless and considerate of fellowmen, tenacious and persevering in the pursuit of goals.

The lament of the group of educational leaders is a critique not on the ROTC program alone. It is a timely wake up call on citizenship training and its outcomes-the development of our youth in whose hands lie the future of the country.

Pending a scientific inquiry into the nature and character of the ROTC program, it may not be amiss to say that the program’s output and outcomes depend largely on the quality of its leaders, specially program cadres and their superiors in the bureaucracy.