Dumb and dumber
Maybe it’s all the TV contests that ask the simplest questions. It has become so bad, that the ads for all these little contests even show the answer on the sample format that you have to send via text.
“Who is the national hero of the Philippines?” send your answer by texting “Your name <space> Jose Rizal” to 299.
We have set the bar so low we don’t even expect Filipinos to know who our national hero is anymore. I am pretty sure someone actually texted “Manny Pacquiao” for an answer. And even worse, “Your name”.
One time, a young boy of maybe 14 knocked on my door. He was selling longganisa that his mom must’ve made. I really don’t buy longganisa from less than reliable sources, but something about the boy told me that he really needed the money for him to continue on with school or something really important like that. It was close to June, so yeah, maybe it was school. And anyway, the longganisa was a bargain at 110 pesos a kilo.
“Give me half a kilo. I want to try it first. If I like it, I will buy more next time.” I told him as I handed a 100 peso bill.
He took out his cellphone and I thought he was going to text his mom the good news that he finally sold half-a-kilo. But I was wrong. He needed to use the calculator function on his cell.
I asked, “What grade are you in?”
“First year high-school”, he answered.
“What’s one-half of 10?”
“Five?” He was unsure or maybe he just didn’t know where I was going with this.
“What is one-half of 100?” I continued.
“Fifty!” he was more confident this time.
“What is 50 plus 5?”
“Fifty-five.”
“What is 100 minus 55?”
His eyes rolled, his thumb itching to get to that calculator function on his cell.
Someone once said, the more we design things as idiot-proof will only result in creating better idiots. No, it was not Jose Rizal. He said something else entirely different, something about the youth being the hope of our nation.
oh my! proper education should come first above everything else. :)
ReplyDeleteIronic that the almost instantaneous access to information has resulted into the atrophy of the simplest functions of the brain. More disturbing, do kids today even know how to form an opinion given that they can just copy-paste someone else's thoughts on just about any subject out there?
ReplyDeletethe more access and ease of access to information people have these days, the less inclined people are to actually store and process information on their own.
ReplyDeleteI feel that. I was a former grade school teacher and it was so hard to see kids who can't even spell the word "boat" (spelled as bowt or bawt).
ReplyDelete-the reason, most if not all of the small private institutions that are sorry excuses for a school put money and tuition first above quality education. They prefer to keep the students rather than making sure that they produce students who will be able to keep up with the fast paced world that they now live in. Even parents oomplain that I give difficult home work topics, and that's just cut and paste pictures with long and short vowel sounds. Or a simple logic in Math...
Be careful what you say, Don Dee. Our future evil robot masters keep tabs on everything. ;)
ReplyDeleteDude, that is SICK. Made me remember something even more depressing than that. And it would unbelievably be a true story. Here's my reply to your "Dumb and Dumber story... But lets make it a prequel so #I should say "Dumb and Dumberer". hehehe.
ReplyDeleteI was taking my NEAT exams back then (Yes, waaaaay back then. I studied grade school in a public school but still, this event shook everybody's jaws.) and the students had to go to another school to take the tests with the teachers of the host school as proctors.
Everybody was nervous. We had to answer on one of those "shade me multiple choice test sheets" where even The kids' names had to be spelled on boxes. One letter per box.
Everything was silent until the end of the test. The silence only to be broken by sighs of relief as the students submitted their accomplished sheets one by one.
What startled us was this: the proctor suddenly asked two students if they were twins. (They were obviously not.)
Then as we investigated further, we learned that a student copied all answers from his seatmate INCLUDING THE NAME, ADDRESS, BIRTH DATE, ETC.