The Philippines on a Scale of 1 to 10

A westerner's view of the Philippines, based on overall attributes in each category, with a 10 rating being the best possible:

Philippine Ferry Operations: 2

President Aquino: 7

Catholic Church: 4

Philippine Education: 5

Tourism: 3

Customs: 2

Philippine Airlines: 5

Manila: 3

Clark/Subic: 7

Philippine Physical Beauty: 8

Sanitation: 2

Domestic water: 4

Electricity: 5

Army: 4

Police: 4

Immigration: 4

Foreign Affairs: 2

Constitution: 7

Obedience to Laws: 3

Tax Policy: 2

Agribusiness: 3

Imports/Exports: 6

Retail Services: 6

Congress: 5

Courts: 2

Fishing: 3

Banking: 5

Newspapers: 6

Television: 4

Attorneys: 3

Arts: 5

Cuisine: 8

Career Opportunities: 2

Muslim Faith: 5

Human Rights: 5

Roads: 6

Zoning: 1

Air Cleanliness: 5

Doctor Care: 3

Hospital Care: 4

Inter-Island Transportation: 8

Gasoline: 7

Garages/Mechanics: 5

Traffic Control: 1

Family Safety Net: 8

Forestry Management: 2

Mining Management: 3

Technology Infrastructure: 2

Telephone Service: 8

Internet Service: 5

Family Values: 4

Social Services: 3

Beaches: 7

Treatment of Animals: 1

Common Sense: 4

Planning: 2

Efficiency: 3

Personal Self Esteem: 4

Courtesy: 2

Hard Work (Labor): 8

Problem Solving: 4

In economic terms, the hard work is not converted to value because planning and problem solving are weak; the economic engines are powered by favoritism instead of productivity and bogged down in the angst that arises when any opposing idea is taken personally. Poor services are an outcome of this dynamic. President Aquino is forthrightly trying to change the fundamentals, the malaise that cripples honest effort, and therefore scores high.

The Manhood Chronicle

As I pen these blogs, I sometimes find that they leave a residual intellectual after taste. That is, one idea leads to another.

I had such a lingering thought the other day. I had published a blog in the morning about institutions having human traits. In that context, I made the following remark:

He [President Aquino] needs to get the Divorce Bill passed. Until he does, one aspect of the Philippine persona will remain abusive toward women.

As I sat at lunch slurping up some kind of animal-meat broth my wife had found at a local take-out restaurant not named McDonalds, it came to me that the Divorce Bill is not just a relief for women who are abused by their husbands.  It provides relief for men whose eyeballs are relentlessly under threat of scratching from the little lady.

Furthermore, the Bill offers an escape route for women who are not physically abused, but have kids and get no support from the father. In the US, fathers in this scurrilous bunch are called "Deadbeat Dads". Wives could divorce the deadbeats and re-marry responsible fathers who would actually care for the kids. Who cares if the priests object; the kids are worth it.

And as one thought often extends to another, I made a grand leap forward to the idea:

"You know, I don't very much like what masculinity in the Philippines represents."

Well, there is a hot blog topic if ever there were one. Never before have I thought about taking on the entire macho persona of the everyday Filipino. It makes me glad that I write anonymously and am deeply and safely ensconced in the deep, dark jungles west of Surigao. Or it could be I'm high on the mountain banks just east of Pinatubo. Or even, faking y'all out wildly, nestled in my aerie high up in the Snowy Range of windy western Wyoming, USA.

In other words, please don't bother to come looking for me. I hold few of the macho renditions common to Filipinos and do not choose to prove my manhood against any of y'alls via fisticuffs, pistols at 50 paces, or any other kind of painful process.

Now one of the traits I find common among Filipino boys and adult boys who think they are men is the tendency to laugh at another person's slip-up. If one boy falls down or gets smacked upside the head with the basketball, the rest laugh riotously. If he breaks his arm, they laugh even harder, and the laughter lasts until he gets his cast off.

This seems to me to be a side-effect of the tendency to look for ways to appear cool by diminishing others. You see this behavior in some blog commenters, the ones who attempt to paste diminishing names onto other commenters.  Moron. Idiot. Stupid twit. Those tags. The lower you can push others, the higher you seem to be . . . even if you are very much cemented to the bottom.

