Erico Joseph T. Canete
“SCHOOL, A PLACE FOR SPIRIT’S LEISURE, TURNS INTO A TERROR”
I WOKE UP EARLY MORNING OF WEDNESDAY hearing and watching the news about the school shooting in Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas killing nineteen elementary graders and two teachers. The shooter, identified as Salvador Ramos, also shot his grandmother before moving on to the school. Officials said that this eighteen-year old shooter was shot dead by responding officers.
AP News reported that it was the deadliest shooting at a U.S. grade school since a gunman, twenty- year old Adam Lanza, killed twenty children and six adults a decade ago at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut.
Another circumstance that made this incident worst was the shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, NY, – a hate crime – targeting the black community, killing ten people. This happened nine days prior to this recent shooting in Texas.
As noticed, both shooters were on educand ages and committed the crime in a place where leisure and wonder ought to take place. As a background, the Greek term for leisure is “schole” which is obviously the etymology of school. Tracing history in ancient Greece, school was regarded as a place where one finds leisure; the leisure and wonder of knowing new things. Understandably, leisure during that time had an appeal to the intellect rather than to the allurement of the senses.
These shooters stained the essence and existential value of school. That instead of taking school, sensus plenior, as a place for leisure and wonder or a place where union between the subject and the object known or taking it as a place where liberation of the soul from the slavery of ignorance is realized, turned it into a place of terror.
What about the young souls devoured by the tyranny of violence? What about the rest of young survivors whose eagerness for knowledge and wisdom was transformed into fear and horror even in their slightest imagination of school? What about the families whose lives were totally changed and destroyed by this incident? What about the community and the nation whose peace and order are threatened by the forces within its citizens?
Though this kind of horror in school shooting did not happen in our country as far as my recollection is concerned, yet what’s happening in our school is as worse or even worst than this considering the fifty years of sowing fear and terror activities of the CPP-NPA-NDF. It speedily consumes the lives of our young educands.
In 2018, AFP Brigadier General Antonio Peralde, Jr had identified at least eighteen schools where the reds had allegedly been recruiting students with UP as the top. It’s not surprising then that ninety percent of NPA cadres were recruited from schools according to former cadre Jeffrey Celiz, alias “Ka Eric”. (Source: Philippine News Agency, 10/31/2020).
In National News dated 1/26/2021, NPA had recruited more than one thousand students from Manila based schools alone. This is more than the number of victims in USA school shooting.
This is alarming in the sense that students’ lives, aspirations and dream for a better future are shattered by the deceptive, manipulative, skillful, masterful lies of the reds. This is a very serious problem in our country. It is prayed then that this will be addressed not only by our incoming new administration but also by the vigilance and guidance of parents, school officials and workers and community in general.
Unless we give due care to our educands, we would then be one with the Americans in crying that our nation is a nation of anguish scream consuming the lives of the young educands. Let school be a place for spirits’ leisure and not fear and terror.
We are one with all the victims in the recent shooting in Texas.
Sympathy, condolences and prayers!
God bless our nations!