FORGET the horror movies about unexplainable cursed houses, spirits and the walking dead, real life provides you with actual horror experiences.
For instance, you get stuck in traffic as Diversion Road is closed; you’re stuck for an hour and you need to go to the bathroom. And you learn that the Diversion Road and landslide woes will happen again and again with the rains, it’s a bad sequel.
Other horrors in the city. You urgently need cash and the ATM eats your card. You’re beating the deadline and when you’re about to send your assignment, the Internet is gone.
Welcome to modern life horrors.
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The indie news website Manila Today came out with an alternative horror story for Undas. They retell the tragic stories of young people who ended their lives as their dreams of schooling were broken.
There was Kristel, the UP student who lost her scholarship because of a skewered tuition fee bracketing system. “She wasn’t born with a silver spoon, so to speak, but she died with a silver cleaner which she swallowed along with her dreams crushed by the system.” The article describes her sad death.
They also included Mariannet Amper. If one can remember in 2009, Mariannet was the 12-year-old girl from Davao City who shocked us by hanging herself in her house. She had not gone to school for a month as her father, a carpenter, could no longer provide her with baon for school.
She kept a letter that was addressed for a television show, there she requested for new shoes, a bag and a job for her father.
Manila Today calls these horror stories that plagued the educational system. It eats the dreams and even the lives of the young.
And more than telling about the tragic end of students, it points out the problem of our education system where high tuition in private colleges makes education elusive. While the K-12 program is still facing many problems in implementation.
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As we observe Undas or All Saints' Day, the urban poor group Kadamay, which have been facing many battles in Manila over demolition, points out a sad reality. “The dead are better off than the living poor who do not have homes.”
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It’s happening all the time. A student who is supposed to feel safe in his neighborhood, but gets shot instead. And the police would say it’s drug-related. That’s 17-year old Kian in Caloocan. There’s also Lumad student Obello Bay-ao in Talaingod, killed by the paramilitary who is still at large.
In this killing time, their deaths give these senselessness a face.