Also in the Philippines, If you have a big, fast car, you assert your manhood by driving like everyone else is of a lower class and obligated to get out of your way, blasting past slower traffic, running oncoming tricycles into the ditch and flashing your lights to instruct lesser vehicles to yield.

Certainly, it is not macho to wait for some lady with her kid to cross the street at the crosswalk, or to allow other cars the right of way in any circumstance, as long as you hold the power position. If you see someone looking for a break in traffic so he can cross the road, it is macho to speed up so that he has no chance to go.

Now you have to excuse my ways, but I am from the west of the west, that is, cowboy country in the US of A. There really macho macho guys in ten gallon hats climb onto the back of a one-ton angry bull breathing fire from his eyes and snot from his nose and try to ride it for 8 seconds. Or they strap themselves onto a huge 16 hand bucking bronco that flies into incredible Chinese acrobatic contortions in midair. Or they leap from their galloping horses onto the back of a big-ass horned steer at 40 KPH and wrestle the wild-eyed beast to the ground.

They don't cheer chickens that peck each other to death.

So I'm afraid I don't understand the obsession over chickens. My neighbor has about 20 of the birds camped out in little triangular shacks in his chicken yard.

But I can deal with that okay. It just doesn't inspire the hunter in me, you know the mountain climber, the explorer, the cliff diver, the soldier, the born killer.  But to each his own.

And I don't mind the wild roads anymore as I have become a highly skilled pinball player.

One of the facets of Filipino manhood I actually appreciate and have been known to partake in is the tuba table under the mango tree. That's the place at any social gathering where the guys collect to get away from the mind-numbing nattering insignificance of the conversations their wives are having. There they can get drunk, poke fun at one another, tell dirty jokes, catch up on the Pac Man and engage in other more invigorating topics.

I do, however, find it best to restrain from offering up a book report on my latest read.

The notion of chivalry is not common among Filipino males. Nor is kissing your sweetie in public. And it is the absence of those expressions of kindness and affection that bother me most.

It is not manly to be a gentleman, or a lover. Except under cover of night or blanket.

It is not manly to be literarily literate.

It is not manly to be gracious to someone you don't know. Unless you have something to gain by being kind, in which case gracious becomes "kissing up". A manipulative quality admired by other men.

So color me wimpy as I hold the door of the car open for my wife, carry a book everywhere, smile at the neighbors and offer my best wishes for a quick recovery to boys black and blue from the battles they engage in to prove their manhood to other guys.

And themselves.

Sending Philippine Schools to the Moon

Students of Philippine public schools are being given a rotten deal. They are not allowed to be all that they can be.

How can parents stand for it, knowing that their child will not be given the education needed to be successful in a competitive global economy? That the child will never be all that he can be?

Public school students are  handicapped by a style of education that emphasizes the passive skill of memorization instead of active, productive skills of creative thinking, problem solving and ambition. Furthermore, there are too many kids, the facilities are poor and teachers are too often unskilled and overworked

Yes, Philippine universities produce many fine professional minds. They filter up with the strong support of their families, many through private schools. I am referring to a different group. I am referring to the millions of kids who are forced to achieve well below their potential.  Whose home life may not be the best. The millions of kids who are denied an opportunity to be all that they can be by a school system that is so over-whelmed and under-funded that it can barely cope.

How can the Philippines get from behind to the front in the global competition for capable minds? How can a struggling school system become a worldwide leader in how it opens young minds to the excitement of knowledge, good values and ambition?

In my earlier article, I proposed an "out of the box" agenda that encourages kids to think for themselves and to aspire to compete in the global playing field for brainpower. It is centered on five essential disciplines:

• Mathematics
• English and Chinese (Mandarin)
• Discovery
• Aspiration
• Computers

Refer to my prior blog ("The Philippine's Reach is Too Short to Grasp") for a description of the subjects covered within each area.

The First Objection

"Oh, yeah, Joe. How are we going to do that? It is totally impractical. We don't have enough money or teachers or people who would back such a wild, far-out program."

Well, the first thing you do is swap out your "can't do" attitude for one that says: "We must do this and we must not let any barriers stop us from finding a way".

As US President Kennedy made a commitment to put a man on the moon, the Philippines can make a commitment to radically improve and modernize its public education. To innovate and lead rather than lag behind forever.

