Who Failed Them?
By Ivy Betalmos
A school should be a sanctuary, a place where children learn, dream, and feel safe. It should never become a crime scene. Yet in Tacloban City, that sacred space was shattered when two students, only 14 and 15 years old, respectively, allegedly opened fire inside their school, killing fellow students and injuring others. The tragedy was horrifying not only because lives were lost, but because the hands that carried out the violence were themselves still children.
And that is what makes this unbearable.
This was not just a school shooting. It was a brutal reflection of a society that has failed to protect, guide, and shape its youth. When children are capable of bringing guns into a classroom and turning a place of learning into a place of death, we can no longer pretend this is only about the suspects. We must ask the harder question: Who failed them first?
Did the government fail these children by allowing weak school safety and poor firearm control? Did educators fail to teach beyond textbooks and grades? Did parents and guardians fail to guide, discipline, and listen? Or did we all fail to become the role models the young needed?
These questions do not excuse the crime. Three students are dead. Families are grieving. Classrooms have become spaces of trauma instead of learning. The pain is real, and the act was horrific. But children do not become violent in isolation. They are shaped by the homes they live in, the schools they attend, the content they consume, and the adults who either guide them, or fail to.
It is deeply painful to see young people in the Philippines involved in such grave criminal acts. Under Philippine law, minors who commit offenses are called Children in Conflict with the Law (CICL). But this legal term should not be misunderstood as immunity. One dangerous misconception spreading after this case is that because the suspects are minors, they will not be held liable. That is false.
Under the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act, a child 15 years old or below is generally exempt from criminal liability. This means the 14-year-old suspect will not be treated as an adult criminal, but that does not mean freedom from consequences. Intervention, rehabilitation, and placement in child-caring institutions may still follow. The 15-year-old suspect, however, may still be held criminally liable if it is proven that he acted with discernment, meaning he understood the wrongfulness and consequences of his actions. In short, the law does not simply excuse minors; it examines age, intent, and awareness.
But even if the courts determine legal accountability, the deeper moral question remains unanswered: How did children get access to guns? Where were the adults before the gunshots? Were there warning signs ignored, pain unnoticed, anger left to grow, or violence tolerated in silence? A child may know how to pull a trigger, but a child does not learn cruelty alone.
The government must answer for school safety and gun access. Educators must answer for whether warning signs were seen and addressed. Parents and guardians must answer for the values, discipline, and guidance given at home. And society must answer for the culture it feeds the youth, a culture where violence is often normalized, emotional wounds are neglected, and children are left to be shaped by anger more than by compassion.
Three young lives are gone, and many more are forever scarred. The law may decide what happens to the suspects, but the nation must decide what it will do with the truth this tragedy has exposed. Because before we ask how these children should be punished, perhaps we must first ask ourselves: if children are already learning how to kill inside the very place meant to teach them how to live, then who among us will admit that we failed them first?