Archive for the ‘education’ Category
Fix major education problems first–Nebres
MANILA, Philippines—Ateneo de Manila University president Fr. Bienvenido Nebres has criticized the Aquino administration’s plan to add two more years to basic education, saying the government should focus first on cutting the number of “illiterates” the country produces annually.
Nebres, who headed the Presidential Task Force on Education (PTFE) in the Arroyo administration, said that with its meager resources, the government should first address the backlog in schools, textbooks, teachers and classrooms, and then cut by half the number of students (estimated to be around 700,000) who drop out of elementary school and are “illiterate.”
“Once you have achieved that, then let’s talk about the two years,” Nebres said in an interview in his office at the Ateneo.
President Aquino in his State of the Nation Address announced the plan to add two more years to basic education, which currently consists of six years of elementary and four years of high school.
The plan is aimed at aligning the Philippine education system with international standards.
But for Nebres, the plan would take away precious government resources from more pressing needs. Proponents of the plan say it would cost the government an additional P100 billion to implement it over a five-year period.
Nebres said records showed that 700,000 to 800,000 elementary school students—or around a third of the 2.4 million who enter the grades each school year—drop out before Grade 6.
“That means they’re illiterate. They’re unemployable. The estimate is that there are 12 million to 15 million illiterates in the country. So every year, you’re adding another 700,000 to 800,000,” Nebres said.
“That’s what should be addressed first because the country cannot move with so many poor unemployable people being added every year,” he said.
Instead of adding two years to basic education, Nebres recommended that the government instead add extra years to “select college courses” whose graduates would be required abroad to have 15 to 16 years of education.
bookbug blues
i could be more upset about the book tax. i am a bookbug, after all. i buy imported and local fiction and non-fiction regularly, mostly imported mostly english, and i read them all as a matter of pleasure, of study, sometimes of survival. do i really not mind paying more?
i mind, of course. times are hard, money is tight. maybe it’s just mercury being retrograde, i’ve been through this before, the post office has been taxing our mail-order books for some years now, and talaga i know i should could be angrier but i just can’t get beyond a hay-naku sabay buntong-hininga.
kumbaga sa “straw that broke the camel’s back” this is not it, this is far from it. because a tax on imported books simply is too lightweight and too burgis an issue to get me as mad as i already am about the scandalizingly high cost of basic goods and services e.g. food, shelter, clothing, utilities, medicines, and schooling. “non-educational” books simply don’t belong in the same category.
nonetheless i wish robin hemley and manolo and jessica and teddyboy and the blogosphere success in the campaign to jolt the government back to its senses and back to full compliance with the florence agreement. until then, books getting more expensive just means i’ll be buying less. maybe i’ll even stop going to bookstores, as a matter of protest, as 1read2 suggests:
… the government as represented by the Department of Finance and Customs Bureau has made its stand on the Book Tax and Duty. “Sue us” seems to be the battle cry: A very arrogant one at that.
…Hopefully, someone does sue them but in the meantime what to do?
Given that it seems that the bookstores and booksellers are somewhat hesitant to challenge this ruling. Perhaps it would be time to do something against this taxation.
Do not buy books that have duties imposed. Do not buy it. Book readers and book collectors are the customers of this industry. And they make it prosper and if the industry cannot defend itself from unjust and illegal taxes it might be the time to not buy.
Books can be downloaded from the Net . Read and even share the ebook with a friend or fellow book reader.
…Refuse to pay the taxman his unjust taxes
Books can be gained in several ways and not all of them involves buying. No I am not referring to stealing. Borrow from the library or share a book with a friend.
Establish book clubs with libraries…
meanwhile as le flaneur reminds in his comment to mlq3 there’s the 2010 elections coming. how about if we not vote for candidates who support the book tax. or, to be positive. how about if we campaign and vote for candidates who would rescind the book tax (other things being equal ;)
also meanwhile, there’s always booksale. i don’t mind secondhand books. i’m also willing to trade, but first i have to put together a list of books that i can bear to part with, fiction and non-, all of them educational. promise.
the senator’s daughter 2
thanks to anna de brux for asking:
You mean to say that sex education is still not part of the school curriculum in Pinas? That accounts for the phenomenal population ‘explosion’ in the country.”
there is some “sex education” going on in the higher elementary grades and in high school but mostly just about the anatomy, and mostly vague about how male and female get together in sexual intercourse, and how babies are made. i suppose educators are held back by the same factors as parents from explaining in some detail how to avoid pregnancy, which is the fear that the kids might take it as a license to have sex as long as no one gets pregnant.
what we need are some creative minds working on how to get sexual information across in a manner that encourages objectivity and equips kids with the necessary information about hormones and libido so that they are not entirely at the mercy of sexual urges.
the senator’s daughter
pregnant at 18. what a bummer for bong revilla and lani mercado, no matter what they say (now that they’re over the shock and the shame) that it’s okay, they did their best, hindi sila nagkulang sa pangaral, hindi naman nila kayang magbantay 24/7, siguro talagang destiny niya na mag-asawa ng maaga tulad ng magulang niya.
in fairness to inah, nag-sorry naman siya sa magulang, which means she knows how deeply she has disappointed them. and, i suppose, it is to her credit that she is prepared to suffer the traditional consequences, as in goodbye freedom and maidenhood, hello marriage and motherhood. how brave.
but i think it is even braver to buck the system, like rosanna roces’ 16-year old daughter did when, in the same “happiness ahead” circumstances some years ago with an 18-year old brother of inah, she opted for single motherhood. the idea being, to wait, finish their studies while getting to know each other better. there’s more to a relationship than sex.