The moon walk was accomplished by a commitment to problem-solving anchored by application of technology.  (1) Commitment; the nation was enthusiastic about it. (2) A problem-solving attitude, one that does not accept the premise "it can't be done". (3) Technology.

Achieving a striking advancement in education in the Philippines would require the same three elements: (1) National commitment, (2) Problem solving and will to succeed, and (3) Technology.

I'll leave gaining the commitment up to the nation's Educator in Chief, the President, and his "gate-keepers of children's minds", his education staff. I would remind them, the gates are weather beaten and worn, hanging from one rusty hinge, and very hard to push open. To put it in blunt terms, Filipino kids aren't getting a world-class education and the gatekeepers are responsible.

The Vision: to end the suppression  of opportunity that exists now and give millions of intelligent young Filipinos the knowledge and confidence to strive for the moon. The figurative moon. Or literal moon, that is fine, too.

Overcoming the First Objection: "It's impractical."

It seems impractical to make dramatic change given the breadth of the problems and the increasing flood of kids going to school. But it is entirely feasible if educators are willing to let go of the way they were taught and embrace technology as the way to do so much more, and teach so much better.

I therefore propose the Moon Model. 

Step 1, build a Mission Control center that is equipped with aggressive, sharp, computer literate people, technology pros, "out of the box thinking" Curriculum Masters, and central computer hardware and software (the latter including a secure internet platform). Have the Curriculum Masters begin building the full curriculum and Grade 6 lessons that will be pushed out to a handful of schools. Develop a teacher certification program.

Second, select the seven pilot schools for conversion of one classroom of Grade 6 students to a new curriculum and a new teaching method than is anchored to the internet. This program is for students showing the aptitude and desire to attend college. Issue a bold challenge to each of the seven responsible local schools to aspire to be the best at making the conversion. That is, they must supply a proper facility, certify the best open-minded  teacher to oversee class, provide the technology (with Mission Control assistance), and align teaching methods with directives from Mission Control. Classroom size, 20 students, plus or minus 3. No fees are to be assessed for exams, equipment or any other reason, and, no uniforms are required (this shall be deemed the "Bill Gates" rule, for he brought casual dress to Microsoft and corporate America.)

Third, give each student a tablet computer that can receive transmitted lessons and exams from Mission Control and upload exam answers and assignment papers to Mission Control. No paper text books or exam materials will be issued. Each classroom will also have 5 shared desktop computers and the teacher will have a laptop computer. All tablets and computers will have an internet modem (Smart or Globe broadband wireless).

Fourth, start pushing out the lessons from the internet site to students' computers. Provide teaching guides to teachers the same way.

Fifth, looking ahead, select the next group of 70 classrooms that will be converted and assign a conversion lead from each school who will work at the 7 initial schools to understand and help fine-tune the process. They have a year to get their own schools ready. Concurrently, have the Curriculum Masters build the Grade 7 lessons for those who advance from the original seven classrooms.

Concurrently, the Educator in Chief will have to get Philippine schools converted to the 12-year international standard, realign necessary laws and regulations to recognize the dual teaching method that will exist for a time, and begin funding technology roll-out.

The basic point of this article is to suggest how to overcome the obstacle that "the job is too overwhelming". It is not if you take steps one at a time, where each step is along a well-defined path, and you walk forward with your head up. You also have to accept that some students will have a huge advantage over others for a time, and the clamor to be added to the new curriculum will be loud. Criteria for selecting schools for expansion will need to be clear.

The math computes like this:

Year 1: Build Mission Control; create master curriculum and Grade 6 lessons; certify 7 teachers.

Year 2: 7 classrooms Grade 6 converted (140 students)

Year 3: 77 classrooms Grade 6; 7 classrooms Grade 7 (1,680 students)

Year 4: 777 classrooms Grade 6; 77 classrooms Grade 7; 7 classrooms Grade 8 (17,220 students)

Year 5: 7,777 classrooms, etc. (172,760 students)

In Year 5, you have 172,760 Filipino kids on the move toward excellence. Toward opportunity.

By year 10, they are all on the move.

In a future article, I'll deal with the Second Objection "My God, the cost of all those computers and internet access!! No way, Dude!".

