Teach what’s ours

By Herman M. Lagon

Show a Grade 6 pupil in Iloilo a map, and Boracay may be easy to find. Panatag Shoal, Ayungin Shoal, or Pag-asa Island may take a little longer. No surprise there. They are far from home. Yet what happens in those waters is not far from our lives. It can affect the fish we eat, the families who live from the sea, our food and energy security, and even how young Filipinos understand their country.

That is why many welcome House Bill No. 10587, the proposed West Philippine Sea Education Act. Filed by Deputy Speakers Paolo Ortega and Jefferson Khonghun with Representatives Zia Alonto Adiong, Rodge Gutierrez, and Ernesto Dionisio Jr., it would bring age-appropriate WPS lessons into schools and universities, covering the Constitution, the Maritime Zones Act, UNCLOS, and the 2016 arbitral award. It also provides for teacher training, updated materials, and research.

For us in Iloilo, however, the idea sounds familiar.

We were already there.

Last February, Gov. Arthur Defensor Jr. signed the Iloilo Legislative Ordinance for Values Formation Through Education on the West Philippine Sea, aptly shortened to I-LOVE WPS. Authored by Provincial Board Member Rolando Distura and sponsored by Jason Gonzales, the ordinance brings the West Philippine Sea into classrooms across Iloilo’s 42 municipalities and Passi City. The province also provided initial funding and formed a team to develop lessons and learning materials. The Philippine Coast Guard later recognized Iloilo for showing how national awareness can begin in local classrooms.

That deserves recognition. Iloilo did not wait for the argument to become fashionable in Manila. A province facing the Visayan Sea understood that an issue occurring on the country’s western maritime frontier still belongs to us. Being far away does not make something less ours to care about.

An Ilonggo child need not live in Palawan to care about the WPS. In the same way, a child in Zambales can care about Kanlaon. We teach children about places they may never visit because citizenship should reach farther than home. Distura made essentially this point when he connected the WPS to food security, fisherfolk livelihoods, and economic growth. For an archipelagic country of more than 7,600 islands, knowing our waters should be as basic as knowing our provinces.

The idea is hardly new. As far back as 2015, the DFA was already proposing that students learn about the country’s maritime entitlements and marine resources. Importantly, it framed the proposal as education rather than indoctrination. That distinction matters even more today.

A WPS lesson should never sound like a campaign rally. A good teacher should be able to put a map on the board and say: Here is our exclusive economic zone. Here is what UNCLOS provides. Here is what the 2016 tribunal decided. Here is what it did not decide. Here is China’s position. Here is the Philippine position. Now examine the evidence.

The 2016 arbitral award gave the Philippines important legal victories, affirming our rights in the EEZ and rejecting the legal basis for China’s sweeping nine-dash-line claim. But this is exactly where good teaching matters. Having sovereign rights over an EEZ is not the same as owning everything inside it as national territory. We have specific rights to resources and economic activities there. Questions over who owns disputed land features are different — and the tribunal did not settle them.

A student who understands the difference between territorial sea, exclusive economic zone, continental shelf, sovereignty, and sovereign rights becomes harder to fool — from any direction. If tomorrow a politician exaggerates our legal position, the student should question that too. If Beijing presents the nine-dash line on TikTok as historical fact, students should know enough to ask, “Where is the evidence?”

That is informed patriotism — loving your country without giving up your ability to think.

And we badly need it because the dispute is no longer fought only with ships. It is fought through videos, memes, edited clips, anonymous accounts, influencers, maps, selective history, and politicians repeating talking points their audiences rarely have time to verify. HB 10587’s proponents explicitly cited young Filipinos’ vulnerability to online misinformation as one reason for institutionalizing WPS education. Akbayan’s Chel Diokno has similarly argued for mandatory WPS education partly as an answer to Chinese disinformation, and official congressional records show that he and several colleagues filed HB 1625 in July 2025 to mandate the study of the WPS in public and private educational institutions.

Encouragingly, support for WPS education crosses political lines. Sen. Risa Hontiveros and lawmakers from different camps have also strongly defended our maritime rights. That matters because the WPS should never belong to one administration, party, or political color.

Some public officials have been criticized for echoing Beijing’s narratives even as Filipino vessels and fisherfolk face harassment at sea. HB 10587’s proponents used the much harsher word “traitors.” I would not use that label lightly. Disagreement is part of a healthy democracy.

But keeping an open mind does not mean accepting every claim. When officials brush aside documented harassment or echo a foreign government without scrutiny, we should ask questions. Question Manila. Question Washington. Question Beijing too. Intellectual independence means applying the same skepticism to everyone.

Teachers therefore need more than another PowerPoint deck. They need reliable maps, understandable legal concepts, primary sources, case studies, and training. HB 10587 calls for coordination among key education, maritime, foreign affairs, and security agencies — and rightly so. The WPS is geography, history, law, environment, food security, diplomacy, and citizenship all at once.

Imagine what students could learn from that. Younger pupils could locate Philippine waters on a map. In science, they could study reefs and fisheries; in economics, the livelihoods of coastal families. Older students could examine the arbitral award, competing claims, maritime law, and diplomacy. Nobody needs to shout “Atin ito!” every five minutes. Teach the evidence well, and students will understand why the issue matters.

Iloilo can become a useful proof of concept here. Its ordinance provides for instructional materials, awareness campaigns, teacher capacity building, poster and essay contests, debates, and monitoring of learning outcomes. But I hope implementation goes deeper than patriotic tarpaulins and one commemorative program every September. The real test will come when an Ilonggo student can explain the WPS calmly to a parent over dinner — not merely recite that it is “ours,” but explain what exactly our rights are, where they come from, why they matter, and what peaceful means exist to defend them.

That is the kind of formation schools do best: seeing the whole picture before judging, examining evidence before choosing a position, and then acting according to what facts and conscience demand. It is a habit useful far beyond geopolitics. In an era when a 30-second video can manufacture outrage before the truth has even put on its slippers, teaching young people how to discern may be one of education’s most patriotic jobs.

There is also something beautifully Ilonggo about having moved early on this. We are nowhere near Panatag or Ayungin. From Iloilo, the WPS can feel like something happening beyond our horizon. Yet perhaps distance is precisely the point. A country holds together because we learn to care about places we may never see and people we may never meet.

Somewhere off Zambales or Palawan, a Filipino fisherman should know that children far from those waters understand why his work — and his right to be there — matters.

Put the map in the classroom. Teach the law. Teach the history. Teach China’s claims too, then teach students how to examine them. Teach the reefs, the fish, the livelihoods, the arbitral award, and the difference between sovereignty and sovereign rights. Teach them to question Manila when necessary and Beijing when necessary. Give teachers evidence rather than propaganda, and give children something far more durable than anger: understanding.

Iloilo has already shown that the lesson can begin locally. Congress now has the chance to make it national. Because a country becomes much harder to mislead when its children know where it stands.

***

Doc H fondly describes himself as a “student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.