The Circle of Discontentment

Nature has several cycles which make sure limited resources are reused. We have the water cycle, the carbon cycle, the circle of life and all of that. However, there's one unnatural cycle we need to kill and stop as soon as possible!

The circle of discontentment as I like to call it works this way. We are discontent with a certain area that our government is in charge off. We complain that we need or deserve better than whatever the government gives us and demand more. This next step isn't always present but usually while complaining, we'll abuse whatever government has already given us while demanding better. So, government responds and the cycle repeats itself.

I shall illustrate one particular case where I have personally seen this happen and though I need not point it out, it's been a common recurring theme in protests that make it to the headlines.

Coming from a national university, the battle cry had always been for bigger state subsidy. I was paying around 7,000 pesos per semester for (arguably) the best education in the Philippines and people just wanted more. This 7,000 pesos/semester was blamed for certain students opting to drop out of school altogether because they couldn't afford it. My friends would always express shock at the figure since it was at least three times less up to ten times less than their own tuition fees per semester.

Granted not everyone is as blessed as I am but this 7,000/sem tuition fee did not amount to a preventing a bunch of my friends from enrolling at all. I've had friends apply for scholarships very easily and they even give monthly allowance and housing allowance. So no, any tuition fee is NOT a barrier of entry for any one although it was always mentioned as the barrier of entry for the poor Filipinos. What I think the actual barrier of entry is, is the inability of some families to sustain the cost of living of a student - from food to housing and transportation. This figure amounts to more than 7,000/sem.

UP Students rally for greater state subsidy

So the activists of UP would always stage rallies and protests pushing for bigger state subsidy and lower tuition fees. And their means of doing so? Walking out of classes. This is where I never got the logic for walking out of classes. Every single class held in UP has a corresponding cost. Whether it's the salary of the professor, the janitor that cleans the hallways, the electricity that powers the lights and the air conditioning, there is cost involved. That cost is subsidized heavily (or today, fully) by the government. If you're fighting for greater state subsidy, it simply does not make sense at all on any level to throw away classes which the government has offered to pay for. And this isn't something that's rare. A lot of student activists (not all mind you) actually consistently fail their classes because they're off in the streets "fighting the good fight." Wanna know a better fight to fight? It's in the classroom.

The analogy is simple. Would any sane person willingly continue to give you things if you simply throw them away and have the gall to ask for more? Of course not.

This is the circle of discontentment as seen in numerous government projects. How do we fix it? I have a suggestion although it may be an unpopular one. But needless to say, we need to end it.

I'll close this piece with something I've noticed time and time again on these issues. If we should learn anything from our recent history, it's that the government is a lousy spender and a lousy quality controller and we need to change that soon.

(P.S. After writing this piece, I noticed that the term, circle of discontent had already been used. Although in a different context. I'd like to keep this piece the way it is though so don't mix the two when reading this.)

Teaching the new kids today

Last November, I took a part time job teaching Calculus to Senior High School students in Ateneo de Cebu. Anyone who knows me from high school or college knows how much I enjoy explaining things. Up until last November, my audience had been limited to classmates, tutees, friends and family. As this time around, I'd be teaching Grade 11 students, I knew that these kids wouldn't be like my classmates or my family or my friends. This was mentioned to me over and over and over again by practically everyone who knew these kids.

This new generation of students grew up with technology readily available to them as younger kids. I grew up in a time when we needed to get those floppy disks (the big 5" ones, not the smaller 3.5" ones) for computer class,. I grew up in a time when internet was really slow and practically unusable, when e-books weren't yet a thing, when having a cellphone (even the clunky ones) was absolutely banned in school.

 

We needed this for computer class. #thiswasathing

Naturally, I would have to expect having to talk to kids who aren't "speaking my language". I could not assume that what worked for me when I was in 1st year college would necessarily work for them. This is one lesson I learned the hard way after I gave them their first long test.

You see, being in UP, the test questions were never the same as the questions given during the tests. In the rare cases they were, we didn't learn as much. The teacher would teach us how to find x, for example but ask us to find y in the exam. All the competencies were in place, it was simply a matter of how to use the competencies. Being brought up this way, I decided it would a great learning experience if I did the same thing. Looking back, however, I think my students did learn a lot from the first long test I gave them.

One of their first assumptions about me were that my exams would be easier than their previous teacher's exams and boy were they wrong. I wanted to let them experience the kinds of exams I did - where I'd learn more while taking the exams and I knew I wasn't being spoon fed the solutions. I remember seeing their faces after the exam looking so defeated. But I take pride in knowing they quickly learned their lessons.

Succeeding test results were still low but they gradually went higher and higher and I'm proud to say that my first batch of students did end up learning from their time in class. I hope I taught them more than calculus though. I hope I taught them hard work as most of my students aren't going to be using calculus as much as the others. But all of them will be using hard work throughout their entire lives.