DepEd: No more active-shooting ‘reenactment’ in school drills
The Department of Education (DepEd) will no longer conduct active shooter “reenactments” during the simultaneous school safety drills to be held nationwide on Sept. 3.
“There will no longer be reenactments involving an active shooter or active attacker because, according to experts, these may cause psychological trauma to participating learners and teachers,” DepEd Undersecretary Malcolm Garma said on Wednesday at the sidelines of Kapihan sa Manila Prince Hotel press forum.
“What will trigger the drill are the … distinct alarms. [Once] they [go off, they] will signal the commencement of the drills,” Garma said.
The DepEd called off the active shooter drills originally scheduled on Aug. 25 over inclement weather and amid concerns from psychiatrist groups, which said that current evidence does not show that these simulations “reduce casualties or prevent incidents.”
‘Run-hide-fight’
According to Philippine Psychiatric Association and Philippine Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, multiple studies also demonstrated that the drills, which “expose learners to hyper-realistic scenarios of violence,” may cause lasting psychological harm.
For Garma, the deferment of the nationwide drills also allowed the DepEd to include measures to strengthen post-incident response efforts and integrate the “run-hide-fight” protocol.
The “run-hide-fight” protocol is a procedure in which individuals in an active shooter situation may decide to evacuate as a first response; or hide silently as a secondary measure; or directly confront the perpetrator as a last resort.
The DepEd official said that one other measure that was introduced was to seek the consent of parents for their children’s participation in the exercise, noting that schools were currently in the end-of-term block for the first trimester.
“We will not be able to force them to make their children join,” he said. “But, of course, we would like to encourage our parents to make their children join.”
Muscle memory
The nationwide drill will kick off at a school in Bulacan province on Thursday morning, according to Garma, noting that other schools—particularly those affected by flooding amid inclement weather—may choose to hold the exercise some other time.
The school safety drills were prompted by school shootings in Tacloban City on June 22 and Zamboanga City on Aug. 18. A total of five students were killed, including the shooter in Zamboanga City, who turned the gun on himself after killing a fellow student. The two students who carried out the shooting in Tacloban City were arrested. Only one was charged, however, because the other student is only 14 years old and cannot be charged yet under the juvenile justice law.
“This will not be the first and the last,” Garma said. “We have to perfect that drill. It’s really for muscle memory.”
“Our earthquake drills are paying off. Our children already know what to do: duck-cover-and-hold. We hope that these drills to address human-induced incidents like this would also be part of the muscle memory of our learners,” he added.
