EDITORIAL — Out the window

A video taken during the magnitude 5.8 earthquake that hit different parts of the Visayas and Mindanao a few days ago is now making its rounds online.

The video shows the reaction of a teacher during the quake. We see him calmly going about his lessons, but when the quake hits, his demeanor totally changes from someone in control to some who has lost control.

“Oh my god. Oh my god! Gawas mo, gawas mo. Mamatay ta ‘ron. Mamatay ta ‘ron. Gawas. Kay mamatay mo!” he tells students as they scramble out of the classroom.

Thank goodness no one appears to have been hurt during the incident.

Despite the seriousness of the event, we can see the humor in it. However, we can also see something else that concerns us.

In this particular situation, what happened to everything teachers taught students to do during all those earthquake drills? You know what we mean, those drills were students are taught to slowly march out of their classrooms in single file, hands over their heads to protect from imagined debris, then sitting in the middle of the field waiting for things to calm down.

While others will find it easy to rib the teacher for losing his cool and panicking in front of his students, we won’t go there because we don’t really know how we will react when suddenly thrust into any situation that tests our nerves and mettle. He did the best he could do under the circumstance.

We also cannot generalize that this was how many teachers acted during the quake because this appears to be the only video shot in a classroom during that incident.

But still, at the back of our mind we wonder if what we are teaching our children on how to act during such a calamity sticks with them, and is being followed by those who teach them, or just goes out the window when time comes to put into practice what has been learned.