Forty-five years ago, corruption in government was one of the major issues which led to EDSA People Power and the change in government. A few months before the event, at the lowest ebb of our country, I wrote a widely appreciated article in the leading newspaper titled, “Values – Cornerstones of a Society’s Destiny.” My contention then was that changing some people in government, changing a whole government or even changing the system of government will not solve our problems as long as we do not change our values. Our country’s history since then has proven this view correct.
Today, almost half a century later, corruption has not only persisted through several administrations, but has become progressively worse, costing up to 40 percent of our annual national budget per some estimates. This easily amounts to trillions of pesos.
To solve the problem, successive leaders have created (in addition to the Constitution-mandated Office of the Ombudsman) special commissions, i.e., Presidential Commission Against Graft and Corruption (Magsaysay); Presidential Anti-Graft Commission (Macapagal-Arroyo); Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission (Duterte). All these special bodies “eventually disappeared into irrelevance,” as a columnist put it.
Today, to keep the Filipino people’s ire from boiling over in the face of unmitigated corruption in the use of government funds for its flood control projects, President Marcos Jr. again created another special body, the Independent Commission for Infrastructure, to investigate and take appropriate action against all perpetrators, regardless of their position or influence. Once again, our long- suffering countrymen’s hopes and expectations for the full accountability of all guilty parties have been revived.
But judging from past experience, many still ask if this latest move will really provide the lasting solution our country needs. Will identifying, prosecuting, convicting and imprisoning some guilty parties in government and their accomplices in the private sector prevent future epidemics of corruption? Or are these steps just superficial band-aid remedies, as our long history has shown?
I strongly believe that the solution lies not in short-term fixes, but in a long-term reset of our values system (including values we preach but whose opposites we practice). The solution I propose is a generational task, but its fruits are also generational. It is realistic, not just a pie-in-the sky aspiration. I’m referring to institutionalizing in our schools a values education program, starting in the primary grades and covering all levels in our K-12 curriculum.
Why do I know this works? Because it is at the heart of the basic education system of the only ASEAN country which is exemplary in many aspects of national life – economic, political, civic and social. I refer to Singapore, the first and at present the only first world country in the ASEAN community. Singapore has zero tolerance for corruption in public service, and its anti-corruption culture is reinforced by proven, effective measures to root out and severely penalize offenders.
Let’s look at what Singapore has done to get to where it is today. An integral pillar of Singapore’s pursuit of its national vision is its basic education system, which places strong emphasis on character development and values education. This is institutionalized in what it calls Character and Citizenship Education (CCE), a cross-disciplinary program that permeates the educational curriculum, starting in the primary grades (the child’s earliest academic experience). As the name implies, CCE’s goal is to produce citizens with good moral values, civic awareness and social skills with which they can positively and productively engage their total environment.
Using Singapore’s decades-long (since 1959) CCE model as a guide and without reinventing the wheel, my simple proposal is to make character development and values education an integral part of our own basic education system (K-12). This calls for recalibrating our present system beyond the intermittent teaching of Civics and GMRC (good manners and right conduct), which might not even be part of the present curriculum. A paradigm shift in the training and attitude of teachers is also called for, because in Singapore, “every teacher is a CCE teacher.”
In my view, deeply instilling the right values in our youth at the earliest possible age is the most effective and lasting solution, not only to endemic corruption, but to other social ills that plague our country today. Ultimately, it is also the key to changing our fortunes as a people.
To end this piece, think about this: Mayor Vico Sotto of Pasig has become the rare “poster boy” for integrity and good governance by a young leader in government. Imagine if we had a hundred, a thousand or even a hundred thousand Vico Sottos in public service. This is what a deliberate, encompassing values education can help accomplish, as Singapore has been proving to the world for a long time.
* * *
Gil Yuzon worked in the marketing communications industry and is presently a writer and book author on sock-civic issues.