Our children’s scaffolding
The tragic shooting at a school in Tacloban, where two teenage boys killed three of their classmates, has understandably focused public attention on guns, school security, bullying, and the emotional state of the two suspects. These are all legitimate concerns.
It is tempting to look for a single explanation. Violent video games. Social media. Broken families. Poor parenting. Mental health. Bullying. Yet no single factor adequately explains why some young people, when confronted with ordinary disappointments, end up making extraordinary and irreversible decisions.
If there is one lesson we should draw from Tacloban, it is not simply that we need tighter security or harsher punishment. Perhaps we should ask a more uncomfortable question. What happened long before those boys entered their school carrying firearms? Better, we should ask, what has happened to the invisible scaffolding that helps children become resilient adults?
Every generation grows up surrounded by an unseen network of support. Parents are only one part of it. This network teaches children how to lose without giving up, how to disagree without violence, how to fail without despair, and how to belong without having to prove themselves through cruelty or aggression. Like the scaffolding around a building under construction, these institutions support young people while their character, judgment, and confidence are still being built. Once the structure is strong enough, the scaffolding quietly disappears. We rarely notice it—until it is no longer there.
Perhaps the deeper challenge is that the scaffolding built for one generation is not automatically suited for the next. Earlier generations grew up in neighborhoods where children spent more time outdoors, belonged to Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, church youth ministries, school publications, debating societies, Red Cross Youth, 4-H Clubs, sports associations, and community volunteer organizations. These did far more than occupy weekends. They created friendships, introduced caring adults outside the family, encouraged service to others, and gave young people a sense of purpose and belonging. Some of these institutions remain active today, while others have diminished in reach or influence. The important question is not whether they still exist, but whether enough young Filipinos still experience the guidance, mentorship, and community they once routinely provided.
Today’s young people inhabit a very different world—one shaped by smartphones, social media, artificial intelligence, online friendships, intense academic competition, and rapidly changing family and work patterns. Yet many of the institutions responsible for guiding them have changed only gradually. If our children’s world has been transformed while the institutions that support them have not kept pace, then what we are witnessing may not simply be a crisis of individual behavior but rather an adaptive lag in the way society prepares young people for the realities they now face.
Over the past several years, we have witnessed a series of troubling incidents involving young Filipinos. Student suicides have deeply shaken communities. Hazing continues to claim lives despite stronger laws. Street gangs remain active in many urban areas. Universities increasingly alert faculty members about psychologically vulnerable students who may react badly even to disappointing grades. These are very different events, and we should not assume they all have the same causes. Yet together they invite a larger question: Are the institutions that once helped ordinary children cope with ordinary stresses still as strong, connected, and relevant as they once were?
Perhaps it is also time for the Philippines to ask a new national question. Just as we periodically survey poverty, education, employment, and health, perhaps we should also take stock of the institutions that shape childhood itself. Are we giving today’s generation the relationships, opportunities, and communities they need to flourish? Or are we expecting institutions designed for another era to prepare young people for a world they were never designed to navigate? They are questions for parents, schools, churches, civic organizations, local governments, businesses, universities, and policymakers alike.
The tragedy in Tacloban may not simply be asking us what happened to two boys. It may be asking us what has happened to the invisible network of families, schools, youth organizations, churches, communities, and civic institutions that quietly helped millions of Filipino children become resilient adults. Societies are ultimately strengthened not only by the roads, bridges, and buildings they construct, but also by the institutions that help ordinary children become compassionate, resilient, and hopeful citizens.
Perhaps that is the most important infrastructure project we have neglected.
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