strike two na ito kay senator revilla – first a son, now a daughter. clearly, parents need help in the sexual education of their children, never mind the catholic church. clearly, there ought to be a law mandating sex education in all schools and universities. let’s hope the message is not lost on the senator.
elderly divide – lumbera vs. salonga & bernas
it wasn’t a face-off, just three of our elders one-on-one with korina sanchez: first former senate president jovito salonga, then the jesuit constitutional commissioner father joaquin bernas, and finally national artist for literature bienvenido lumbera.
no doubt natuwa ang palasyo kina salonga at bernas who together took up 45 minutes of the hour-long show. di bilib sa people power ang dalawa. salonga is against “mob rule.” bernas is against a quick fix. both recommend that the gloria-resign forces expend their energy on rallying for electoral reform instead so the 2010 elections will be clean and credible. shades of the bishops and christian monsod. status quo. go by the rules. don’t rock the boat.
mas interesante si lumbera, who recently endorsed the u.p. council statement calling for the resignation of gma. clearly unequivocally against the status quo and not beyond breaking rules, breaking out of patterns, for the common good, lumbera speaks also for a group of political analysts, public policy experts and academic scholars whose attitude is, “Arroyo was installed to the presidency by people power, people power may also unseat her.” and since neither a noli succession nor a military junta is desirable, a citizens’ transition council might be just the thing.
lumbera soundbites:
I belong to the Center for People Empowerment in Governance, or CenPEG . . . [in our analysis] what could possibly be done is to set up a commission headed by the Chief Justice, and the task is to prepare for 2010, making sure that everything has been cleared up and every move has been taken to ensure real elections. How to get more people to support such a proposal, that’s the task of the movement right now.”
People should keep on demonstrating and expressing their will to get her out of power, and if she doesn’t resign, at least people learn how it is to participate in a group movement towards making her resign.”
Noli is part of the Gloria regime and therefore one can expect that his moves will be in line with what he got from associating with Gloria and her cabinet.”
It is possible that people right now behind Gloria’s decision to cling to power might begin to advice her to take cognizance of the demand of the people. Perhaps as the movement gathers more power, more support from people, then even provincial and local governments will begin to concede.”
This is the fruit of EDSA One and Two. We’re moving forward in the sense that now people are no longer personality oriented… People have a greater consciousness of the need for genuine change.”
I would not hazard a fearless prediction. All i can express is hope that there is going to take place certain realigments prior to 2010 which might involve people who will be give us hope for real change.”
Our political education has been moving in waves. First we were all convinced that the leaders we need are those America approved, then that our leaders should be those who are nationalist to a certain extent. When Cory took over, for a while there was real hope that the Philippines would find a new social order, but it was very disappointing; Cory proved to be a daughter, a child of her class. Then there was Fidel Ramos and we got to a point where the country was being dragged by the President to globalize. And then Erap; there was much hope that Erap, reputedly of the masses, would institute a government thats really for the masses. And then Gloria by accident was the one constitutionally installed; we were also bitterly disappointed that she did not live up to hopes of the people.”
I think the masses [are looking to] the politically educated to come up with moves that would bring about change. Our system of education has really distorted the minds/mentalities of our people. The colonial orientation of the educational system has made people think that only if we follow the Americans, then our country will be all right. There is a great hesitance to take a step that would depart from that mentality.”
I am full of hope that our country in a future time will achieve the kind of government that would give freedom and deomocracy to a greater number of people. How long is it going to take? It depends on the persistence and determination of those who are in the forefront of the Resign movement to get our population to realize that what needs to change is not simply the personalities in government but the system altogether.”
hmm, a two-year transition government to be headed by the chief justice. and who exactly would people the commission? excerpts from CenPEG’s issue analysis no. 5:
The trailblazing transition council will be composed of – and staffed by – representatives of people’s organizations, NGOs, and sectors that are struggling for the resignation or removal of Arroyo and are united by a concrete program of genuine social, economic, and political reform. These are the groups and sectors generally left out in Edsa 1 and Edsa 2 where the victories of people’s struggles were hijacked by members of the elite and ruled the country in the old tyrannical and corrupt ways that people power had precisely struggled to demolish.
“The citizens’ transition council will address the public clamor for a non-traditional, pro-people political leadership that may likely draw support from other key players such as influential members of the interfaith, business, and the military. For this option to become feasible, however, the pressure that will force Arroyo to resign should be strong and insurmountable in a supreme act of sovereign power by the people allowing them – extra-constitutionally – to entrust powers to this caretaker body.
“The short-term and minimum agenda of the proposed citizens’ council is to initiate immediate reforms starting with the electoral system to ensure a clean and democratic election in 2010. So long as this is made clear – alongside with the fact that the council will exist only for a specific duration – then it will likely draw the support not only from the disparate political forces arrayed against the regime but also significant segments of the broad public. Elite and traditional politicians should admit that they have already lost their self-proclaimed right to dominate leadership while the people have begun to realize they should assert their sovereign power if comprehensive reform in governance is to be instituted. . . .
“The search for a political alternative is a communal work in progress. Its shape and configuration will evolve in the process of widening and increasing the momentum for replacing a widely-perceived corrupt and most despicable regime. But the answer for an alternative leadership must soon be cobbled together by all democratic and patriotic forces as it will serve as the bridge toward building the “critical mass” needed to put an end to a regime of greed and fear. The arduous and contentious process of political reconstruction should begin with the first step.”
interesting. possibly because i’m not sure about noli anymore. caught him being ugly, scolding media for being makulit. how unpresidential.