Ironic. A word for sharp, surprising contrasts, yet it perfectly captures the glaring contradiction in our education system's policies. A news article released by the Philippine News Agency (PNA) stated that the Department of Education (DepEd) originally set nationwide active-threat drills on August 25, 2026. The drill aims to apply the lessons from recent school shooting issues in Tacloban and Zamboanga City. According to the article, the exercise will test how school personnel and learners will react when a human-induced threat unfolds, unlike conventional earthquake drills. For the past few months, the government, along with parents, has pointed fingers at video games, warning that digital environments like this desensitize our youth and fracture their mental well-being. Yet, in an astonishing twist of logic, DepEd recently attempted to combat the school shooting issues by simulating real-world violence and staging it in children’s classrooms. We censor screens to protect their minds and well-being, but we rehearse the nightmares in their hallways—subjecting them to hyper-realistic active attack simulations with complete mock terror. While DepEd’s recent postponement and softening of the drills became a welcome retreat, it does not change the fact that the drills were never needed in the first place in places where children are supposed to learn freely and without fear. If we want safer schools and educational institutions, responsible parents and stricter security measures must work together. The institution tasked with handling and protecting our children inadvertently exposes them to a far more toxic breed of violence than any video game ever could. A video game, for all its flaws, remains behind a screen—a chosen fiction with escapes or pauses. On the other hand, these drills offer no escapes and deeply embed the trauma of violence into their actual reality. We are not conditioning their safety, but creating trauma in disguise as one—forcing children to rehearse their own victimization in real life. Some may argue that DepEd removed these theatrics and implicitly acknowledged the irony; it is still clear that you cannot cure the threat of societal violence by institutionalizing it in classrooms. The fundamental flaw of the active-threat drills is the misplaced focus. The real antidote to the issue is far from school hallways—it begins at home and with proper security. Instead of forcing students to participate in these terrifying simulations, our resources must be funneled into proactive physical defenses, such as hardened perimeters and stricter campus access. Concurrently, true prevention requires responsible parenthood. Most youth-led security threats are preceded by severe behavioral shifts, deep isolation, or unsupervised digital radicalization—warning signs that can only be caught by active, engaged parents who monitor their children's mental well-being and secure real-world hazards at home. Safety and fear cannot coexist in a space dedicated to enlightenment and learning. If we are genuinely terrified of virtual pixels corrupting our youth, we must be doubly outraged by the state-sanctioned rehearsal of terror in real life. It’s time to stop training our nation’s children as victims of a broken society and start building a system that will protect them—helping them grow into our future leaders. But for now, as the drills are still ongoing, the thought remains ironic, doesn’t it? — ms. kae 09.02.26