“That school was a safe haven for the children and teachers. Children were following their dreams. They were growing and thriving.”
— Ziauddin Yousafzai, Pakistani educator and education activist
SCHOOLS should be places where children can follow their dreams, grow and thrive. Parents send their children through school gates trusting that they will return home carrying books and stories, not wounds from gunfire.
In less than two months, that assumption has been shattered — twice.
On June 22, two male students, aged 14 and 15, allegedly opened fire at San Jose National High School in Tacloban City, killing three students and injuring 20. Then on Aug. 18, a male junior high school student at Ateneo de Zamboanga University shot and killed another student before taking his own life. Part of the attack was livestreamed through a body-worn camera.
Investigations continue, particularly into the Zamboanga shooting, and we should resist easy explanations about bullying, mental health, online games, or social media until the facts are established. But we need not wait for another shooting before asking difficult questions.
Violence involving children is not new in the Philippines. Children experience bullying, hazing, physical and sexual abuse, trafficking and online exploitation. In conflict-affected communities, some are vulnerable to recruitment by armed groups and violent extremist organizations. Children can be victims and witnesses of violence or be manipulated into becoming instruments of violence themselves.
What is deeply disturbing about Tacloban and Zamboanga is the entry of firearms and lethal student-on-student violence into schools.
The Philippines is not the United States, where recurrent school shootings have become a national tragedy. Guns are more strictly regulated here, and school shootings remain rare. Two incidents do not constitute an epidemic. But two fatal shootings in less than two months tell us that something we once regarded as almost unimaginable can happen here.
The firearms themselves deserve scrutiny.
In Tacloban, one weapon reportedly came from a police officer, while another was registered to a security agency. In Zamboanga, the adolescent shooter’s father was a Bureau of Customs police chief. Authorities reported that the boy obtained firearms belonging to his father that had been left in the vehicle that took him to school.
Perhaps, the first question is not how children brought guns into school, but how they got hold of guns in the first place.
Police officers, law enforcers, security personnel and other authorized gun owners carry an enormous responsibility. An improperly stored firearm is not merely a lapse in gun safety. Where children are present, it becomes a child-protection issue.
There is another uncomfortable fact: all three alleged shooters were male.
Three adolescents cannot establish a pattern, but gender cannot be ignored when discussing violence. Serious interpersonal violence worldwide is disproportionately perpetrated by males. We need to ask what boys learn about masculinity — how they are expected to respond to humiliation, rejection, anger and conflict, and whether admitting fear, sadness or distress is still regarded as weakness. Teaching boys that seeking help is a form of strength must be part of violence prevention.
But guns and gender are parts of a larger ecosystem.
A child lives within a family, peer group, neighborhood, school and, increasingly, a digital world. Vulnerabilities can develop across these spaces. Traffickers and sexual predators exploit them. Drug syndicates, criminal and armed groups exploit them. Violent extremist networks can exploit alienation and grievance.
Social media adds another dimension. The livestreaming of the Zamboanga attack is disturbing because violence becomes not only an act but also a spectacle with an audience. This does not mean social media caused the shooting. It means children’s digital lives can no longer be separated from their safety and well-being.
This is also why the controversy over confidential funds in the Department of Education deserves discussion beyond personalities and politics. Schools can face genuine security threats, including trafficking, recruitment by armed and extremist groups, organized criminal activity, and serious threats of violence. Whether confidential funds are necessary and how they are used must be subject to law, safeguards, auditing and accountability. But protecting schools requires the capacity to identify threats before they reach the classroom.
Security, however, cannot mean turning every school into a fortress.
Closed-circuit television cameras, guards, controlled entry and emergency protocols matter. So do guidance counselors, teachers trained to recognize distress, functioning anti-bullying mechanisms, confidential reporting channels, digital literacy, referral systems and close communication among schools, families, social workers, communities and law enforcement.
Students themselves must be part of this protective ecosystem. They often know before adults do when a classmate is being bullied, threatening someone, posting disturbing messages, carrying a weapon or becoming dangerously isolated. They need trusted adults to whom they can speak without fear of ridicule or retaliation.
The Philippines still has an opportunity that societies where school shootings have become recurrent have largely lost: we can act while these incidents remain exceptional.
After Tacloban and Zamboanga, it is tempting to ask: What is happening to our children?
Perhaps, adults should ask a harder question: What are we failing to do to protect them?
A child carrying a gun through a school gate is the last link in a much longer chain of failures. We must break that chain long before another child reaches the gate.
Our children should learn how to live together, not how to survive one another.
