a funny exchange and a serious thought

i have just been enlightened by toni what a naughty gift pearl necklace means. and i had to go "eeeeeeek!" i have just been sending that to friends over facebook? what the hey. i am so sorry.
so note to self... if it is a naughty gift and it looks pretty harmless... it still means something else. so if you don't know what it means... don't bother sending it. jeez. kakahiya. hahaha!

kasalanan mo to, sigmund freud! nyeta ka. hahahaha!

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after paying the water bill, i arrived at an empty office with just today's paper waiting on the table. (hmm... how did that get there? moomoooo!) . so i flipped around and saw the usual bad news and did not bother to read. until i came across an article on education written by mike luz.

it talk about systemic answers to the problem of the department of education, rather than band-aid solutions. one of the band-aid solutions that he points out to is cyber-education. which i totally agree with! when i first heard jesli lapus talk about it during the karunungan festival in the ateneo, i was totally skeptical about the idea. having gone around several indigenous communities in mindanao, i have seen the state of public elementary schools in the area. and using the internet would do nothing to improve it at all. heck, there is no electricity and much less phone connections! and with zte deal... makes you wonder, really. cybereducation would probably just widen the gap between urban and rural education centers more.

what these children in the forgotten regions of our country needs are good teachers and better classroom conditions. they need schools that are near their communities and not one that can be reached only after a three kilometer walk. what they need is definitely not the internet. yet.

mike luz makes a good point about the department of education budget. while it has the biggest budget allocation (as it should be), the real test of government commitment to education should be budget per child. and he indicated, other countries spend seven to ten times more than we do.

and the teacher's salary... most urban private schools are able to provide good benefits for their educators. the government and the people have to realize that teachers are the core to the progress of the nation. salaries must be competent and one that will allow a teacher to live on it, not merely survive. imagine that our nation's future is in their hands. so investments on good teachers is a must.

and applicants should be screened properly. not just on the intellectual basis (which i actually find lacking still), but also on their capability to handle and educate a class. teaching is not about having the smartest people in front of the board, but one who is able to have an idea understood. (i've had so many near-genious teachers in the ateneo, but some of them do not know how to teach at all!) and any person who believes in corporal punishment applying to be a teacher, should be kicked out as soon as they step in the door. threatening a child will not do anything to a child's learning. at all.

on mike luz... juan miguel luz used to be the undersecretary of education. while i was not able to follow his short career on the post, i find it tragic that he wasn't able to stay longer to make the changes he had discussed in his article today. i had the privilege of being in a meeting in him january this year.

when i was informed that we were to present our program to him for comments, i got nervous. i barely had an idea about him and i've always been afraid of presenting thoughts to education experts. but he came. late but quite apologetic because he came from another meeting. and i was aghast... he was a handsome fellow. if i were in my 40's, i'd have a super crush on him. since i'm only nearing 30's, i only have a slight crush on him. hehe!

but i was more blow away by the way he thinks, by his ideas. in that man, i find a true educator. one truly concerned by delivering education to children and not just an official concerned with statistics to present to people. we both advocate against GMA's english policy for early childhood level students. and our program was lauded for using the native dialect as medium of instruction for class (yey!). and he was encouraging with focus on our skills-upgrading for teachers rather than prioritizing infrastructure (which tends to be a government folly).

anyway... that meeting made me a mike luz fan. i would like to work with someone who has that kind of drive for change and the intellectual capacity to lay options out. i do hope to hear more from this man next time. for now, i will content myself with his articles.