Ferdinand Marcos Sr. once held up the professionalization of teaching as a mark of national development. Yet this recognition rang hollow as the state failed the very people expected to carry forward and benefit from its education agenda. In one of the Martial Law period’s starkest contradictions, a regime that promised to elevate the profession actually presided over its decline.
“We owe it to Marcos Sr. for the professionalization of the teaching profession. But then again, by the end of the Marcos era, teaching had lost its prestige as an occupation. Teachers, beginning with the Martial Law period, were severely underpaid, extremely overworked,” said Dr. Michael D. Pante, associate professor at the Department of History of the Dr. Rosita G. Leong School of Social Sciences, Ateneo de Manila University.
Pante examines this contradiction in his book, The Impact of Martial Law on Philippine Education, 1972-1986: Foregrounding Teachers’ Perspectives , launched last October 26 at an event jointly organized by the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) and the Ateneo de Manila University.
Dr. Pante’s book is the first published historical account of Philippine education during the Marcos years to examine both public and private institutions, from basic to higher education, on a national scale. Drawing on teachers’ experiences, Pante places the labor behind education at the center of a history often told through government policies and institutional changes.
Written with a grant from the NHCP, the book underscores the history of education as a history of labor: of who bears the cost of education policy, whose working conditions are undervalued in reform efforts, and the mass resistance of teachers that followed.
He examines how the Marcos dictatorship’s education reforms—from sweeping curricular changes to the professionalization of teaching—reshaped classrooms, knowledge production, and teachers’ roles in society. Despite these, education’s share of the national budget plummeted, salaries remained inadequate, and working conditions deteriorated. As their profession became increasingly proletarianized, teachers organized alongside blue-collar workers to fight for their economic and political rights.
“Ang mga guro ang unang nakapansin sa mga nangyayari sa ating lipunan noong panahon ng Martial Law… Ang aklat na ito’y hindi lamang tungkol sa nakaraan. Ito rin ay tungkol sa ating kasalukuyan. Hinahamon tayo nitong isipin kung para saan nga ba talaga ang edukasyon. Ito ba ay isang karapatan para sa lahat ng Pilipino o isang kalakal na maaaring bilhin lamang ng may kakayahan?” (“Teachers were the first to notice the social upheavals of Martial Law… This book is not only about the past. It is also about our present. It challenges us to think about what education is really for. Is it a right shared by all Filipinos or a commodity that can only be bought by those who can afford it?”), shared former ACT Partylist Representative Teacher France Castro in a review of the book.
“Mike Pante has given us not only an essential history, but a moving tribute to the great awakeners and keepers of our collective conscience,” said academic Dr. Caroline S. Hau of Kyoto University.
Its release comes as the country continues to reckon with the state of its education system under the presidency of Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. via the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM II): in its final report, released in January 2026, the body highlighted persistent problems in Philippine education, including heavy teacher workloads and chronic underfunding.
More than four decades after the dictatorship ended, Pante’s book calls for a reckoning with the promises made in the name of educational progress. Any effort to reform Philippine education must confront not only what the state promises, but what it owes the people who make education possible.
The Impact of Martial Law on Philippine Education, 1972–1986: Foregrounding Teachers’ Perspectives is available through the Official NHCP Bookstore Portal or at the NHCP Central Office Bookstore located on T.M. Kalaw Street, Ermita, Manila.
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