I'll also deal with the Third Objection. "Our teachers are overwhelmed already; no way they can train up to a new curriculum, too." Ah, let me give you a hint about this:  Grading will be done by computer or outsourced to a call center under the auspices of Mission Control. Local teachers will have more important things to do.

Finally, I will provide the BIG SECRET key to success.

Once I finish with the BIG SECRET, a light bulb will go off inside your brain. The pieces will fit: The curriculum. The rollout. The computers. The teachers. The secret.

You will become a believer.

The Philippines CAN go from the back of the pack to global leader. From millions of kids denied opportunity to millions of kids thriving on opportunity.

"My Baby Has Warts"

I have this tendency to humanize institutions.

For example, I view Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation as an extension of his lascivious inclinations, where sex and dirt are more important than social awareness. His tabloids are world famous. Bohemians everywhere look up to the old curmudgeon. Him and Hugh Hefner. Even the conservative Fox News thrives on dirt. Murdoch's Wall Street Journal has become so shrill and one-sided that it, too, an icon of virtue in my eyes as a business man, has slid bumptiously from its pedestal and landed sideways in the muck.

So News Corporation to me is a scurrilous Republican who waves the flag and preaches Mom and apple pie during the day whilst screwing the neighbor's daughter at night and diverting attention from the misdeed by spreading nasty rumors about the mayor.

If I look at the humanized personality of many of our institutions, I am led to believe we adults are nothing but children a lot older. And we are a lot better at playing pretend games. Boy howdy, a way lot better at playing pretend games.

US politics has little dignity and diplomacy left. It is shrill pubescent pushing and shoving to try to claim the manhood prize.

China is a teenage bully in a glass cage.

Pacific Long Distance Telephone Company is a snake-oil salesman, marketing its Smart wares with the innocent joyfulness of an 11 year-old on a sugar high whilst milking the poverty stricken Philippines for every centavo it can get. It promotes services it cannot fulfill because its phone pipelines aren't big enough to carry the traffic, but the public pays for each dropped call or a broadband internet connection that slows to 2KBS. Meanwhile, it sucks off depreciation cash and sends the dividends to Britain for overseas shareholders rather than re-investing in the Philippines to upgrade services to its customers.

The Philippine populace sits back gaga over Paris Hilton whilst millions of school kids get screwed out of their education and opportunity.

In that regard, the Philippine national persona is one of a teenage girl who is more interested in her hair and nails than her education. Who would rather watch Showtime than the Discovery Channel. Who is a Valley Girl at heart, but can't pronounce the American slang properly. Or maybe she is a twin, with her male counterpart being a teenage boy who is more interested in impressing his friends than developing a set of values that benefit mankind. Like courtesy, for one.

Children.

We are all children.

I do think the Philippines has matured over the past year. I'll give the country that. Some social issues have flared up, like outrage over 7,000 hectares of coral raided for smuggler profit, like the contentious but important dialogue on whether Jesus with a dick on his head is art, like the HR Bill which President Aquino has maturely added to his list of preferential legislation. If he keeps that up, he will develop a legacy as a president who actually tried to move the Philippines forward into the modern social world. He needs to get the Divorce Bill passed. Until he does, one aspect of the Philippine persona will remain abusive toward women.

Digression. As I think about it, I have changed my mind about the Cruz shock art display. I think the violent dispute it has stirred up has awakened the nation to the importance of art, the poor condition of its museums, and the limited world-class product emerging from its artists. In an empty room, shit will shine. So I no longer think it should not have been presented. However I do still think an aspect of the Philippine persona is lack of compassion. I wouldn't go so far as to say heartless, but I would say lack of a refined sense of caring for the well-being of others.

I'll be happy when Paris goes home and attention returns to following the glare of the spotlight on those who keep the Philippine persona as corrupt.

I'd like to see that also as a legacy of President Aquino. Building an honest government where once there was a government by the crooks and for the crooks.

Come to think of it, Philippine media are pretty much bimbos, aren't they? Shallow stories and quick hits that are largely star-powered.

I'm surprised Rupert Murdoch is not here.

Maybe he will be in a month or two, the way the phone hacking scandal is going in Great Britain.

The UK is an old man with apoplexy.

Germany and France are jealous lovers forced to dance together.

Japan is a teenage mountain climber who fell off a cliff. Bounced a couple of times on the way down.

