Sunday, May 13, 2018

Philippine Woes: The Sad Reality of The Philippine Education


Image Source: Philstar

Albert Einstein, an intellectual giant in Science uttered that if he could name something that hindered his learning he would conclusively pinpoint that it’s his education. Well, we cannot deny this point of view of Einstein considering that his biography would definitely shout out that he was a freakin’, awe-inspiring eccentric student.

Well, I'm an avid fan of Albert but I don’t think that following his footsteps of pessimism will give me an instant genius look. I’m also one of the aspiring Scientist who took the ladder of not displaying any interest in schooling yet I’m the one who still paddles in this endless ocean of knowledge.

Well if I'm going to harness this whole rationality within me, Education in the Philippines is a complete ridicule. You’re given a tiresome time of roughly 10 hours with their boring talks which would later be adjourned by having a rote-based assessment. In Computer Reference, metaphorically, Schools are manufacturers of RAM not ROM. We’re only given a single topic on each day, with an assessment on the following day, then another discussion for the following day… hence, we’re forced to erase all what we learned from the preceding day to give space for the new ones.

And… how could we define school based on its etymological origin?

Well, it later came out from my Book in Classics that the word “school” was actually a Greek word with the same literary significance of “leisure”.

The most intriguing part isn’t about the etymology thingy but upon how to establish any connection with the latter.

Does what we see as the 21st Century Leisure is the transformation of Humans to Robots just like how students were given multiple tasks in a span of hour without a little consideration of their emotional health (most specifically for those students who don’t have any coping abilities to deal with academic stress) and any signs of complaint is a sign of discouragement.

Pssh~!  I also don’t get that idea why teachers always start their first-day discussion on Grading system instead of giving the possible lessons we’re going to tackle for the semester. Every subject teacher would definitely have this monotonous tone of “Ayaw jud mo’g pagtuon kay ihagbong tamo!”, “Pagsag-ulo jud mo’g maayo kay dagko biya ko muhatag ug grado.” Well, this is just a perfect archetypal of the modern-day ignorance, memorizing a single piece of facts without touching its significance, just like how every student lacks the critical thinking skills of assessing the credibility of every fact published in every DepEd-published books.

Philippine Education is a complete miseducation and uneducation. It’s the societal opium that drowns the youth to alienation. And all I see are the proudest parents, expressing their lavish feeling of accomplishments through tarpaulins and a boastful social media posts; taking pride about the ends of hard work from the so-called “Diploma Mill”. Disregarding that the Philippines is a good source for a cheap labor and putting behind the idea that grades aren’t a good parameter of intelligence and grades are just the product of an induced competition in order to sell themselves at a higher price in the skilled-labor market. Graduation isn’t  the end of studying nor a time to rejoice for it’s the threshold for someone that he/she is entering the world of oppression, which they taught to be the noble days to give their service for the humanitarian development or it’s just their materialist egos which think that having diploma is the best way they could satisfy their crazed consumer goals. And where here demanding for quality? Well in fact! Philippine schools were like bestowing diplomas like piso-print.

History can be the best reference point one could view to show that the Philippine Education isn’t efficacious in instilling an intellectually-liberated mind. Remember that Erap, a convicted plunderer was impeached due to corruption and perjury and yet he was almost re-elected as president in 2010 elections if it were not for Aquino whose mother’s timely death caught the glare of publicity. As well as with the late dictator, Ferdinand Marcos who was ousted out in position due to offenses such as atrocities, electoral sabotage, conspired crony capitalism, and questionable expenditures of public funds and yet years later he has been buried as a hero. And how education acted this sick stupidity of within this shameful course of Philippine History? Education should act as doctors of this widespread social cancer considering that DepEd is the only sector granted with a lion’s share of the Philippines’ national budget. It just proves that Philippines’ GDP and taxes were just wacked. With so many licensed teachers who only teach not by conviction but to teach as being told to do so. Educators who are only licensed but not empowered by a social mission. Who are only for their positions/jobs as an economic animal for items, tenure, and profit. All those mission-vision of DepEd has been purely degenerated by the superior’s economic motive.

At large, Education nowadays is now an investment in the economy (as a politico-economic tool to serve the interest of the ruling class) rather than pure, sheer garnering of knowledge.

The intrusion of this whole capitalistic philosophy is bogus. It’s a total b**sh*t. People with the utility/money are more privileged. If only education were as genuine and innocent as during the Enlightenment Period, we’d have a million of Einsteins and Picassos by now.

Its whole purpose is lost. It's now a battleground, not a breeding ground. I would rather educate myself than to succumb to unnecessary, selfish and superficial educational system.

I think only self-education is the only genuine form of education.. that is driven by pure curiosity and inquisition.

I don’t get how these troubles (aforementioned above) were still undiagnosed even today… If the majority of the students still take Rizal as the National Emblem of a Hero, then we should probably get a much more serious work on the critical side of teaching pedagogy.

Sunday, November 19, 2017

The Amazing History of Toothpick



Who would have thought something as simple as a wooden stick was commercialized by someone who made vast wealth for it?

