Business & Economics Perspective Blogger

High School Philippine History Movement It's August, and it's frequently associated with Buwan ng Wika . However, August tends to be celebrated more like Filipino cultural month than it is about the language. Right now, I want to "de-stress" by writing about the Filipino subject . I can remember how someone nearly didn't graduate from elementary or high school (during K+10) because of  the Filipino subject . It might sound absurd for Generation Z students but in my case, I can relate. Honestly, I hated the Filipino subject, especially since I grew up as a natural-born Filipino, but three out of four of my grandparents were Chinese citizens who took a long time to become Filipinized. I had to deal with the fact that my paternal grandmother became a Chinese citizen again when she got married to my paternal grandfather. It was in the 1990s, and I remember the Filipino subject. I could easily talk to my Filipino teacher now . Just because I have already forgiven the F...

Right now, I reserve the right to be critical of Kabataan Partylist. Kabataan Partylist is part of the Makabayan Bloc. I often get insults on Facebook, like saying, "Where's your mass base like Kabataan Partylist?" or "Have you rallied enough like Kabataan Partylist?" That's the "You Too Fallacy". As always, it becomes Makabayan Bloc's mindset to stick to what I call "Vietnam War Economics". The late Lee Kuan Yew would call their mentality a third-world mindset . Here's a post by Kabataan Partylist on their Facebook page: KABATAAN: Marcos Continues to Submit to Washington; Down with the Pax Silica Framework! House Assistant Minority Leader and Kabataan Partylist Rep. Atty. Renee Co expressed fierce condemnation today over the impending November finalization of the predatory Pax Silica framework, calling it an “outright declaration of economic warfare and imperial exploitation against the Filipino people.” With the Philippine gove...

Credit: Verywell / Dennis Madamba Some time ago, I wrote about the Broken Windows Theory and school insults . Whenever I remember the vicious cycle where the insulter usually gets a free pass (out of the name of "kids just being kids"), I also get more violent despite the interventions done. It wasn't until I was in another school that both sides were usually mediated, even if teachers could often lapse into just "dealing with the bigger offense". It made me think that several fights I got into in high school, even if the conflict wasn't resolved immediately, eventually fizzled because when I got scolded for overreacting, the aggressor still had the punishment that met the offense. For example, I got the harder scolding for overreacting,  while the other person got scolded also for triggering the offense. I even felt that reconciliation with some of my former enemies may have been much harder without mediating between the  two sides of the conflict. I mean, ...

Vecteezy The 1990s may be over, but there are times I feel like reviewing them. Many times, I feel like the teacher is often the enforcer and the victim of a bad system. You can have a smart teacher, but the same person  is constrained by the work culture of that day. There's this irritating mentality that says, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." mentality. This is like saying insults supposedly have no lasting impact . This reminds me of some incidents growing up. For the privacy of the people, I will not mention their names or the names of the institutions where they took place. In one incident when I was seven years old, a girl taunted me and wagged her tongue at me. I got mad, and I punched her in the eye in front of the whole class. The teacher comforted her and scolded me severely. I said I was insulted and I told the teacher, "Come on, you saw it ." However, the more I look at the work culture of that day, people were ex...

ABS-CBN News I thought about what life was like in the late 1990s. It was a boomer vs. millennial clash . I remember how often I kept complaining about high school during the K+10 era. Even worse, the real problem why I hated school was that school cared more about grades for the sake of grades , instead of teaching students how to get good grades based on learning first. What may have compounded it is that we've had boomer parents who thought that fatigue is a badge of honor .  What I realized is the common problem of toxic positivity . We have the "good vibes only" or "everything will turn out right in the end". Sadly, life doesn't always turn out that way. You can tell a terminally ill cancer patient that, and the cancer patient would die anyway. No amount of toxic positivity ever fixes the problem. This time, I'd like to rant once more about how toxic positivity has been used to defend the outdated 1987 Constitutio of the Philippines.  The classic r...

