Though Catalog: Another Gun Violence

In a world where ideological ideas, whether good or bad, are increasingly accessible, we must, as adults, step in and teach the younger generation to be more discerning. Gun violence among young people is becoming an increasingly alarming reality across Southeast Asia. We have witnessed how awful, traumatic, and egregious these incidents can be.

We have to admit it and face the reality: gun violence is here. School shootings are here.

Our focus should not be on pointing fingers or finding someone to blame. Now, more than ever, our focus should be on rebuilding the foundation of values and discipline that defines the very fabric of our society, because what we are witnessing now is the rot that has slowly crept into our world. 

This is not just about kids being easily influenced. This is not just about bullying. This is not just about online games. This is the unbecoming of a society. And if all of us continue pointing fingers at one another, we'll just run out of time before everything falls into chaos. 

Let us call on our policymakers to do their work and make sensible, practical, and responsive laws. Let us call on our communities to restore the values that once defined us. And let us begin in our own homes, teaching our young people that violence is never the answer, that we are here to listen, and that one mistake can never justify another.

Because if we are to fight injustice, we must be careful not to become the very injustice we oppose.

Sadly, in a society marred by generations of abuse, inequality, and social division, the hope of finding balance and harmony can sometimes feel as dim as the fading light of a distant nebula.

But perhaps that is precisely why we cannot give up.

Because when the world becomes darker, our responsibility is not to add to the darkness. It is to become the light that keeps the next generation from losing its way.

xxx

Please talk to the young people around you. Check on them. Ask them how they are doing, and more importantly, listen.

And if you ever find yourself in need of a listening ear, know that I am always willing to be that ear. 

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Transmutation of Grades: A Guide for Teachers

One important change that has been included in the K-12 Program which a lot of teachers are still trying to grasp is the way grades are reflected on the report card. Under the new grading scheme, the passing grade is reduced to 60% from the traditionally used 75% mark. While this is easy to understand, the problem is that teachers are tasked to give a mark of 75 when the student gets a computed grade of 60. While DepEd on its related memoranda have not cited the exact benefit regarding this scheme, one plausible explanation is that it is to avoid parents from complaining if their child gets a mark that is below 60 on their report card. It is also helpful in order to provide students the ability to cope with a failure from the previous quarter. This process of shifting the passing grade is something most teachers are not yet able to grasp completely. Transmutation of grade is not actually difficult. You need not to repeatedly rely on a transmutation table just to compute the grades of all your students. Here is a quick guide to the math behind the transmutation of grade.

What is Grade Transmutation?

Transmutation of Grades is an essential part of the K-12 Program of the Department of Education of the Philippines. Under this, student’s academic standing is reflected on a 60-100 scheme on their report card (60 is the lowest possible grade and 100 is the highest possible grade; descriptive marks are also given) while a 0-100 grading scheme is actually applied in the classroom with 60% as the passing mark. The process involves shifting of the Actual Grade (the one computed based on the student’s academic performance) to the Transmuted Grade.

What is a Transmutation Table?

A transmutation table contains the range of the Actual Grades and their equivalences of Transmuted Grades. The transmutation table below converts the passing rate of 60% to its equivalent grade of 75. The range for the Actual grade is 0-100 while the range for the transmuted grade is 60-100.

Is there a formula to convert Actual Grade to Transmuted Grade?

The answer is a big YES. You can actually compute the transmuted grade using the formula below.

In excel, you can do this with the help of some built-in functions.

=FLOOR(IF(A1<60,60+(A1/4),75+(A1-60)/1.6),1)

Where,

A1 is the address of the Actual Grade.

ISNUMBER checks whether the cell reference contains a number (TRUE) or not (FALSE).

FLOOR rounds down the number to the nearest integer.

IF checks whether a condition is satisfied. Executes the second argument if TRUE or the third argument if FALSE.

Does this formula work? How did we arrive with the formula?

Yes, it does work. You can actually try and check if it does work. We arrived with the formula by following the steps below.

•          Determine the range of the AG (Actual Grade). That is L_AG (Lowest Actual Grade) and H_AG (Highest Actual Grade).
•         Determine the range of the TG (Transmuted Grade). That is L_TG (Lowest Transmuted Grade) and H_TG (Highest Transmuted Grade).
•         Determine the Actual Passing Grade (P­_AG) and the Transmuted Passing Grade (P_TG).

·         The general formula of transmutation can then be used.

For our case,

•         The Actual Grade (AG) range is 0-100. So, L_AG=0 and H_AG=100.
•          The Transmuted Grade (TG) range is 60-100. So, L_TG=60 and H_TG=100.
•          The Actual Passing Grade is 60 and the Transmuted Passing Grade is 75. So, P_AG=60 and P_TG=75.
•          We also want to round down to the nearest integer.

Does the general formula work on all cases of transmutation of scores?

Yes, it does. There might be times when you need to tweak it a little bit in order for it to do what you want it to do.

Okay, I have gone through the guide and somehow understand the mechanism of how it works. What else can you offer me?

Well, I have for you a really nice excel file which contains a sheet where you can input grades and have it transmuted. It can also generates you the formula and you just copy and paste it to your excel workbooks where you want to transmute grades. Aside from this, it also creates the transmutation table for you based on your given input. You can print it and have it anytime specially if you don’t have your own computer or simply don’t trust them.

Download the file: Transmutation.xls | Transmutation.xlsx. 