Toothpicks from a Shake-a-pick Dispenser
The humble toothpick, a material specifically designed to, well, pick up food stuck between your teeth (but there are other uses to it too), is in every restaurant, eatery, or house today. What started this journey of this simple product and who pioneered on this business?

A Portrait of Forster from a Blogpost (The Invisible Woman by Claire Tomalin in film and biography: An impression of Victorianism )
Throughout the entire history, people have been using toothpicks strictly for personal use. They used silvers of wood, bones, quills, etc. Up until the 1860's no one has ever had the slightest idea that money can be made by selling this material. Charles Forster of Strong, Maine, once on a trip to South America, saw natives pick their teeth using wood. He then handcrafted his own toothpick and brought samples back in his homeland.

But then, how could Forster make good fortune from something that can be easily made, used once, and then discarded? Being a marketing genius, he devised a strategy to get customers to recognize the product.He began in small retail stores. When he couldn't place his product in the stores, he would hire people to ask for toothpicks in the store. The store retailers naturally rejected their customers' requests, and then realized what a great product a toothpick was. Forster finally penetrated into the retail stores but that's not the end. He would still hire people to buy a box of toothpicks and then those people returned the boxes to Forster who then resold to the retailers, thus reinforcing the "demand" for toothpicks. By that time, the retailers were now prepared to advertise the new product to real, un-hired customers.

Forster did the same strategy on restaurants which quickly rose the toothpicks' popularity, because people who dined in wouldn't have to bring their own or wait to be at home to get rid of the food in their teeth, or better yet, use their own tongue.

Several years later, the toothpick became so popular that it did not just serve its intended purpose but also as a status symbol. Chewing toothpicks became fashionable among well-to-do men, followed by the chewing of toothpicks by women. at that time chewing toothpick indicated that they had just eaten in a fine dining area.

Finally, the first machine that mass produced toothpicks was patented by Silas Noble, and J.P. Cooley, of Massachusetts. And from then on, one can never finish a meaty meal without a toothpick on the table.

Wage Calculator using VB.Net 2010



Wage Calculator GUI running under Windows 7 64-bit OS
The Wage Calculator is my first program (in publish) besides from the basic Hello World Print. The program was written under VB.Net 2010 and runs at any Operating System that supports .Net Framework Architecture (Windows Operating Systems and Linux Kernel using Wine).

The program consists of two GroupBox that incorporates the input and output, respectively. The program runs simply by plugging in your annual input which produces an output of Monthly, Weekly and Daily Wage Income. The silver lining of this working principle is describe from the below's source code:

Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles BtGenerate.Click

        userwage = BxUserwage.Text
        Monthly.Text = "$" & Math.Round(userwage / 12, 2)
        Weekly.Text = "$" & Math.Round(userwage / 52, 2)
        Daily.Text = "$" & Math.Round(userwage / 365.25, 2)
        If (userwage = "0") Then
            MsgBox("Please input value higher then zero")

        End If
    End Sub

Sunday, December 11, 2016

The ‘Plague-Infested Medieval Europe’ as an Epitome of Hazard Evolving to Disaster


Painting depicting the Black Death's Havoc | Photo from National Interest
The Black Plague/The Great Plague/The Black Death is commonly referred to the outbreak of the Bubonic Plague that struck the Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean area ranging from 1347 to 1351.

It is the first thing that came into my mind after going through the Classics of Camus and Boccaccio in which the aforementioned event was the top of the bill.

The Black Plague on its intensity exterminated a quarter to a third of Europe’s Population. It is so invasive that I myself liken it as genocide having its full capacity to set back human advancement.
In general sense, The Black Death was thought to have originated in Central Asia, where it travelled across Silk Road; and it was carried by fleas which struck to the rodents which were often transported on merchant ships. This transported it to Europe where it would wreak havoc.

If we’re going to weigh against the present versus the medieval times, the plague would probably have much lesser mortality rate which is directly comparable to having contacted with a tetanoid bacterium.

Particularly, during the first wave of the plague, several people had resistance to the infection. As the plague swept through Europe repeatedly it only intends to kill off people with low resistance leaving those who had better immunity invulnerable, this reduce the impact of later outbreak to some extent. Thus, the Plague started as just a mere hazard.

How does it evolved to a disaster costing a death toll of two billion lives? 

Well simple! Taking to account the sociological and cultural aspect of the Medieval Society in which it was only maneuvered by a single dominion, The Catholic Church. Most of the people adhered to the hegemonic ideology of monasticism. The way of life as presented by monks and nuns, in which they withdraw entirely or in part from society to devote themselves to prayer, solitude, and contemplation. It is as if that people must have been annihilated by fear and dread searching for explanations: Did this plague come from God? Or the Devil? This ‘mythos’ leaved the medical technology underdeveloped making the aftermath accentuated. Also this irrational belief drawn the Science’s prosper idled. The dormant field was replaced by priests and spiritual faith healing was rampant. Other priests also exploited this phenomenon to advance their stature in the town by suggesting that the plague was an act of God punishing the citizen’s sinful nature.
Other contributing factor was the so-called “Little Ice Age” which leads to a great famine during those times.

By any measure taken, the Black Death was world-shattering and shows how even the smallest of things, the microbial world, can at times steer the course of human civilization.