The science dilemma in Philippine schools

It is believed that Math and Science are excellent subjects to test children because these subjects are taught and tested devoid of culture and emotion. It is no wonder that, other than Language, Math and Science are part of the three kings of school subjects worldwide.

However, a student’s exam results in these subjects cannot predict his success in life because grades are greatly conditioned by teaching itself.

A person may be labeled as poor in Science not because he is dumb but because of the low quality of science education he has received. This early labeling works against a child as it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy later in life. It will be an injustice to generalize that Filipino children are bad in Science considering that children are naturally inquisitive.

BEWITCHED WORLD OF SCIENCE TEACHING

Under the new Basic Education Curriculum (BEC), we start teaching Science as a subject only in the third grade. Whereas before, we teach Science early in the hope that we could produce students who could excel in this field, teaching Science in Grades 1 and 2 now does not seem to matter because students remain laggards in the said subject.

Lack of training of teachers, overpopulated classrooms, dull curricula, outdated teaching methods, lack of equipment, and books offering Mickey Mouse lessons – these are some of the factors that lead to the poor state of science teaching. This is worsened by the general culture that undermines scientific thinking and technological innovation in favor of “bahala na” (“what will be, will be”) and “puwede na” (‘no need to excel”) in our daily national life.

In the end, the educational system, family and government fail to effectively inculcate scientific thought that is necessary in the development of science and technology. This one whole system must be responsible in the large-scale dumbing down of generations upon generations of Filipinos in the field of Science.

PHILIPPINE PERFORMANCE IN SCIENCE

In the1999 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), the Philippines ranked 36th in 2nd year high school Science out of 38 countries. By 2003, the country yielded a similar devastating result in the same study, ranking 23rd in Grade 4 Science, among 25 countries. The shock reverberated as the country started talking about a crisis in the Philippine educational system. In the high school level, we ranked 42nd in 2nd year Science, among 45 countries.

The Philippines did not participate anymore in the 2007 TIMSS.

Significantly, Asians are the ones topping the TIMSS. These countries are our East Asian neighbors known for their discipline and ability to unite as a people. These are Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong (China) and Japan.

Filipino students sometimes top international Science competitions, but they usually come from science high schools with special programs.

THE NEED FOR A STRONG SCIENCE PROGRAM 

The country ought to have a strong science education program. Science and technology have propelled the economies of our Asian neighbors, successfully using these two fields in business, crime prevention, transportation, education, art and e-commerce.

If Philippine schools want to be very good in science, they must do that which is difficult and not just what is convenient. They must resist the culture of parents or intermediaries requesting them to just pass the flunked children. Philippine society, unfortunately, remains feudalistic in terms of social relationships where social ties matter more than real merits.

The country has not yet really transcended influence-peddling based on social bonds, to the detriment of the collective system. By allowing this to be practiced in schools, educational institutions become active agents in training the new generation not only in the dirty world of corruption but also in the world where scientific thinking is alien to them.

An alumnus and former faculty member of UP Diliman, the author is president of the Darwin International School System. He studied in Osaka University (Japan), the University of Cambridge (England) and at the University of Leiden (the Netherlands).

By ROLANDO S. DELA CRUZ
mb.com.ph

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Damath: learning math the Pinoy way

Damath comes from the Pinoy checker boardgame called “dama” and mathematics. It blends local culture, education and digital technology that aim to make math teaching and learning child-friendly, challenging and interactive. In its unique way, damath boardgame ushers the Filipino school kids into the new millennium by equipping them with competitive life-long learning for understanding and ICT-fluency skills.

When school children play damath boardgame they also learn to explore, firm-up, deepen, and transfer to daily tasks the concepts of real numbers and its properties and operations.

Moreover, it stimulates the children’s capability to think deeper through creative math storytelling, flowchart, concept map, tree diagram, picture riddle, haiku, cryptogram, secret code decoding, simulation, role playing, jingle or rap composing, reflection journal writing, and problem solving.

This joyful and practical approach to contextualized teaching and learning math is the brainchild of 1981 presidential merit medal awardee teacher Jesus L. Huenda.

As a public high school teacher in Sorsogon, Huenda always thinks of ways to optimize his talents to help others. This describes best this ordinary teacher who was cited by no less than the President of the Republic for his out-of-the-box “contribution in terms of innovative approaches in teaching and learning mathematics”.

According to Huenda, this is how damath works: “I integrate some math concepts and numeracy skills in the indigenous boardgame of dama. In the 32 white squares (the other 32 alternately arranged squares are colored green) of the 8x8-square damath playing board, I put the symbols of mathematical operations like addition (+), subtraction (-), multiplication (×) and division (÷). The 12 damath chips for each player are divided into two sets (blue and red chips): those with zero, and even numbers with positive sign (+); while odd numbers have negative (-) sign. The two players try to capture chips by adapting the existing dama rules to numeracy skills which result to higher positive points, while evading those with lower negative points.” When the learners play damath, they aim to get higher point over the opponent. Capturing the opponent’s dama chips is strategically planned such that a player would target a chip representing high number. The game becomes a combination of strategic higher order thinking skills and basic mathematical operations.

This strategy in teaching and learning math with Understanding by Design (UbD) framework has helped students look at Mathematics as a subject not so difficult to learn.