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Assimilation of Filipino English in the Philippines

You may have learned about Carabao English, American English and British English but surely Filipino English is something new to the ears of many. In fact, one can sometimes doubt if such entity actually exists. This paper brings a concise discussion on the origins of Filipino English and how applicable or realistic it is in the current society of the Philippines.

The Origin of Filipino English

As with American English being a bastardization of British English, the Filipino English is somehow a bastardization of American English. The development of a new variety of English in the Philippines is said to have primarily occurred due to the colonial history and linguistic background of the country. (Kirkpatrick 2007) Walking back through time, the Philippines was once a colony of the United States and for a couple of decades, the primary medium of communication in the Philippines is not one of the native tongues but English. As to how the bastardization occurred and how blatant it may have been, there’s no concrete answer. 

The very first massive introduction of English to the Philippines occurred in 1901 when 540 US teachers used the language as a medium for instruction in schools. The English-medium education has then started a swift change in the linguistic development of the Philippines. Moreover, the American English that it brought has been indigenized, expounding the vocabulary by adapting terminologies from local dialects and modifying pronunciation and grammar. (McArthur 2002) Perhaps, we can say that this triggered the creation of what is now known as Filipino English. 

Only in Filipino English

The website 8list.ph listed some terminologies that are unique to the Filipino English speakers that you can check here. These are just few of the unique slangs of Filipino English. It is noteworthy to know that these are cognitively embedded to Filipino speakers with out them knowing it. These are product of cultural diversity, societal transformation and other things that have been influential to the use of English in the Philippines.

How extensive is Filipino English?

As of today, there is a limited literature which tackles Filipino English. Most of the current works are much focused on bilingualism in the Philippines and extrapolating on the nature of the English speakers of the country is relatively not something that is studied properly. As to how extensive Filipino English is, we might be able to extract substantial guess from other researches. 

The results of the survey of Social Weather Stations in 2006 showed that more than a quarter of the Philippine’s population claims to have the ability to understand, speak and write English well. (Bautista, et. al. 2009) With a higher rate of literacy, one can speculate that there is a great tendency for people who are not well accustomed to the English language to used barbarized terminologies or slangs to compensate for their inadequacy. 

As English is used as a primary medium for business, education and governance in the Philippines, Filipino English is presumably on larger schema that what we might be thinking of. Whether it is extensively used or not, it surely is there and it is something that is global in scope. 

A Bid for Better English

While nothing is wrong with Filipino English, this paper strongly believes that we must start building the standards of this (new) form of English to ensure that it will stay as efficient and well-aligned with other “customized English languages” across the globe. Being young as it is, Filipino English is evolving and becoming something that is global as the Philippines becomes a power hub for English speaking workforce. It is something that has given this nation an edge among its neighbors. As we know that languages are infinitely evolving, we must always be ready to make Filipino English a superb and eloquent one.

References

• Tom McArthur, The Oxford Guide to World English. Oxford University Press, 2002
• Andy Kirkpatrick, World Englishes. Cambridge University Press, 2007
• Walter Ang, 8 Instances of Filipino English vs. American English. 8list, 2013 (retrieved from http://8list.ph/american-english-vs-pinoy-english on June 22, 2014)
• Ma. Lourdes S. Bautista and Kingsley Bolton, Philippine English: Linguistic and Literary Perspectives. Hong Kong University Press, 2009

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Tech Gap in PH Public Schools

The educational system of the Republic of the Philippines is a cluttered one. Besides the crowded rooms, the limited books, and the obsolete curriculum, our schools are faced with numerous unsolved problems which need immediate solutions. Our nation is a home to great minds, but with the absence of a good educational system, our hope might as well go fade away.

It is not hidden to our naked eyes that schools in our nation are not at paced with the technological advancement that other academic institutions abroad are experiencing. Our schools are home to second-hand outdated computers. We lack e-learning facilities. A large fraction of schools don’t even have laboratories and if they do, the ratio of computers to students might go higher than one is to fifty.

We keep on claiming that we are becoming the technological hub of the ASEAN with our fast growing costumer support industry, our skilled and talented coders, and our growing number of IT workers. Now, it is really ironic that we are declaring such a glamorous name when we cannot offer our elementary and high school students quality education specially in field of Information and Communication Technology.

What I see right now is that our officials are not that interested with regards to educational reforms. They are more interested in publicly displaying their capabilities of interrogating criminals and witnesses on the plenary hall when issues like corruption, killings and scandals surface but not in passing resolutions for the development of our educational system. One can even deduce that they are not interested with issues regarding our school because they are less publicized.

This is one of the primary reasons why we have not moved as a nation. We have always been behind when we talk of technological and educational development. Yes, we have world champions in academics, but these champions are products of private schools where mentoring is way better as compared to much of our public high schools. Face it, when you are in the Philippines, you can only have a good education if you are capable of spending more than a common Filipino can afford.

Technological gap in our classrooms and schools in the past few years have been slowly addressed with the aid of our NGO’s and generous individuals who believes in the importance of technology in making our students equally competitive in the field of computer science. I believe that our financial need to meet this gap is not that big as compared to what have been stolen by our corrupt officials. We can still go on track and join in the race if we start now. We may not go as far as other nations can but at least let’s not get lost in the trail of the modern era of computers science.

This is the challenge that we must impose to our government. Make our educational system better by addressing concerns in the field of ICT. Give our students the equal opportunity other nations are giving to their young ones in this fast growing field. Let us drive our nation towards the road of Information Superhighway!

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