ARTICLE NO.

Use of Gadget Teacher’s Way to Adjust K-12

By Leo Udtohan (Inquirer Visayas)
TAGBILARAN CITY—Rochelle Marie Bolotaolo, a high school teacher, uses a portable
sound system to be heard by her students.
The sound system, a contraption with a microphone and a speaker the size of a notebook, is
no fashion accessory for the teachers, though.
To Bolotaolo and at least six other Grade 7 teachers at Dr. Cecilio Putong National High
School (DCPNHS), it’s one way to cope with one of the most visible effects of the K-12
program—oversized classes.
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Bolotaolo, 33, said the sound system helped preserve her voice, eliminating the need for
her to shout to be heard.
Without the gadget, Bolotaolo said it would be next to impossible for her students to hear
her as the noise of ongoing construction of more classrooms in DCPNHS drowns out class
lessons.
And with 50 students, Bolotaolo can’t expect to be heard clearly by everyone in her class.
Bolotaolo’s class can be considered oversized as the ideal class size is only 45 students for
high school and 35 for elementary school.
It’s the effect of lack of classrooms and more students as a result of the K-12 program that
adds more years to basic elementary and high school education to meet international
standards.
Gadget users
At least seven of 150 teachers at DCPNHS had to use the gadget.
Another Grade 7 teacher, Jeanette Yenogacio, said she used the sound system to prevent
too much strain on her vocal chords.
“I should preserve my voice because I still have six sections to handle,” Yenogacio said.
The gadget, she said, helps her students, “even those seated at the back,” to hear her.
Bolotaolo and Yenogacio bought the gadgets using their own money. They, however, don’t
mind dipping into their own pockets because they know it would be for the benefit of their
students.
While education officials had said everything is set for the start of the school year and
senior high school, perennial problems remain.
Class sizes had to be expanded and schools use one room for two or more classes, held by
shifts, to cope with lack of classrooms.
DCPNHS, which has at least 5,000 students this school year, hold classes from 6 a.m. to
noon and from noon to 6 p.m. to accommodate two classes per room.
Virgilia Omictin, DCPNHS principal, anticipated the school population to increase by 4 or
5 percent.
Grade 11, or senior high school, classes are to be held in morning and afternoon shifts.
In August, Omictin said two buildings with 16 classrooms would be finished and these
could ease the shortage of rooms.
Perennial problem
Lack of classrooms is also felt in public schools in Iloilo City, according to Victor de
Gracia Jr., assistant director of the Department of Education in Western Visayas.
To cope, Gracia said, classes are being held in two shifts, a scheme carried out in previous
school years to maximize the use of classrooms.
Enrollment in senior high school (Grade 11) in Western Visayas, though, is just a little
more than half (57.6 percent) of the 64,548 students who had been expected to enter Grade
11.
Gracia said education officials believed that this was simply because of the practice of
some parents to enroll their children at the last minute.
In Tacloban City, several public schools reported declines in enrollment but education
officials attributed this to the transfer of residents to northern villages in the aftermath of
Supertyphoon “Yolanda,” which slammed into the city in 2013.
One such school is San Fernando Central School.
Its principal, Delilah de los Santos, said families of 200 students were among those now
living in the northern part of the city.
The northern villages had been identified by the city government as resettlement site for
families displaced by Yolanda, which packed up to 300 kph winds when it made landfall in
Tacloban.
Fewer students
In Negros Occidental, the opening of classes went smoothly on Monday although the
number of enrollees was 3,000 lower than last year’s, according to Cynthia Demavivas,
Bacolod schools superintendent.
Gladys Sales, Negros Occidental assistant schools superintendent, said there was a lack of
classrooms for senior high school in some areas.
Parents and school officials have agreed to junior and senior high school students
alternately using classrooms in some areas to cope with room shortage.

