Punchline
Wanted: Urgent help for new distance learners
By Ermin Garcia Jr.
OUR education sector is in dire need of help to be able to cope and deliver the quality education that our children deserve under these most difficult conditions, a pandemic period.
A report in media has indicated that still much has to be done not only for our young generation’s education but also for our new and untested distance learning system that has ruled out face-to-face mode for instruction. The Department of Education is undoubtedly trying to cope with all that there is to introduce under this new normal but it just doesn’t have the time and the resources. It’s bad enough that still hundreds of standard classrooms remain to be built.
Not only are millions of learners handicapped by limited resources to acquire and use laptops or tablets, parents are under immense pressure to provide the very basic. The latest report citing the dilemma of the teachers’ sector is even more worrisome.
The situation calls for a community action never before demanded of it at anytime in the past. We can no longer look at ourselves as to each his own, survival of the fittest with our ‘pwede na’ mindset.
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GET ORGANIZED TO HELP. So, what can we do? Who can help?
First, consider the situation for our young learners who have never seen a tablet or a laptop. And those that have seen but cannot own one? Even if they have the gadgets but have no direct access to internet signal? Even if they have access to internet, how long can they put up with costs of internet access? Finally, how can they be helped to effectively learn through distance learning?
Then, there is the plight of overworked teachers coping with the lack of resources and materials from government. Many are compelled to reproduce the modules themselves, and we all know that there are costs in reproduction of any material. Worse, they are often forced to write their own modules because the original modules did not reach them.
What must be obvious to all by now is the fact that at stake is this young generation’s future in a new completely new environment. What’s also confronting us is the fact that DepEd can hardly cope with these issues.
Whether they like it or not, it behooves business establishments and their organizations to become proactive stakeholders. Professionals with means must reach out to families of learners who don’t have the means or the background to help their young learners absorb and learn from the modules. Alumni groups must find out how they can pitch in. Overseas Pangasinan community groups from 44 towns and four cities must organize to help provide what their local counterparts cannot.
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NO SHABU IN PANGASINAN? In case you’ve not noticed, drug and police operatives in Metro Manila have been on the trail of drug syndicates for some time now.
Most recently, the operations of the Tinga drug syndicate operating in Taguig City have been stymied again with the busting of P20-M worth of shabu. All told, almost a billion have been seized since January this year. By illegal drug industry standard, that’s just a a drop in the bucket.
That thought should give us pause to wonder – how many millions worth of shabu are being traded in Pangasinan by those syndicates? Given these seized amounts of illegal drugs outside Pangasinan, it doesn’t need a rocket scientist to understand what that could possibly mean to us in the province. Pangasinan is a lucrative market for them.
But, we’ve not heard of any encouraging report from PDEA that it has already seized millions worth of shabu from local syndicates.
Surely, the drug syndicates have not given up on Pangasinan. But who’s minding the store?
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WHERE CREDIT IS DUE. A lot of the positive development we are seeing in the front line of the COVID-19 campaign, we should be credited to Guv Pogi, his provincial government, particularly the Provincial Health Office led by Dr. Anna de Guzman, for the yeoman’s job they are doing for our people.
Most of the thankless jobs are performed by our barangay health workers, our nurses and doctors attending to our COVID cases and those who are staying put in their places in high risk medical facilities in spite of their daily exposure to wouild be carriers.
I do pray that their efforts will not be in vain in the days ahead. Like we’ve always said, the best way to show our appreciation for their efforts is simply to do our part – to be conscious and develop the established health and physical protocols as daily habits.
We will continue to see a surge every now and then but what’s important is nobody in our community is letting it happen again and again. Our barangay kaps should handle the remaining pasaway among us!
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ONLY REDDISH, NOT RED. Why has “red-tagging” become an issue for the Makabayan bloc in our midst when it has always been obvious who and what their mission is – to destabilize our government. (Overthrowing the government will remain wishful thinking for now).
The Aquino loyalists and anti–Du30 forces are “yellow-tagged.” The LBTQ+ is rainbow-tagged. The Duterte loyalists are “DDS-tagged”.
They bandy red flags when protesting and rallying in the streets for every reason they can find. Their message with the red flags is clear – they are leading the protests and rallies. So isn’t referring them as ‘red’ simply reinforces what they’ve been telling us? Red flags are about them, and they made sure we bystanders know it.
But today, they protest loudly that red-tagging is a violation of their human rights.
You have to hand it to them – they use our civil democratic system to crush it under our very noses. They want to be known as the red, but invoke human rights when referred to as “red”.
Would they rather be we refer to them as the “reddish”?
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ON A PERSONAL NOTE:
My sincerest condolences to the family of Jesus “Susing” Seen.
It’s bad enough that Filipinos are divided over election result here, but why the division in US over the presidential elections? Is this what PH democracy is all about?
Dagupan’s border checkpoint in Bonuan is giving the city police a good image. Snappy looking cops over there. Not along border checkpoint in Caranglaan, tsk-tsk.
Our family celebrated our departed sister Karina’s birthday yesterday, November 7, whom we regularly pray to for heavenly intercession too. She died at age 12, with a mission for the poor in her heart.
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