011 Is it safe?
The Philippines is not a safe place. We really don’t have a safety culture. We don’t see it in our streets. We don’t see it in our homes. We certainly don’t see it in our schools.
Sure, we try. Backed by the excuse that we don’t have much resources to begin with, we delude ourselves into thinking that we can get by with the barest of minimums when it comes to safety.
This, whether we like it or not, has lead to so many unfortunate safety incidents each year. I’ve seen so many of them in my time at the education department. What’s really heartbreaking about these incidents is the fact that they could have been avoided if we applied stricter safety standards.
Yes, there had been deaths from school field trips and from food poisoning in school. An entire school had to be shut down because of mercury spilled in the science lab. A teacher had to die to protect her students from an outsider who ran amok during school hours. And yes, a whole school was buried deep in mud from landslides (yes, teachers and students were entombed in that horrific incident).
Schools must therefore learn how to make their campuses safer. At the same time, they must train everyone—teachers, students and parents—to become more safety conscious. And everyone must learn what it takes to be prepared for all untoward safety incidents.
One or two token fire drills or earthquake drills just won’t cut it. Wishful thinking won’t protect children from violence in or around campus. The list of hazards, both natural and man made, is long.
What educators have to realize is that cost shouldn’t be made an excuse for inaction, since there’s so much school officials and teachers can do to make their schools safer, for their students, for themselves and for all others who enter their respective campuses.
This is why we made sure that school safety lessons are provided in each Educator Empowerment Program (EEP) training module. And these EEP school safety lessons not only train teachers on how to address specific safety issues, they also train them on how to promote a strong safety culture, not just in school, but also in each home and throughout their community.
Safety is a serious matter. It should be our paramount concern when it involves the lives of children. Our schools, therefore, must level up on safety as much as it should in terms of the quality of teaching and learning they offer our young.
Providing quality education means nothing if just one student dies from a safety incident, natural or man made. Our students’ safety must come first.