US Republicans are a drunk southern white bubba, pounding the bible and pretending simple-minded slogans are great truths.

US Democrats are a greenpeace moralist in pinstripes.

President Obama actually is a reincarnated Abe Lincoln in disguise. No lie.

Declaratives, Interrogatives and Dungballs

Book reviews and grammar lessons. Words mean a lot.

A declarative is an expression of truth. Well, truth in the context that any statement is true unto itself.

An interrogative is what Socrates used as a teaching method, or what GabbyD likes to render. It is a question.

In English Grammar, "declaratives" and "interrogatives" are parts of the "indicative mood".

Now I tell you what. I had 12 years of English in school, compiled 12 college credits in English, endured two-years of Latin and one of German, but I have no idea what a grammatical "mood" is. I know a crabby mood is what my wife gets into before her period. And an exasperated mood is what I get into when driving downtown amidst the chaos that is Filipino road decorum. But a grammatical mood is much like math theory or the philosophy of Hume. It has all the tangibility of a ghost. And it is nine parts as creepy.

But I like declaratives myself. For any assertion is a truth for being an assertion.

"More boys like peanut butter than girls."

That statement is a truth, for it has meaning. Now, it may have nothing to do with facts or reality, for I have no idea what gender bias may exist in a spoonful of peanut butter. Even if the declarative is made up, a lie, it can influence others. So there is a certain truth, a power to influence, in a lie.

Wrap your brain around that, bubba.

Take the declarative assertion "JoeAm is biased against women bloggers". Now again, that statement is a truth, for the person making it (a woman, perhaps) may believe it is so. Or she may just be interested in pushing buttons, who knows. The assertion may also have nothing to do with reality, but it fulfills an objective. Defend oneself at the expense of JoeAm, "for he had the audacity to bring his antagonistic viewpoint and literary nonsense to my blog".

Being JoeAm, I may not like the unseemly declarative, but it has been said, so it is too late to get rid of the peculiar kind of truth it represents. Oh, I could offer up an interrogative response, like "are you nuts, or what?" Or respond with a like-minded declarative, such as "you are an insecure whiner playing the victim card".

But then you end up with a wicked case of bouncing declaratives, each with its own manipulative truth, on a mission to destroy.

When blog commenters lose track of the issue and get personal, you have dung on a blog.

And as you read blog posts and comment threads on Anti-Pinoy or Get Real Post, you find lots of declaratives and a fine smattering of dungballs. The contributors seek to expostulate their wily truths, whether attached to reality or not. They commend like thinkers and seek to destroy opposite thinkers, sometimes with argument, sometimes with dungballs.

What you don't see much of is the open mind. Or the inquiring mind. Or the learning mind.

Everyone has "THE ANSWER" and is not afraid to jam it down other people's throats. Without the slightest interest in understanding how someone else could arrive at a different view.

This undiplomatic approach is from intelligent people, the "best of the best of the best"*. [* From "Men in Black", a movie about alien life forms other than bloggers.]

Never in the history of mankind have so many allegedly smart people pretended to know so much about all subjects, including those live ones they have never met. And never have so many great minds rejected ideas from across the river just because they are from across the river. It is Never Never Land, it is Alice in Wonderland. It is Apocalypse Now. It is surreal. It makes me want to puke.

Humility is found in respect for another person's different place on earth, for his different set of experiences, for his different way of looking at things. It is to be found in the knowledge that "winning", in its most elegant sense, does not mean conquest, but understanding.

There is precious little humility in the Philippines, and the AP and GRP blog sites, which assert their declarative truths that Filipinos are vacuous and inadequate, incompetent, vengeful and wrong-headed . . . represent a living example. They thrive on being closed minded . . . like old-school Filipinos. They are rapturously Ego-bound, dismissing alternative views like water off a duck's behind. They try to intimidate others by name-calling and issuing declarative truths that depart from reality. They are slippery and sly. They whine to win.

They excel at being what they criticize.

They are unremittingly declarative, defining their own truths. Sentence closed with a period.

A dot.

A wee little scratch of ink representing the gross insignificance of what remains. A collective of like-minded self-huggers.

Next up, boys and gerbils, "The Subjunctive Tense", or the strange instance in which a singular noun demands a plural verb. Subtitled "English, the Language Designed by an Insane Lingual Architect".