Skip to main content

When Stubborn Boomers Complain That Academic Lessons Are Getting Harder

 

As the long weekend is well, about to end, I want to write this new post regarding education. Classes are about to resume in the Philippines by Tuesday since Monday will be declared an extended holiday for April 9. April 9 is the Day of Valor which commemorates the Fall of Bataan to the fallen Empire of Japan. As classes are resuming and I'm seeing a new batch benefit from what I never did. Right now, the second semester started in January and school starts in August--which I think should be the thing. I want to recall something from when I was a teenager. I really didn't like high school especially when the previous generation say stuff like:

  1. "When I was your age, I already did a lot, I became a parent in my 20s, I already had this and that..."
  2. "If we were honor students back then, you should be an honor student too!" 
  3. "You're just getting spoiled! Lessons aren't getting harder these days!" 
Lessons are getting harder these days. It's not just children getting spoiled. I remembered a problem when parents started to complain about the lessons getting harder. I could remember parents would start to complain to schools like:
  1. "I was an honor student, why isn't my child one?"
  2. "Why are lessons getting harder when it was easier back in my day?" 
When I think of those arguments, do these boomers (who are in their 60s and 70s now) fail to see these necessary truths: 
  1. New information is generated daily. That means that textbooks back in the 1960s to 1970s should accommodate more information and stuff. Just imagine how mathematics and physics would be if they weren't updated. We'd not be enjoying the new technology today.
  2. These boomers probably care more about grades than learning. I remembered some parents started to transfer their children to easier schools. The reason was not that the current school was harder, but only to maintain an honor roll. Has it occurred to them that it's better to be a nobody in a good school than to be an honor student in a bad school?
With stubborn boomers as grandparents by now, I wonder if they're going to start arguing with their children at the cost of their grandchildren? I wonder if plenty of boomer grandparents aren't going to give the same love and affection to their grandchildren as their parents did to their children? Maybe, the children of boomers may mostly have fond memories of their grandparents. However, maybe the same can't be said about the grandchildren of boomers, especially since the academic standard has changed significantly. The Philippines now has K+12 (which was implemented during the time of the late former president, Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III), there is new stuff to study, and many grandparents still start bragging about what they did when they were only 18-20 years old, when the environment was different right now. I could imagine if the children of boomer parents (who have children of their own) will finally say, "You never change! You're still as stubborn! Now you want your grandchildren to be like you? Please, we're in an updated curriculum."

I guess for stubborn boomers, there's always the comfort zone. I wouldn't be surprised that boomers open to change may often be ostracized. I could imagine that one boomer grandparent may take the wise advice not to give a child a smartphone. However, this boomer grandparent might be seen playing video games with their grandchildren. This boomer grandparent may visit and tell the grandchild, "You should be glad lessons are getting harder. Don't worry, there will be more tools to help you get smarter." These boomers, who are open to change, would be instrumental in upgrading education.

There's a statement that smooth seas never make a good sailor. I wonder if stubborn boomers only got into the honor roll because the school they enrolled in was much easier? I could say they probably got into the honor roll back then due to outdated curricula. The educational environment yesterday and today is significantly different. Lessons just need to be updated every now and then. It was a problem that the late Deng Xiaoping faced during his reign. Deng was already in his 70s when he took over China. Deng saw outdated textbooks. The late Lee Kuan Yew also gave proper advice to Deng. Later, Lee praised Deng's new economic policies, even if the former was a democrat and Deng was a communist. 

In this day and age, we really just need to accept that school lessons will get harder. That's why I'm in for K+12 and starting to change the way schools are done. I still believe it's more than time to follow the Singaporean education system. The Philippines should really stop looking up to America, especially with its failing education system. New methodologies also need to be developed to make harder lessons manageable. Stubborn boomers are probably just going to grumble about it. In my case, let them grumble about it. There will be non-stubborn boomers who are more concerned about fixing what went wrong than being too comfortable in the status quo. 