It's time for a bit of Chinese language Throwback Thursday. I remember how the Chinese school can be summarized as students  memorizing without understanding . The problem wasn't the Lǎoshīs (老師) but the system that ran them as persons . I decided to write this article to " bring up a trauma " associated with the Chinese education system. From Kiko Chinese, this picture shows the common complaints from children. Standard Chinese is so hard! The Chinese schools tend to lose students because they keep failing in Grade 2 or Grade 2 in Chinese. In fact, I remember someone failing Chinese four times back in the 1990s. Another one was three years in Grade 3 Chinese, where the Chinese teacher was even stricter than the Grade 2 Chinese teacher. The real issue was that there wasn't any real learning because the old traditional Chinese system wasn't doing anything right . People were treated as if Hokkien were their first language. However, we realize that people can...

I have the tendency to use my MBA as a license to avoid criticism. It's a real problem that some people use their credentials and/or academic achievements to try and win an argument. One incident I wrote about was Rep. Raoul Abellar Manuel flexing his "smarts" by using his cum laude degree to win the argument . It was all about how I would often say, "You're the moron because I have the MBA and you don't." There are times I felt like taking an MBA would make up for my "moral shortcomings" during high school when I was barely passing (and the passing rate was 80% , which is rather high), that I wasn't having honors, and that there was this saying, " Thou grades shalt determine thy future! " That, of course, has led to the reality where cheating is prevalent .  I wanted to make a review. I took my MBA in 2011 and graduated in 2014. I always felt that the MBA program was what I needed to become "invincible". It was also at ...

As the month comes to a close, I reflect on the fact that I wasn't a good student. I remembered telling everyone at the graduation ball, "I almost didn't graduate from high school." I barely passed high school. I was always in panic because of the statement, "Your grades will determine your future!" I remember saying, "Well, what can I do? I'm not a summa cum laude!" I was given the painful answer, "There are some summa cum laudes who never did anything with their lives." Some people are failures all throughout (which I use to justify being stuck with my fixed mindset). Some people are failures at first but become successful (although not necessarily billionaires). Some people are both successful in life and academics, such as the late John Gokongwei Jr. or Mahathir Mohamad. Some people who graduated with honors eventually admit that the school system is too focused on grades rather than learning (read here ). Since these people are p...

A few years and some months back, I wrote something about how the Filipino First Policy may have influenced Filipino Time . However, after having a strange dream last night, a part of my high school memory was triggered. I haven't seen either Filipino subject teacher for some time. I was thinking about two books which I wished I still had-- Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo . It reminds me that people tell me that I should follow Jose Rizal's example over Andres Bonifacio, that if Rizal wanted war, he would've made Simoun's deadly plan succeed in El Filibusterismo .  This time, I'm going to talk about the "Filipino Time" double standard. Let me remind you, I believe in Philippine time . I don't want to call tardiness "Filipino Time", call it simply being inconsiderate, rude, dishonest, no word of honor, etc. It's because when you don't show up on time, you're a liar! Calling it Filipino Time may encourage the practice of being...

Mechel T. Santiago Right now, I think about some people who made an impact on my life. Yes, I didn't do well back then. I confess that one teacher who flunked me in high school economics was the same teacher who helped me understand it! Here's a quote from the late Miriam Defensor-Santiago. People may call her disrespectful, unreasonable, etc. However, behind Miriam's feisty demeanor was someone who was still willing to step aside when she was  wrong . Miriam made a tactless comment about China and then apologized.  I thought about my situation between two teachers. One was an unreasonable math teacher who terrorized ignorant students . The other teacher was my MDS-style teacher. The MDS-style teacher helped me through when I failed economics. That's why I end up saying that I'd rather have my MDS-style teacher any day over that unreasonable mathematics teacher.  I still remember how MDS did her tirades during the Corona Impeachment Trial. Impeachment trials are so ...