Ang Probinsyano on ABS-CBN is one of the longest running television series (teleseryes) I have ever watched and it started out on the right foot. Until a few months ago.
I have been following Cardo (Coco Martin) on Ang Probinsyano for about 2 years now. I’ve seen him pretend to be his deceased twin, Ador, a policeman killed by a fellow policeman, the son of a drug lord. I also marveled at the transformation of Cardo into an undercover ‘woman’. I followed his blooming relationship with reporter Alyana (Yassi Pressman) and rejoiced when they got married. Qhen they lost their baby, Ricky Boy, in a mall bombing,I grieved along with Cardo and Alyana .
Ang Probinsyano, in my view, started out as a series that taught many lessons. I especially loved Lola Flora (Susan Roces) because her character always stood as the family’s moral ground.
This is so true. I remember my own late Mom who fussed over me even when I was already an adult. She sent me off to graduate studies in the U.S. with a thick wad of index cards on which she lovingly wrote recipes I could whip up in a short time. She worried I would not eat well and wanted me to have some of her home recipes to bring with me. Even when I got married and had one child after another, I could always count on her advice and years of wisdom to see me through difficult parenting phases.
But unlike my Mom who chose to give up her music career early on in her motherhood days, I continued on my very career-driven, stressful corporate life till our fourth child was born. A threatened abortion was my wake-up call that made me assess what was truly important in life – my job or family. The latter won out. I left behind a promising career, an executive position and a comfortable salary to stay home and raise my kids.
Is your kid reluctant to go to school every day? Does he/she feign illness at times?
Do you find missing school stuff, broken pencils or damaged school items?
Does your child come home always hungry or always asking you for more pocket money?
Watch out because your child might be the victim of bullying in school.
I was always told, in my younger days: “Sticks and stones can hurt my bones but words will never hurt me”. Never has a cliche been so wrong because spiteful words CAN hurt. Glaring looks can hurt. Destruction of one’s property can hurt. A person’s self-esteem can be impaired for life.
Bullying has long existed but I think it has gotten worse, judging from the growing number of bullying-related suicides whose victims are growing younger and younger. What makes matters worse, I think, is the almost dismissive, non-serious attention given to reported bullying incidents. Guidance counselors in schools don’t seem trained to handle these kinds of situations.
“Boys will be boys” (Bullying is NOT normal boys’ play)
“Just tell your child to avoid the bully”(You can’t avoid a bully who chooses to come up to you even if you try to stay away)
“Don’t worry. I will speak with him/her (the bully)” (Most times this strategy doesn’t really resolve the issue and the bullying sometimes gets even worse.)
Bullying is a reflection, I think, of the ills of society. The bully himself is a victim. Oftentimes, he is bullied at home and his only outlet is to turn into one himself with hapless victims in school. But of course, the real victims are the bullied children. Oftentimes, they choose to keep this to themselves, ashamed to let others know they are being subjected to abuse and harassment daily in school. Parents are oftentimes the last to know. And in some cases, the only time they find out is when their child takes the ultimate escape from the torture – suicide.
Well, I am finally happy that bullying in schools is getting its well-deserved attention with an anti-bullying campaign that is about to go nationwide and I hope it is eventually going to be nipped for good.
“Bully” the Movie
The Jesuit Basic Education Commission (JBEC) in cooperation with Solar Entertainment, is bringing in an acclaimed documentary film “Bully” to the Philippines. The film features actual experiences of bully victims in high schools in Georgia, Iowa, Texas, Mississippi and Oklahoma. Two of the boys featured, Tyler Long and Ty Smalley), committed suicide after enduring taunts and physical assault.
Alex, one of the 5 bullied kids in the movieWhat looks like an innocent bus ride became a torturous experience for Alex
A by-invitation premiere of “Bully” will happen at Robinsons Galleria Cinema 4 on November 13, 2012 at 6:30pm. That will be followed by a theatrical run, also in November, through several Saturday block screenings in Robinsons Galleria for schools that want to show the film for their communities. Campus screenings can also be arranged for a minimal fee. Teachers and parents will be provided with discussion guides to properly process the movie’s message.
Directed by Sundance and Emmy award-winning filmmaker Lee Hirsch, Bully documents the real stories of 5 bullied kids and their families. Filmed over the course of schoolyears 2009/2010, Bully shows us the painful experiences of bullied American kids, revealing problems that cross geographical, racial, ethnic and economic borders. The movie also shows how the affected parents began a growing movement to change how incidents of bullying are handled in their schools, communities and society as a whole.
My kids were not spared from child bullying in school. It was almost never physical. For my daughter, it consisted of snide remarks, teasing, name-calling, being ignored. For my son, the manifestations were more visible. There was one instance when he was “playfully punched” in the tummy by a classmate who teased him no end. And he’d return from recess with his pencils broken in half or find things missing from his desk. It came to the point where I had to make a special request for the bully boy not to be sectioned with my son the next school year.
For a mother to be witness to these things, I felt almost helpless except to continue calling the schools’ attention to these incidents. But I knew that my kids, even if they were not showing too much on the outside, were crying on the inside and suffering this kind of humiliation day in and day out during schooldays. And knowing that, I wanted to cry along with them.
In recent years, this problem has been addressed by the schools they went to as small kids and I am happy that they have actually made it a school policy that bullying is a serious offense. I feel it is very important for every child to know that the school refuses to condone this kind of behavior and that teachers and school officials are their allies and would actually do something to anyone who tries to bully them. By making bullying a school offense, the school is arming every student with a voice to speak out if he is bullied in any way.
