Reimagining schools as safe havens (1)
General Santos City—The scare generated by the Ateneo de Zamboanga University shooting has managed to creep into public schools in some barangays here in this tuna capital city. From news reports, the Grade 9 suspect, who later on shot himself to death after killing a fellow student and seriously wounding another student, carried two firearms with him.
Both weapons belonged to his father, the district commander of the Port of Zamboanga Enforcement and Security Services.
A week after that fatal shooting, several elementary and junior high school campuses here have revved up security arrangements. Both parents and school authorities have expressed fear that something similar will happen in their campuses. As of last week, parents were required to accompany their children, and attest to what their children bring with them to school. Some school security personnel have even banned the bringing of scissors and other sharp objects that could be used as a weapon.
Yesterday morning, some schools required parents to buy transparent backpacks or tote bags so school security personnel are able to see immediately the contents of any bag a child is carrying.
To beef up security, personnel of elementary schools, especially in two barangays here— Tinagacan and Katangawan—local police have been deployed to ensure maximum security for grade schoolers and senior high school students.
Reports claim that the local police received information that a shooting might take place in either of the two barangays that border General Santos City and Malungon town in Sarangani. That was supposed to happen yesterday, Aug. 24, 2026.
Thankfully, nothing happened, as of this writing.
The rash of school shootings and other violent incidents gives us a complex picture of how schools now have become less of their erstwhile image of being a safe haven—not only for its students and school personnel, but also for community members, who seek refuge in them in times of crisis, like when calamities strike.
School-based violence is not something new, nor is it done only by “violent” people. It is just a manifestation of one worrisome phenomenon that has become the hallmark of modernity—the normalization of violence.
Violence can be expressed in many forms, and one of its most insidious expressions is not readily seen or felt. It can start at home, when parents impose stiff authoritarian guidelines without compassion; when elders insist on saying they are always right because, as many of them say, “they have been there before; we are on our way out and you are just beginning to learn the ways of the world, etc …” In short, they start controlling how their children think, not considering that their children belong to an entirely different generation, when social media posts are more attractive and believable than what parents tell them.
Here I am reminded of what Khalil Gibran once wrote about children, in his classic collection of poems, “The Prophet.” Gibran views children as independent souls who belong to the future, to which no parent belongs. They may come through their parents, but they do not belong to them; they are just expressions of life’s longing for itself. Thus, children are not their parents’ possessions; they have their own minds and parents can only give love and support but not control them. As Gibran suggested in his poem on children, parents can only shelter the body of the child, but not their souls.
This is not to give free rein to domestic anarchy as a template for guiding children. Domestic anarchy is not what Gibran has written. Gibran recognized that children become who they are through their parents’ guidance, not by putting words and ideas into them but through how they nurture them—not only in words but more importantly, in their actions. Such guidance should come with compassion and recognition of the inherent rights of children to be able to develop their own minds in a safe, nonthreatening environment.
Such guidance regimen also includes how parents themselves behave in front of their children. If children are exposed to domestic violence early in life, this will have a lasting impact on how they look at the home as a source of violence.
Many fathers and elders who are oriented to the military type of regimen tend to mirror the stiff draconian discipline they get from being trained as soldiers or police officers. This also includes orienting their children to deadly weapons and how to use them. It is part of their flawed way of thinking that knowing how to use weapons of violence is part of making people safe.
Violence begets violence; and killing other people, even if they are considered among the dregs of the Earth, can never make the world a safer place to live in.
(To be concluded next week.)
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