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Is he a fault-finding meddler? Or is former school supervisor Antonio Calipjo Go, who strafed error-studded textbooks for over 12 years, a ?gadfly??
The 57-year-old critic last year quit his lonely campaign to root out flawed textbooks. But this January, Go came back with a vengeance. Inquirer published his new critique of the Grade Six textbook English for You and Me. In a review titled ?Burn After Reading,? Go documents over 500 errors in this one book.
Samples: ?The engine of the tractor is sleeping.? ?Comfortable living means having the comfort.? ?Can we take care of the bird at home? Just like in a rehabilitation center!? ?The turtles squirm independently.? ?A ferryman worked as the transport chief of the rafts.?
There are other textbook critics. A study by Joel Sarmenta and Melvin Yabut of the University of Asia and the Pacific found public school textbooks prettified the Marcos dictatorship. ?Martial law textbooks continue to miseducate,? historian Ambeth Ocampo complained. Parents pinpointed glaring mistakes in science textbooks. Are they nitpickers or gadflies?
To describe critics of rulers, the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah chose a term familiar to his mostly agrarian listeners. Insects that pestered their cattle. ?The gadfly cometh from the north.?
Socrates goaded Athens? leaders for misrule. In his Apologia (339BC), Plato quotes Socrates: ?I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state and all day long, and in all places, always fastening on you, arousing, persuading and reproaching.?
The term forms part of today?s political vocabulary. Some of the credit goes to modern ?gadflies? in politics, from music to literature.
Mohandas Gandhi confronted the British Raj with fasts and teachings. His moral clout won independence for India. Centuries of protest against racial discrimination preceded Martin Luther King?s ?I Have a Dream? speech. And 46 years later, the first black American took his oath: President Barack Obama.
Soviet censors castigated composer Dimtri Shostakovich in 1936 and 1938. To get back, he composed ?The Gadfly.? It celebrates feats of a 19th-century freedom fighter whose work ?stings authorities.? In The Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn exposed communist suppression. Miguel de Cervantes flayed the mores of his time in the 1613 novel Don Quixote de la Mancha.
?(From Cervantes) we got the word ?quixotic? and ?tilting at windmills,? notes a British Broadcasting Corporation feature. ?Both fit ?gadfly? to a T?. The human gadfly stings the conscience of a society.?
?If the gadfly keeps at it, society will react in some fashion,? the BBC homepage essay adds. ?It may swish its tail to drive off the gadfly. But ever once in a while it may correct something that it hadn?t even realized was wrong.?
But it is a ?generally a thankless job,? BBC cautions. ?(In this) the gadfly has much in common with the whistleblower?. People with something to hide will go to almost any length to discredit one who brings their behavior to light.?
Thus, furious Athenians forced Socrates to drink hemlock poison. Gandhi and King were assassinated. Like Boris Pasternak, who wrote Dr. Zhivago, Solzhenitsyn was barred from receiving the Nobel Prize. He died in exile in Vermont, United States.
Here, a gadfly or whistleblower invariably ends up battered. Acsa Ramirez denounced Land Bank graft. NBI agents shoved her into a lineup of criminals as the President preened for photographers. Expensive YouTube features today skewer Rodolfo ?Jun? Lozada. He testified on the First Gentleman?s fingerprints in the $327-million broadband scandal.
Textbook publishing is lucrative. Over 25 million textbooks were distributed over the last six years. International standard book numbers (ISBN) rose from 3,770 to 5,139 in eight years. World Bank underwrote Loan Number 7393-PH for school texts. The Department of Education asked for P2.06 billion for textbooks in 2007.
?A cabal of columnists (went) hammer and tongs against Go after his campaign resulted in the Department of Education?s banning the materials,? Inquirer?s Fernando del Mundo wrote. ?The torrent of invectives in Op-Ed pages? came in the midst of the refilling by alleged extortion case that a court dismissed earlier.?
Most criticism didn?t rebut textbook errors. Instead, they zapped Go?s bona fides. The Philippine Press Council asked Go?s rejoinders be published under fairness norms. The PPC is still waiting.
Delay stokes demands that ?right of reply? bills (House Bill 3306 and Senate Bill 2150) be passed. These would compel editors to surrender prerogatives to complainants. This is unconstitutional ?prior restraint.? Both the National Telecommunications Commission decision and Miami Herald-Torino case underscore this. But this foot-dragging invites unneeded threats to the press.
?The columnists? campaign last year to shoot the messenger? killed (Go?s) message that defective textbooks are one of the root causes of the decline in Philippine education,? Del Mundo wrote.
Indeed, the cost to society of silencing irritating individuals is extortionate. ?If you kill a man like me, you will injure yourselves more than you will injure me,? Socrates said before his execution.
The ultimate victims in this textbook brawl are not the gadflies. They?re ordinary Filipinos parents. As the old proverb says, ?They?ll pawn even their lives to educate their children.?