But even if they are now all grown, I know that those childhood incidents have left scars on my kids that will take time to heal. I know….because when I was growing up, I had a taste of hurt too. I always was the youngest (and one of the smallest) in my class since I entered Grade 1 at an earlier age than my classmates. I remember what it felt like to be told I was too young to be included in “more adult-ish conversations” of classmates which at that time revolved around childhood crushes and boys. I still remember conversations they’d have that would stop as soon as I came near them. It was not bullying at all because they never called me names but that subtle exclusion from a group did hurt then. Can you imagine how much more hurtful it is to be called names outright by a peer? Or be subjected to forms of condemnation or derision by someone much older who is supposed to be respected – a parent, an adult, anyone with authority?
Whoever made this up — “Sticks and stones may hurt my bones, but words will never hurt me” — probably never experienced bullying or verbal abuse. Or maybe that person was himself/herself THE bully. Because it isn’t true. Words CAN hurt. And they leave lasting scars. Physical scars remain visible long after the hurt but you can function normally even with them. Emotional scars are so much more difficult to heal because they continue hurting the victim long after the bullying or abuse has gone. It affects a child’s self-esteem and can even affect how he/she deals with people and family in the future.
It is so important for us to protect the children. All forms of abuse, particularly verbal abuse which is hidden from the rest of the world, cuts across all classes of society, even among the wealthy.
We need to raise a future generation of children free from any stigma of abuse if we are to have a generation of confident, hopeful, self-respecting citizens with their values in the right place. The only way to curb abuse is to recognize it for what it is. We cannot stop something if we don’t recognize it as a problem in the first place. So, while I have no answers at the moment as to how to go about ensuring that all children are raised totally free of abuse, I do know that firstly, we must know WHEN to recognize it as such. And this where our child protection laws, child-governing government agencies, and citizens equipped with the right knowledge skills come in.
I created this post for the Blog & Twitter Carnival: Child Abuse Prevention.
For many years now, whenever I would pass Shaw Blvd (Kapitolyo area), I’d see this building that said Reedley International. It had always piqued my curiosity, with me wondering what kind of school it was. A couple of weeks ago, I got an invite from Carlo to visit Reedley, which by this time had transferred to the Libis area.
We were briefed by Jerome T. Castro, Reedley’s Headmaster, and Emil Ong, Director of School Development. Emil is the son of Nellie Aquino-Ong who founded Reedley.
Reedley started as a review center giving personalized teaching to students wanting to enter universities. The effectiveness of Nellie Ong’s tutoring prompted some parents to tell her that she should open up a school, which she eventually did. Reedley opened as an Upper School in 2000 with 80 students. A 250% growth rate in 2001, the opening of their Grade School and Middle School levels made them move to a larger building in Pasig and eventually to their present location. Now they cater to a current level of 500 students from 19 different nationalities.
My kids all went to traditional schools. In traditional schools, everyone is expected to go at the pace of the teachers who follow a lesson plan. Class sizes even in the Nursery levels are at around 30 and this could grow to almost 40 by the time they graduate high school. Some of my kids experienced bullying in school and I know that in many traditional schools, this has grown to large proportions. Teachers have their hands full teaching several sections with over 30 students each; it is really hard for a teacher to know a student closely enough to know his/her needs and personality. Luckily, the school where my boys go adopted a mentoring system to address this lack.
Yesterday, I attended the annual parent orientation at Xavier School. Unlike past years, there was something different about this year, I realized. I would be attending activities in this school for only one boy (my other boy already graduated high school and is facing a new life as a college freshie).
Ever since Fr. Johnny Go, S.J. took over the helm as School Director, I have seen vast improvements in terms of facilities, quality of faculty, curriculum, use of technology in academe and so many other aspects. In a previous post, I described how the school turned virtual during Typhoon Ondoy when school was suspended for 10 days. While many schools lost school days, Xavier students continued to study and do assigned homework via the net.
At the orientation, I eagerly awaited Fr. Johnny’s presentation to the parents. His part is always something I look forward to. After all, when the School Director blogs, uses multimedia in his presentations, has a Facebook account and maintains his own YouTube channel, you can be sure his talk would be a very interesting one. I was not disappointed.
Fr. Johnny talked about how important it is for schools (and parents) to learn how to educate and parent this generation of tech-savvy kids.
He described the TV Generation I belong to (the age when baby boomers first encountered a television set and whose free time was spent in front of the boob tube watching episodes of popular shows). He also described the next younger set called Generation X (that age group between mid 30s to mid 40s that were schooled in classrooms where passive learning was the norm: teacher lectures and student “vomits back” what he absorbed during exams).
He next described the 2 generations that students belong to now: The Net Generation (kids from 13 yrs old and up) and the Next Generation (those below 12 years old). These two generations have absolutely no fear for technology; in fact they embrace it wholeheartedly. But with such wide access to information at the tips of their fingertips, schools face a new challenge in teaching them, something that Xavier is moving briskly into. Unlike the generations of parents where a student WAITS for content before ASSIMILATING it, learning for 21st century kids must entail what Fr. Johnny calls the 5 “-ate’s”:
* LOCATE content (e.g., how to use search engines to find information)
* INTERROGATE the results (learning not to just accept search results as truth but to interrogate which is true, half-true, or false)
* CREATE and COMMUNICATE content
* COLLABORATE with others
At the same time, kids must learn 3 things that go along with ease of technology access and information:
