When will they prioritize education?

[OnMyWay]

17 minutes ago, Sea Turtle said:

Not everyone is able and has the genetic makeup to do well at academics. 

Certainly, but with better education more youth are able to break out of that mold and do better in all walks of life.

19 minutes ago, Sea Turtle said:

Much rather have over the top sports than some of the other activities that teens would choose...

For me, I did not see this as being about sports.  Sports are great for youth and adults.  The two can coexist and benefit each other, as they do in the U.S.  Why they can't hold the FIBA while kids go to school and all gov offices stay open, is beyond me.

[hk blues]

Let's be honest - many of the locals don't exactly have a reputation for being hard workers. 

[Gator]

Too bad Wastebooking, Tickity-Tocking and Instacrapping aren’t sports or the Phils would alway have world champions. Who needs school when you have a smart phone! 

[Gator]

2 hours ago, Sea Turtle said:

Not everyone is able and has the genetic makeup to do well at academics. 

Or even simple math. At the market the other day the total was 382 pesos. Wife gave the young girl (about 16-17 I’d guess) 502 pesos. After staring at it for a while I said change is 120 pesos. The wife repeated it in Bisaya. Girl while nodding her head yes pulls out her phone and does the math. 

It gets better. She then hands the pesos to her father, who had watched and undoubtedly over heard our conversation. She tells him 120 pesos change. He pulls out his cell phone and does the math before giving the wife change! 2 generations of no genetics for academics? 

Without an electronic cash register or a phone kids today (and often adults as well) can’t do simple math. To be fair, I’ve seen this often in the USA as well, but it’s no where near as prevalent  as here. 

[Possum]

14 hours ago, Old55 said:

It's almost as though the ruling faction want's Filipino citizens to remain ignoran

It's not that they want them to remain ignorant it's just that they don't care as the ruling faction sends their children to private schools here and abroad. They have no skin in the education game. Of course ignorant people are easier to manipulate/rule than the well educated so that's a plus. The moderately educated become OFWs which props up the country. The OFW remittances are even measured in the GDP of the Philippines at about 10%. I guess they count the OFWs as an export.

[hk blues]

1 hour ago, Gator said:

Or even simple math. At the market the other day the total was 382 pesos. Wife gave the young girl (about 16-17 I’d guess) 502 pesos. After staring at it for a while I said change is 120 pesos. The wife repeated it in Bisaya. Girl while nodding her head yes pulls out her phone and does the math. 

It gets better. She then hands the pesos to her father, who had watched and undoubtedly over heard our conversation. She tells him 120 pesos change. He pulls out his cell phone and does the math before giving the wife change! 2 generations of no genetics for academics? 

Without an electronic cash register or a phone kids today (and often adults as well) can’t do simple math. To be fair, I’ve seen this often in the USA as well, but it’s no where near as prevalent  as here. 

It used to be a bugbear of mine too until I realised that as folk these days have their smartphone permanently attached to their hands the need for simple arithmetic is pretty minimal and the effort to learn is just not worth it.  

(I know this may not be a popular opinion )

 

[Kingpin]

5 hours ago, OnMyWay said:

Why they can't hold the FIBA while kids go to school and all gov offices stay open, is beyond me.

Same reason the whole country shut down and came together when Pacquiao fought. Difficult for modern Westerners to understand but Filipinos are a unified culture, God Country Family, so of course they are going to massively support their own people when competing in international events. It's not just the way things should be, it's the way they used to be throughout the Western world when its nations were also unified.

 

[Kingpin]

8 hours ago, Freebie said:

If you have a pliable uneducated workforce you have workers and less problems.

And who wants to live in a country with less problems?  (that was sarcasm )

[JJReyes]

7 hours ago, hk blues said:

Let's be honest - many of the locals don't exactly have a reputation for being hard workers. 

Why do Filipinos working in cruise ships and merchant vessels have a reputation as hard workers?  They work 10-12 hours a day, 7 days a week.  Perhaps the better pay compared to what is paid in the Philippines is a good incentive.  

[JJReyes]

5 hours ago, Gator said:

Or even simple math. At the market the other day the total was 382 pesos. Wife gave the young girl (about 16-17 I’d guess) 502 pesos. After staring at it for a while I said change is 120 pesos. The wife repeated it in Bisaya. Girl while nodding her head yes pulls out her phone and does the math. 

It gets better. She then hands the pesos to her father, who had watched and undoubtedly over heard our conversation. She tells him 120 pesos change. He pulls out his cell phone and does the math before giving the wife change! 2 generations of no genetics for academics? 

Without an electronic cash register or a phone kids today (and often adults as well) can’t do simple math. To be fair, I’ve seen this often in the USA as well, but it’s no where near as prevalent  as here. 

I agree it's the same everywhere.  Like most of you, I can still do addition, subtraction, and multiplication mentally because this was ingrained based on then teaching method which required memorizing the tables.  Today's graduates are dependent on mechanical devices.  

The family gifted my mother-in-law with the latest iPhone and my brother-in-law wanted to add everyone's phone numbers.  She said, "No."  Her reasoning was 70 to 80 phone numbers were committed to memory and by adding them to the iPhone program would eventually result in forgetting them.  And she was already passed 90 years!