“Unknowingly, the players are using the mathematical fundamentals when they play damath”, Mr. Huenda explained. “Those who used to dislike math is actually learning how to use math when he/she plays the boardgame and in the process learn the subject,” he added.

Aside from “damath”, Mr. Huenda has also developed the “pierdi-gana” boardgame. He calls this boardgame “scidama”. This is the opposite of damath in the sense that the players’ main target is to have their dama chips consumed by their opponent in order to win. Scidama is focused on bringing about environmental consciousness among the school children.

Literally, pierdi-gana means to let go by disposing water, fuel and energy consumption that contribute to global warming and climate change. The main objective of the players in scidama is to divest themselves of extravagant consumptions that can lead to environmental degradation. Here, the scidama chips represent kilowatt hours of electricity used, cubic meters of water consumed, liters of oil consumed, cooking gas used among others.

The players strategize in such a way that they will have to reduce their consumption of these resources and in the process help in arresting global warming and climate change. “The less you consume resources, the less you contribute to the destruction of the environment. This is what we want to instill in the minds of our learners,” Huenda pointed out.

In the scidama, the player’s main objective is to have his/her dama chips be captured by the opponent in order to win. The player who first has his/her chips decimated by the opponent wins the game. This means that the winner is able to divest himself/herself of these resources and does not use them unnecessarily.

|“Kabaliktaran ng damath ang scidama kasi ito ay pierdi-gana o ubusan ng chips. Dapat maubos ang chips mo para manalo. In other words, I have to dispose off my expenses in water, electricity, oil and others so that I will not contribute to global warming and climate change. Kung malaki konsumo ko, I will contribute to the destruction of the environment. Gagawa ka ng plano na pagkatapos ng laro konti lang konsumo mo at ibibigay mo ang dapat mong konsumo sa kalaban mo upang hindi ka makasali sa paglubha ng kapaligiran”, Huenda added.

Another collaborative innovation which Huenda did in cooperation with some Computer Science students is the “eDamath” which uses digital technology in playing damath against the computer itself. The damath computer game helps develop the strategic and analytical thinking skills of the students. Similarly, when two players are interconnected in their computers through the Local Area Network, they can play damath in a remote platform and the computer becomes the arbiter or scorer.

Mr. Huenda’s electronic damath playing board can be accessed through the DepEd website (http://www.deped.gov.ph/BSE/iDEP). The eDamath appears in the computer monitor together with the damath chips that are properly labeled with positive and negative signs in even and odd numbers, respectively.

Playing the electronic damath is also a contest on who gets the higher positive score which entails the use of the fundamental operations in math. “When students play the game, they tend to have deeper consciousness on the intricacies of the game. They get to consider every step that they make and how this can contribute to winning the game. In the process they develop analytical thinking skills,” Huenda explained.

And there is no stopping Huenda from inventing edutainment games that teach students the basics in living such as entrepreneurship. Thus he came up with “entrepinoy damath,” a business venture game.

Here, the fundamental operations of math and basic accounting are also used in the board game including debit and credit, simple bookkeeping, balance sheet and the like. The first set of damath chips represent rent, taxes, salaries, bonuses, discounts, cost price, and other operating expenses. The other half represents income like selling price, profit, savings, real property, building, equipment, etc.

The game is played with the damath chips properly labeled: business expenses on one hand and business income on the other hand. The game is won by the one who has captured more chips representing incomes rather than expenses. “With this learning for understanding approach, the learners are honed on strategic business models like the efficiency of incurring less cost in order to have more income. The learners also become conscious of effectively running a business venture,” Huenda explained.

But in business as in life, the learners still have to be trained on values and ethics. So he came up with “damath de honor”. Here the damath pieces represent positive and negative Filipino ways including interpersonal relation, consumer protection, anti-corruption and red-tape practices.

“Ipapakain mo ang negative values at makakaipon ka ng positive values. Dapat walang greed na siyang dahilan ng corruption at illegal business transaction,” he emphasized.

“Have you heard of damath on health and nutrition, People Power EDSA revolution, English-Filipino-Korean vocabulary-building? Or damath with three players? This is just the tip of the iceberg”, Huenda shared.

Huenda remains a very active staff at the DepEd Central Office. Although he is a superintendent-eligible, Huenda opted to focus on educational technology innovations that will make a difference in basic education. The beneficiaries, no doubt, are the young school children who never imagined that the lowly boardgame of dama would ever play a significant role in their learning of life’s lessons.

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World's Largest Known Prime Number

Euclid proved in the 3rd century BC that there are an infinite number of prime numbers. A prime number can be divided only by itself and the number 1. Primes serve as the building blocks for all positive integers, and have applications in cryptography and other fields.

Mersenne numbers are numbers that are one less than a power of two (2n – 1). A Mersenne number that is also a prime number is called a Mersenne prime. These can be found and verified relatively quickly. Before 1952, 12 Mersenne primes were known; with the aid of computers, 30 more have been found. The eight largest have all been found by the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), a distributed network of volunteers using their spare computer power to find the largest Mersenne primes.

The largest currently known prime, 243,112,609– 1, was found by electrical engineer Hans-Michael Elvenich on 6 Sept. 2008. It has 12,978,189 digits.

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