IN his State of the Nation Address, President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. listed among the priority bills he proposes to this year's Congress the revival of the mandatory Reserve Officers' Training Course (ROTC). We supported the bill on the same subject previously, and we hope that this time the new bill will be successful and pass into law.
We have never been able to understand why mandatory ROTC was scrapped. We took the course every Saturday during our freshman and sophomore years at the University of the Philippines (UP) in the 1960s. Never were we even aware that it was mandatory. We simply thought it was an identifying mark of being a student of UP and a necessary preparation to becoming a citizen of a great nation.
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