Planned school drills preparing students like my 15-year-old son to survive gun attacks from deranged classmates. The Dept. of Education has prioritized them following two fatal school shootings in as many months; first in Tacloban, then in Zamboanga City.
“The preparation, readiness, and awareness of schools are important so they can react immediately when there is an ongoing threat,” Education Secretary Malcolm Gama has said of the drills, scheduled for later this week.
Coming from America, I’m accustomed to such pronouncements. In my home country school shootings are so common that a recent one in California barely made the national news. Which, frankly, is one reason my family and I don’t live there anymore.
Ah, but until now the Philippines seemed different: the rarity of school shootings rendered them almost unimaginable. That they now appear to be happening regularly has understandably caused a national epidemic of anguished soul-searching. “What’s going on?” wondered Rep. Leila de Lima. Is it lax school security, unregulated access to weapons, inadequate guidance counseling, or what one columnist called “cognitive grooming” by an online network encouraging violence?
Perhaps, some argue, it’s the unbridled influence of internet survival games inviting players to act as shooters.
I submit that any or all of these are contributing factors. But I also believe they underlie a disturbing reality: the well-documented and growing malaise of young men coping with a world many feel has left them behind.
“There has been a sharp decline in prescribed roles, inherited life courses, and clear occupational and educational trajectories,” the New York Post reported two weeks ago. “We find social formlessness to be like a raging storm in which many young men are struggling to find some secure foothold.”
The evidence: a recent study indicating that more than one in five of the 2,000 young men it surveyed have anxiety or depression. Another 43% say they consider themselves failures; 60% claim to have little control over their lives; 40% report the absence of consistently present fathers; and a terrifying 12% aged 18-29 relate having at some point been incarcerated.
All of which is supported by educational statistics. Nearly 53% of college students globally are women, or 112 women for every 100 men. In the Philippines the ratio is even starker: 56.2% females compared to 43.8% males.
In high school, boys are 50% more likely to fail in math, reading, and science. And, even more disturbing, they account for three-fourths of the “deaths by despair” caused by suicide and drug abuse. As a result, says Richard Reeves, president of the American Institute for Men and Boys, “The sense a lot of young men have is not being needed by their families, communities, [or] society.”
There are many theories regarding the causes of this male derail. My favorite: that decades of feminism—i.e. the focus on female independence with little or no reliance on men—has made many question what it means to be male.
Historically, the problem has been more pronounced in the West. Which, frankly, is one reason I married a Filipina whose obvious strengths don’t preclude her from appreciating the man in her life. And which undoubtedly has contributed immeasurably to my happiness in the Philippines.
More recently, however, I’ve sensed a change. Many of the young women I know feel no urgency—let alone necessity—to be involved with men. At least one young male relative recently dropped out of college and has yet to find a direction. And another, married with child, is showing major signs of depression.
None of this excuses violence.
My guess, though, is that those ubiquitous online shooting games provide alienated youngsters with a way to feel connected. They also, unfortunately, convey two dangerous messages: that shooting isn’t real, and that it’s a way to express your pain and be seen.
So, for now, I endorse extreme vigilance. And yes, bring on those vaunted school drills to keep our children safe.
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David Haldane is an award-winning American journalist and author with homes in Southern California and Northern Mindanao. His latest book is Dark Skies: Tales of Turbulence in Paradise. This column appears weekly in The Manila Times.