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

The Idiocy of Typing Anti-FDI Rants Using IMPORTED Devices, IMPORTED Platforms, and IMPORTED Social Media

Bulatlat It's very easy to open Facebook (or any related platform) and find lots of stupidity , right? There have been idiotic comments I find on Facebook such as FDI is this and that. We can find "thought leader groups" such as Alliance of Concerned Teachers, Anakpawis, Anakbayan, Bayan Muna, IBON Foundation, Kabataan Partylist, League of Filipino Students, and Philippine Anti-Fascist League (PH Antifa) who keep ranting about FDI as this and that. I even remember somebody dared to say that FDI caused Egypt to dry up. Ironically, North Korea and Venezuela, two protectionist countries, have very bad pollution problems. I'd blame it that they don't have the money to do a clean-up drive. How can you clean up a polluted river without the right equipment? How can you expect better power efficiency with outdated equipment that keep coughing up, cough, cough, lots of black smoke?  All the talks on social media can be very funny. The big irony is that all calls for "...
Read more

Get Stuck with EDSA, End Up Like Nokia

  Yes, we should never forget what history teaches us. A classmate of mine, back in high school, wrote a simple and blunt essay called "History: A Teacher". I doubt he still has a soft copy, given it was already more than 20 years ago. I'd like to quote Duterte critic Andrew James Masigan wrote this in  Philippine Star --something that should remain relevant: I would never undervalue the 1987 Constitution. It dismantled the legal framework of a repressive regime and established the democratic institutions we enjoy today. For this, I am grateful. The 1987 Constitution was crafted with the best of intentions. It sought to put the Filipino first in all aspects of governance and to level the playing field amongst sectors and peoples.  But it is far from perfect. It failed to consider the importance of foreign capital and technologies and the stiff competition we would have to face to obtain them. In short, its economic provisions were short-sighted . So despite the Constitut...
Read more

Going from Tet Offensive in 1968 to Doi Moi in 1986

Foreign Trade University The Lunar New Year isn't just celebrated by the Chinese. Chinese New Year is one form of the Chinese New Year. Other forms of Lunar New Year follow   the Chinese New Year cycle, such as the Tết Nguyên Đán of Vietnam, the Japanese Lunar New Year, and the Seollal in South Korea. There's also the Tibetan New Year and the Mongolian New Year. I remember when talking about Vietnam celebrating the Lunar New Year together with the Chinese, my fellow Chinoy made the squity-eyed gesture to talk about most Vietnamese looking like Chinese. Should we even be surprised that there's a Vietnamese student who looks like the deposed Alice Guo, aka Guo Hua Ping?  What was the Tet Offensive about? Right now, I want to talk about the infamous Tet Offensive , which was a Lunar New Year attack of January 31, 1968. The Western concept would prefer to talk about it on January 31 instead of the Lunar New Year. A Filipino would probably say, "So what if it was Lunar Ne...
Read more

Facts vs. Gossip: Did Vietnam (According to Filipino MARITESes) Develop from Its Own Treasury Before Opening Up to FDI?

Vietnam Youth Union It's been 80 years since Vietnam achieved its independence in 1945. Some time ago, I wrote about how Vietnam's Doi Moi actually disproves the Trust Me Bro School of Economics . I wasn't too accustomed to researching Vietnam's ironic economic miracle . Vietnam is a one-party state ruled by the Communist Party of Vietnam. The word Communism would evoke fear and terror. What I find funny is that some people are using Vietnam as an excuse not to open up the Philippine economy (read here ). Such misinformed  people think that Vietnam "won this revolution," supposedly self-industrialized from its own treasury before opening up to FDI. In short, some people either believe that (1) Vietnam is an example of how a highly protectionist economy works, or (2) that Vietnam made itself rich before opening to FDI. Both of them are lies. I'll focus on the second point for this new blog post!  Right now, some people say that I'm just another marites...
Read more

It's Incredibly Frustrating to Discuss Economics with an Overspender

Overspending is just bad economics, isn't it? Economics is defined as the following for the sake of a review of high school basics: Economics is a social science concerned with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. It studies how individuals, businesses, governments, and nations make choices about how to allocate resources. Economics focuses on the actions of human beings, based on assumptions that humans act with rational behavior, seeking the most optimal level of benefit or utility. The building blocks of economics are the studies of labor and trade. Since there are many possible applications of human labor and many different ways to acquire resources, it is the task of economics to determine which methods yield the best results. Economics can generally be broken down into macroeconomics, which concentrates on the behavior of the economy as a whole, and microeconomics, which focuses on individual people and businesses. It had me thinking of 2016 wh...
Read more