With reports from Nestor P. Burgos Jr., Carla P. Gomez and Joey A. Gabieta, Inquirer Visayas
retrieved from http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/790691/use-of-gadget-teachers-way-to-adjust-to-k-12
 ARTICLE NO. 2

English and the Competitive Edge

By Dr. Jaime S. Ong

Does a people's proficiency in the English language have anything to do with a country's
ability to compete in the global economy? The American Chamber of Commerce in the
Philippines (AmCham) has gotten a scolding for saying just that, or more precisely, for
identifying the Filipino's loss of skills in English as a cause of the country's low standings
in the latest World Competitiveness Scoreboard of the International Institute for
Management Development (IMD) and the Global Competitiveness Report of the World
Economic Forum. The Amcham's critic is columnist Dr Isagani Cruz, Palanca Awards hall-
of-famer and former undersecretary of education. In the Oct 28 issue of the Philippine Star,
Cruz points out that a) the IMD's competitiveness criteria -- economic performance,
government efficiency, business efficiency and infrastructure -- do not include or involve
the language used in a country's business or education, and b) English is not the dominant
tongue in the world's most competitive countries, with the exception of the United States.
While conceding the correctness of Amcham's concern over infrastructure, governance,
corruption and instability as factors that reduce competitiveness, Cruz admonishes the
chamber to stick to its knitting and leave questions of language to the experts. His logic is
unassailable. If the criteria used to evaluate competitiveness do not specify proficiency in
English, then a nation that wishes to vie with others in the global arena must focus on those
factors – a predictable business environment, investments in infrastructure and education,
quality, efficiency and transparency in government -- which matter more than language
skills. And yet, and yet. Is the Amcham totally off the mark when it deplores the loss of our
ability to speak and read in the language of international business? Is it pontificating half-
cocked on matters better left to scholars, or speaking from its knowledge of what makes for
better business performance? Embedded in IMD's writeup on competitiveness, under its
section on business efficiency, is the statement: "A skilled labor force increases a country's
competitiveness." Should a labor force's marketable skills include English language
proficiency? One out of four of the world’s seamen, serving as officers and crewmen of
vessels sailing under all flags is a Filipino. Granting that having to keep millions of OFWs
abroad so our economy stays afloat is no reason to rejoice, what skills should we reinforce
so that Filipino seafarers remain more sought after than those of other nations? Consider
the following factoids, from bestselling author Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue (Penguin
Books, 1990): • For the airlines of 157 nations, English is the agreed international language
of discourse. It is also the official language among the member nations of the European
Free Trade Association. • When companies from four European countries -- France, Italy,
Germany, and Switzerland (none of whom is an English-speaking country) -- formed a
joint truck-making venture called Iveco, they chose English as their working language
because, as one founder wryly observed, "It puts us all at an equal disadvantage." • For the
same reasons, when Brown Boveri (Swiss) and ASEA (Swedish) merged in 1988, they
made English the company language. So did Volkswagen's factory in Shanghai, because its
German engineers don't speak Chinese and its Chinese managers don't speak German. • In
France, the Pasteur Institute announced in 1989 that its famed international medical review
would appear only in English, because too few people read it in French. • There are more
students of English in China than there are people in the United States. There may be a
connect after all between English and business viability. Bryson is a professed Anglophile,
but there's no disputing his assertion that "More than 300 million people in the world
speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to." (Unless you are Henry
Higgins, who laments, in My Fair Lady, that "There even are places where English
completely disappears. In America, they haven't used it for years!") For the
Amcham, then, and for just about any Filipino thinking about marketability and
competitiveness in the foreseeable future, the decline in English speaking and
writing skills, as evidenced by diagnostic tests administered among the nation's
students, is a stentorian wake-up call. We ignore it, or leave it to linguistics
scholars to puzzle over, at our peril. Dr J S Ong is chair, marketing management
department, college of business & economics, De La Salle University.

These article are contributed by the CBE Faculty in the column of Business Focus
of Manila Bulletin published November 29, 2004