By Jam Magdaleno and Cesar Ilao III
LAST WEEK, Laguna Governor Marisol “Sol” Aragones announced a blanket suspension of in-person classes at all levels, shifting all schools — public and private alike — to online learning. The reason? The “possible” occurrence of a strong earthquake within two weeks, following the tremors that recently hit Cebu and Mindanao.
To many parents, the announcement sounded reassuring: better safe than sorry. To students, it meant almost a month of flexible learning, reminiscent of the pandemic experience. To politicians, it was a masterstroke of populist signaling: quick, visible action that pleases an anxious public.
The rush to suspend in-person classes reveals how, in post-pandemic Philippines, class suspensions have become the new populist tool. What used to be a last-resort response to typhoons and calamities is now wielded as a political reflex, an easy way to appease fearful constituents while avoiding deeper, structural questions.
But what do we mean when we say “populist?” We use the term in its broadest sense: politicians appealing to public sentiment as the highest virtue, while overriding other bases for policy decisions, such as science and data. Populism thrives on a binary framing that leaves little room for nuance.
One familiar refrain captures it well: “Ang klase na mawawala ay maaaring mahabol, ngunit ang buhay ay iisa (One can catch up a missed class, but you only have one life).” Such rhetoric turns complex policy trade-offs into moral absolutes.
The suspension was premised on the “precautionary” need to conduct structural checks on school buildings. Yet this raises a fundamental question: Why only now? Earthquakes in the Philippines are not new; they are regular features of our geography. The National Building Code of the Philippines (Republic Act No. 6541) already mandates that all public and private buildings be properly maintained to ensure structural safety and integrity. If safety inspections were a true priority, shouldn’t they have been scheduled routinely, not triggered by social media panic? In other words, the decision is reactive, not proactive.
Instead of institutionalizing safety through preparedness and infrastructure investment, officials resort to what communication scholars describe as symbolic action — temporary closures, online classes, and “monitoring” announcements — that perform concern and signal action but deliver little in the long term. To borrow from French thinker Guy Debord, we are witnessing a spectacle of safety.
Two days after Laguna’s announcement, the Department of Education (DepEd) issued “a reminder” that class suspensions should be “exercised with balance and prudence,” signaling that the measure may have gone too far.
The most troubling assumption behind such decisions is that learning can be replicated online without compromising its quality. The pandemic normalized a reliance on digital platforms among schools and local officials: an approach often mistaken for a genuine, science-backed education policy.
What began as a temporary emergency response in 2020 has since become a perverse incentive. one that allows decision-makers to suspend in-person learning at the slightest “hint” of danger, even after seismologists have disproved rumors that recent the earthquakes were related to one another.
Let’s look at the facts: For millions of students, “online learning” means poor connectivity, unaffordable devices, and parents forced into the role of teachers. For younger pupils, it means lost social interaction, the foundation of real learning. The abrupt shift also presumes that teachers and professors can instantly rework lesson plans, laboratory activities, and fieldwork schedules without disruption.
To assume that schools can switch back to online mode overnight, with no preparation, is to ignore the very crisis policymakers claim to address.
Every day of lost classroom instruction further widens the gap in reading, math, and science — areas in which Filipino students already perform among the world’s weakest. In the 2022 PISA assessment, the Philippines scored 355 points in mathematics (versus the OECD average of 472) and 347 points in reading (versus 476). The science result was approximately 373 points (against an OECD average of 485). Because each 20-point shortfall is roughly equivalent to one year of schooling, this implies that Filipino 15-year-olds could be as much as five to six years behind their international peers.
Education officials and local executives appear to have forgotten that physical classes remain the irreplaceable venue of instruction. Every canceled class, every day of lost interaction, compounds the learning crisis the country already faces.
Beyond education, these suspensions reverberate through the local economy. The small karinderya (food stall) beside the school, the jeepney and tricycle drivers who ferry students, and the sari-sari (sundry) stores that sell snacks all lose income when classrooms are empty.
According to a 2021 study by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), a full year of school closures could cost the Philippine economy up to P1.15 trillion in lost output as parents withdraw from work and productivity declines. Meanwhile, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported in 2023 that Laguna’s economy surpassed P1.03 trillion in gross provincial output, making it the first province in the country to cross the trillion-peso mark. Given this scale, even short-term disruptions in in-person learning can ripple through local communities with significant economic consequences.
While future studies have yet to quantify how much small enterprises lose during prolonged suspensions, the scale of Laguna’s economy and its dependence on service and transport livelihoods make such disruptions far from trivial.
The move also sets a worrying precedent. If one province can cancel in-person learning for almost a month on the basis of a possible earthquake, what will stop other local executives from doing the same?
Laguna’s case is a symptom of a larger national problem: the ease with which we suspend learning, and with it, progress itself. When short-term political optics replace long-term investment in schools and safety, we tell an entire generation of students and parents that disruption is normal and that education is negotiable.
Populism always exacts a price beyond the next election — it is society that ultimately pays. In this case, the cost is a weaker education system, deeper learning losses, and an economy made ever more fragile by political performance.
Jam Magdaleno is a political and economic researcher, writer, and communication strategist. He is the Head of Information and Communications of the Foundation for Economic Freedom (FEF), a Philippine-based think tank. Cesar Ilao III is a lecturer at the University of the Philippines and a researcher and communications specialist for the FEF. He was formerly a researcher at Monash University, Australia.
