Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson on Thursday, July 2 said he misses the brand of discipline from parents and teachers of his generation that helped keep young people from committing crimes. 

Lacson pointed this out amid recent incidents of school-related violence, including the Tacloban school shooting last June, where two minors were criminally charged for openly firing and eventually killing three students who were also their schoolmates.

Lacson, a former national police chief, recalled that his generation was taught discipline at home and in school by their parents and teachers, whose guidance - and at times, tough love - instilled respect, responsibility and accountability at an early age.

"JUVENILE JUSTICE LAW: My generation must be missing our fathers’ belts, our mothers’ bamboo sticks and our teachers’ rulers. We were disciplined, always at home for the 6 o’clock evening prayers to receive our daily blessings from our elders. Those were the days," Lacson wrote on X.

https://x.com/iampinglacson/status/2072494624242032998

On Wednesday, July 1 the Senate Committee on Women, Children, Family Relations and Gender Equality, headed by Sen. Risa Hontiveros held its first hearing on the shooting at San Jose National High School in Tacloban City where it was revealed that the two minors behind the deadly incident may have been manipulated by 764, an international online network of violent extremists.

Also during the hearing, it was disclosed that one of the shooters allegedly shot his own best friend in the back during the June 22 incident.

The Tacloban school shooting is just one of the several recent incidents of violence in schools that fueled renewed calls for measures to address youth violence and delinquency.

The senator recalled that when he was in elementary school, he and his siblings learned discipline from their mother Maxima, a strict disciplinarian who once ordered his elder brother to find and return a one-centavo coin he found while going home from school.

He also recalled that his mother would spank him if he came home late. But after disciplining him, she would also cry and remind him not to be hardheaded.

Such tough love, he said, helped instill the values of integrity and discipline that guided him throughout his public service career as law enforcer and lawmaker.