ENDEAVOR

The top-ranked Netflix series Teach Me a Lesson calls attention to a prevalent problem that has since crashed into Philippine headlines: bullying in schools. It has joined the parade of K-drama in the top rungs of public viewership.

Just as I began viewing the series, our Manila Bulletin print edition flashed a highly disturbing headline: 3 dead, 7 wounded in Tacloban school shooting. President Marcos promptly ordered a “thorough probe” of the crime involving two minor suspects, aged 15 and 14, who are Grade 9 students at the San Jose National High School.

Flashing back to my adolescent years in Don Bosco Technical Institute, Makati, I recall that, truth to tell, we had fistfights among ourselves when we were in high school. But those encounters never degenerated into gangster-type violence.

Indeed, times have changed. The scale and pace of alienation among the youth has scaled up. I am not a sociologist, but I am inclined to think that there are more children suffering from the travails of unhappy families and broken homes.

The killing of three students at San Jose National High School in Tacloban City is a stark warning of how unchecked bullying can escalate into school violence. Police investigators say the two student suspects cited years of bullying as a factor in their actions. Even if multiple influences are involved, the tragedy poses a difficult question. How much suffering among children goes unnoticed until it erupts in violence?

The immediate reaction is understandably focused on the shooting itself. How did two minors gain access to firearms? Why were weapons able to enter a school campus? Could security measures have prevented the attack? These are urgent questions.

But there is another question that deserves equal attention: What was happening in the lives of these young people long before the gunshots were fired?

Research around the world has consistently shown that chronic bullying can have devastating consequences. Most victims never become violent. In fact, they are far more likely to suffer anxiety, depression, self-harm, social withdrawal, and declining academic performance. But when humiliation, exclusion, and harassment persist without intervention, they can create deep psychological wounds.

The Philippines is hardly unfamiliar with bullying.

In 2018, a bullying incident at Ateneo de Manila high school that was caught on video sparked widespread outrage. The video showed a junior high school student physically assaulting and verbally degrading schoolmates in a school washroom. The school administration dismissed the offending student after an investigation validated the bullying charges leveled against him.

At that time, the incident sent shock waves. If intimidation, humiliation, and abuse can flourish even in supposedly safe educational environments, then so many youth are highly vulnerable in classrooms, hallways, group chats, and social media feeds away from close supervision by adults.

Five years before this event, Congress already enacted Republic Act No. 10627, the Anti-Bullying Act of 2013 that required schools to adopt policies addressing physical, verbal, social, and cyberbullying. The Department of Education subsequently issued implementing guidelines requiring reporting systems, intervention programs, and disciplinary procedures.

Yet laws on paper do not automatically create safety in practice, as the recent tragic event shows.

Many schools still lack adequately trained guidance personnel. Students often fear retaliation if they report abuse. Parents frequently discover problems only after emotional damage has accumulated. In some communities, bullying remains dismissed as ordinary childhood behavior or a rite of passage.

International experience suggests that punishment alone is not enough. Countries that have successfully reduced bullying emphasize prevention, early identification, and whole-school approaches. Finland’s KiVa program, for example, focuses not only on bullies and victims but also on bystanders, teaching students how to intervene and reshape peer culture. Norway’s Olweus Bullying Prevention Program similarly seeks to transform the entire school environment rather than merely react to individual incidents.

The lesson is simple. Bullying is not merely a disciplinary issue; it is a school-climate issue. Schools must become places where students’ safety is assured, and that there are guardrails that prevent them from becoming either perpetrators or victims. and before they become statistics.

The Tacloban tragedy also highlights a broader challenge facing modern education. Young people today navigate academic pressures, social media exposure, family stresses, mental health struggles, and increasingly complex peer relationships. When schools lack the resources to respond effectively, warning signs can be missed.

There is no single explanation for what happened in Tacloban. There rarely is. Violence of this magnitude usually emerges from multiple failures occurring simultaneously.

But if this tragedy teaches us anything, it is that preventing school violence requires more than metal detectors and security guards. It requires listening to students earlier, taking complaints seriously, strengthening guidance services, engaging parents, and creating school cultures where cruelty is neither tolerated nor normalized.

Three young lives have already been lost. The most meaningful tribute we can offer them is not simply grief. It is the determination to ensure that schools remain places of learning, belonging, and hope rather than places where unresolved pain turns into irreversible tragedy.

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