Real horror stories

Manila Today, an indie website, came up with alternative horror stories for Undas, focusing on the lost dreams of those failed by the education system.

Forget the horror movies about cursed houses, evil spirits and the walking dead, real life can provide us with actual horror experiences. For instance, we get stuck in traffic as Diversion Road is closed; or we’re stuck in traffic for an hour and we need to go to the bathroom. Then we learn that the Diversion Road and its landslide woes that cause traffic congestion will happen again and again with the rains. That’s a bad sequel.

Other horrors in the city: We urgently need cash and the ATM “eats” our card. We’re trying to beat the deadline and when we’re about to send our assignment, the Internet is gone. Welcome to modern life horrors.

The indie news website Manila Today came out with an alternative horror story for Undas. It retold the tragic stories of young people who ended their lives when 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 described her sad death. It also included that of Mariannet Amper.

Mariannet was the 12-year-old girl from Davao City who shocked us by hanging herself in her house in 2009. 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 ate the dreams and even the lives of the young. And more than telling about the tragic end of students, it pointed out the problem in our education system where high tuition in private colleges makes education elusive. Meanwhile, the K-12 program is still facing many problems in implementation.

It’s happening all the time. A student who is supposed to feel safe in his neighborhood gets shot instead. And the police would say it’s drug-related. That was what happened to 17-year old Kian in Caloocan. There’s also Lumad student Obello Bayao in Talaingod, killed by a paramilitary man who is still at large. Their deaths give these senselessness killings a face.--