Category: Opinion

IN your mind, you’re an athlete, an award-winning musician, an actor, or even an idol. You have millions of admiring fans, your family is incredibly proud of you, and you have a loving, supportive, and loyal partner. A superstar. A hero. The one who is loved, admired, and simply unstoppable. But then the fantasy abruptly stops. You realize you’re lying in bed, your phone in hand, earphones in, and a TikTok edit of a celebrity playing repeatedly on your phone. How much time has passed? A couple of minutes? Perhaps hours? For some, it’s the entire day.

THE K-12 program was signed into law as Republic Act No. 10533, also known as the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013. It was created to improve the country’s education system, adding two more years to the traditional 10-year basic education.

Many of the early legislators in the Philippines were highly educated individuals, often trained lawyers who were capable and qualified lawmakers. In contrast, today’s standards appear to have shifted, with fame and popularity often outweighing academic and professional qualifications. This change raises concerns about the level of preparedness among those seeking legislative positions.

Back when my grandparents were still kids, it wasn’t uncommon to share the same roof with 6 to 11 siblings. It staggers my mind to think parents in the 50’s were able to mentally handle and even afford to have that many children. These days, parents usually get along by having three kids, max.

WITHIN every queer youth lies an internal light, waiting to be seen—whether fully realized or not. A quiet spark whose fate is determined through a simple truth: it either flourishes in an environment that fosters love and acceptance or dims in the presence of fear and rejection.

“Pets can heal your mental health.” I once read this while scrolling through social media. At some point, we’ve all probably felt like our mental health was being ignored or invalidated. Stress, anxiety, and sadness can feel overwhelming, and sometimes, it seems like no one truly understands us.

“YOU can kill a revolutionary, but you can never kill the revolution… You can jail a liberator, but you can’t jail liberation.” A quote from Fred Hampton, an American revolutionary and activist, can correlate to what was celebrated last Feb. 25, the 39th anniversary of the People Power Revolution, also known as the EDSA Revolution.

AN EX-PRESIDENT walks into a campaign rally and begins to do what he does best, publicly talk about murder. “Makapatay na tayo ng kinse na senador para pasok na lahat,” then added, “The only way to do this is pasabugin nalang natin yung mga ano…” The diehards would scoff at it and say something along the lines of “Oh, well that’s your typical Pareng PDuts HAHAHA!” But of course, the rest of us here, or yet anyone in their right mind, would be alarmed by such a joke.

PEER pressure has always been a powerful and influential force that often affects a person’s choice or action, whether it be for something good or bad. Almost all of us have experienced peer pressure at least once in our lives. I can safely say that, more often than not, it is not a circumstance that a lot of us enjoy going through.

THE Philippines is known to be a country centered on Christianity. Majority of Filipinos are Roman Catholic. Some say that to be considered a religious country, it has to have a culture, societal norms, and statutes almost dependent on the nation’s faith. Undeniably, this is very evident in our country, where nearly every tradition, cultural practice, and even statute is intertwined with religion.