Business & Economics Perspective Blogger

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 This time, I'd like to rant once more about how toxic positivity has been used to defend the outdated 1987 Constitutio of the Philippines.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 ...

Inspirational Quotes Back when I was in high school, I often felt I "never lived up" to the "legacy" of my family. It's an often bad habit by boomers to put their children under their shadow, brag about how "great" they are, and even talk and talk about the "good old days". Newsflash! An old man had something that would offend boomers. This old man is former Malaysian Prime Minister  Mahathir Mohamad . To avoid the Duterte vs. Aquino dichotomy--I often put the late Benigno Simeon "Noynoy" C. Aquino III under scrutiny. More likely, put the presidential system under scrutiny! I'll admit Noynoy had his ups, but he too had his downs.  Now, for Mahathir's words that reflect on how surprisingly updated this old man is, compared to stubborn boomers: He said education today was not only about learning history or literature, but more about learning new sciences that are revolutionising the world. “ Even business is now affected by n...

Here's a quote I found on Facebook. As I look at the Philippine academic calendar plans to resume back to June (but some private schools aren't following it), I think about why I hated school before. A few years ago, I could recall writing about the Boomer Generation's sleep-deprived stressful education  and how the Philippine education system may be automating students . This reminds me that a few years back, my high school classmate who plays the concerned citizen, actually still plays it. Again, to respect his privacy, I'm not going to put out the screenshot. The post talked about the problem of grades over learning education (read my essay  here ). As I look back, I may be wrong to blame the teacher . Instead, teachers may have been required to give homework over the weekends (read here ). Teachers are required to follow rules, putting more of the blame on the education system . It's no wonder that some teachers quit teaching . It's because when students get...