Local governments across Metro Cebu extended last Sunday for another week the suspension of classes in public school campuses following the earthquake that struck Cebu and surrounding areas on Sept. 30, 2025.
Many school buildings, according to media reports, have been found upon post-earthquake inspection to be safe for use. But as at least one mayor said, the mental health of school personnel and students following the earthquake and its aftershocks is a consideration in keeping learning mainly online for now.
Studying at home or elsewhere in a homely, cozy environment at a more relaxed, flexible pace after an earthquake may indeed address anxiety and calm nerves in communities of learning. However, it also comes with challenges. People’s homes, for instance, are not necessarily the most conducive environments for learning. We have heard of the home office. What about the home classroom? I wonder how many students have the resources to carve out a space reserved for studies in their residences.
And there is no guarantee that Filipino homes will always withstand earthquakes. That one is studying at home therefore does not erase all anxiety when upholding online learning is the prudent move.
But as earthquakes underline that life is filled with uncertainty especially for many of us who build on stuff that is one disaster away from being utterly lost, more self-paced learning gives academic communities the opportunity to gain greater clarity. It is an opportunity to break down walls between study and everyday life where all knowledge must lead to service, especially of the least of our brothers and sisters.
Students, teachers, and academic support personnel, while doing what they can to cover the normal requirements of syllabi even as the earth shakes can use the affordances of hybrid learning to elevate ongoing conversations about the human condition, about existence, suffering, compassion, and meaning. These topics are not exclusive to the sitting rooms, libraries, and scriptoria of philosophers and theologians.
Let us talk about mourning. The earthquake has exposed our reluctance to own our suffering and pain. Our narratives of resilience, heroism, and rebuilding are helpful and necessary. But they seem to indicate that we are in a hurry to deny our losses not only in economics but also in priceless human lives.
Will government and civic leaders show us the way by setting aside days for collective mourning of the 76 who were killed? Will officials and other leaders be for once just human beings, examples of grieving with those who are still trying to make sense of their bereavement?
Let us talk about accountability. The men and women behind post-earthquake relief drives have been laudable not only for their leadership in a difficult time but for honoring donors by releasing updates on how much has been raised, what has been purchased, who are the beneficiaries, when and where aid has been offered.
Yet our instinctive turn to volunteerism as a response to disaster must not mask the issues of our resignation to the unreliability of officialdom and our disengagement from the government’s own post-disaster work.
The volunteer, of course, never waits for others to act before she or he helps. But we are well within our rights to look to a government that is sensitive to our precariousness, living as we are on earthquake belts. That means a government that both performs well when disaster strikes and works smart in times of relative calm to prevent disasters.
Should we wait for more earthquakes before our building codes are modified to outlaw construction without earthquake proofing? The Philippines is not so different from Japan in terms of the frequency with which earthquakes hit the country but our northeastern neighbor long ago mandated by law that no building be constructed on the land absent earthquake proofing features.
Malacañang and our legislature must make earthquake proofing in construction a legislative priority. The disaster offices in the bureaucracy must meanwhile perform, stringently, structural safety assessments to enable the speediest possible reinforcement of buildings beginning with those that are old, flimsy, or used for large gatherings.
We must have more designated evacuation destinations and relief goods pre-positioned near vulnerable communities. When hard times come, the volunteer’s first thought must no longer be, “We cannot wait for the ineffective, inefficient government to act.”
And while we talk about accountability, the government can take its cue today from the transparency reports of the civic post-earthquake relief movement. Where are the government’s transparency reports? Where are our taxes, released following state of emergency declarations in earthquake-hit locations, going? How is money transferred as aid from one local government to another being spent? This is information that we must demand.
Being, suffering, compassion, and meaning are not mere notions confined to the minds of those who philosophize or theologize, abstractions that distract the learned from their goals. They have concrete expressions as in the courage to mourn the dead and be with the bereaved, and the refusal to settle for mediocre governance, which ought to be criteria for determining whether one merits the appellation “educated.”