Month: December 2018

Last week, I expressed how funny writing was because I would start with a thought — something I want to say — but in the process of composing the introduction and adding supporting details, what I originally wanted to say is sometimes left unsaid and I have a different output from the one I had in mind. My fellow columnist, Tyrone Velez, expressed the same sentiment, saying that writing is a process of exploring and discovering where your ideas lead you.  

I am, of course, referring to “writing” in the context of creative work (for example, when I am writing my weekly columns or fiction), not when I write business letters, memos, instructions, policies or the like. The latter type of writing needs to be concise and on point. It would be a disaster to have a business letter saying something other than what I want to say.

The process of exploration and discovery appeals to me. As a kid, I used to enjoy Choose Your Own Adventure books. Instead of merely following the story, you make choices along the way and the book tells you to turn to this page if you make choice A and turn to that page if you make choice B and there were several possibilities about how the events played out and I would weave in and out of those until I had exhausted all the storylines and endings.

Then along came computer games. The very first type of games I played were arcade style shooting games like Space Invaders or Asteroids. But I tired of those very quickly. Then I discovered adventure games where you can go around, examine and pick up stuff, and use them to solve problems that come your way. You could, for example, find a piece of gum, chew it, and later use the gum to plug a hole in a wall or something like that.

Today, the games I enjoy the most are those that are open-ended and offer many possibilities of action and multiple ways of solving a problem. I don’t like it when things are too scripted and contrived.

I guess that’s how it is too with my writing. Some of the works I like the most are those that just seem to flow out of me — when I don’t try too hard to inject this or that thought into it. That is not to say that I don’t edit and polish later on (I do — and sometimes I delete entire paragraphs and rewrite them). But it’s always a pleasure when the piece takes a life of its own — like watching a child make its first steps. You don’t want to put the child on a leash and direct his every move, but rather you’re just there hovering in the background ready to support him if he falls.

Maybe that’s why when I was a teacher, I never liked making lesson plans. The way some seminar speakers talk about making lesson plans made it so artificial and contrived — like you had to plan every minute of your class time — that I hated it and rebelled against it. I would often just write a short 1-2-3 of what I wanted to do. Sometimes, I would just write one sentence. In around 8 years of teaching high school, I never finished a year making lesson plans. I just gave up somewhere in the middle or towards the end.

What I really wanted to happen was just to present the lesson, see how the students responded, and proceed based on that response. What I enjoyed most was the interaction I got when students were engaged. Sometimes, we wouldn’t be talking about the lesson itself anymore but some other aspect of life — but that didn’t mean it was less important or any less meaningful.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.

Newly crowned Miss Universe, Catriona Gray’s final answer in the interview portion of the contest triggered some critical responses about her romanticizing poverty instead of addressing it. Here is the full text of her mini-speech:

“I work a lot in the slums of Tondo, Manila, and the life there is very poor and very sad. I’ve always taught myself to look for the beauty in it, to look for the beauty in the faces of the children, and to be grateful. I would bring this aspect as a Miss Universe to see situations with a silver lining, and to assess where I could give something, where I could provide something as a spokesperson. If I could teach also people to be grateful, we could have an amazing world where negativity could not grow and foster, and children would have a smile on their face. Thank you.“

I would contend, however, that rather than romanticizing poverty, the message is one of seeking to rise above it. The very first sentence already describes life in the slums as “very poor and very sad.” Not quite so romantic. It is then followed by a very personal statement – “I taught myself to look for beauty in it.” It’s not about poverty being beautiful, but on making the most of a bad situation.

“Silver lining” comes from the old saying “Every cloud has a silver lining” meaning a negative circumstance can still yield positive benefits. It is not a denial of the negative, nor an idealization of it, but a means of seeing oneself through it. In her case, it was seeing the children’s faces — probably dirty, greasy faces, some with gap-toothed grins and some filled with tears and snot — but she learned to see these as beautiful, as humans. And she also learned to be grateful — perhaps of her privilege, of not being born there, but also of having the opportunity to serve and help them and see how to alleviate their situation.

In short, it was a message of hope amidst all the despair.

Could she have done better? Could she have made the point clearer? Definitely yes. But then again, with only 30 seconds to answer an impromptu question, the added pressure of being on an international stage, with thousands watching live and millions more watching remotely, it is unreasonable to expect a nuanced and perfectly crafted answer, complete with citations and case studies. It’s a beauty pageant, not a thesis defense.

I read one comment saying that her answer was obviously prepared and so we shouldn’t be so easy on her because there was no pressure. On this I would simply credit that comment to inexperience. I know what it’s like competing on a stage. As a Toastmaster, I’ve competed on a national stage. My speech was fully prepared and I had rehearsed it so many times. I knew it so well that you could hold a copy of the speech in your hand, read any sentence there, and I could continue the speech from there. I could even tell you what sentence came before the one you just read, and the one before that even.

Did that level of preparedness eliminate the pressure and nervousness? Of course not. My hands were still cold as ice as the emcee called me and welcomed me on stage. My point is, no level of preparedness removes the tension and the pressure. And she was on a bigger stage than I was with the hopes of millions of Filipinos all over the world riding on her back. I cannot even begin to fathom the intense pressure she must have been under, nor the ignorance of that remark.

The irony of it all is while the handful of critics were bashing her (many of whom are keyboard warriors who have probably never set foot in the slums where Catriona worked), those poor children whose lives she touched were busy cheering her, with joy and hope blazing in their hearts.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.

There are math teachers who like to teach only one method of solving problems and who will mark students wrong if they use another method but arrive at the correct answer anyway. This is all the more unfortunate if these are elementary or high school teachers, because they are giving kids very wrong foundational ideas about math.

Math is already a complicated and stressful subject for most kids. The least any teacher can do is to aid them in understanding it in any way they can, instead of insisting on their way as the only way. (I am, of course, referring to the subject as traditionally taught in schools. Those of you who have been following my recent articles would be aware that I am advocating a wholly different method of education altogether — but that is a topic for another day.)

If you look at how brilliant mathematicians solved “unsolvable” problems, it was because they were able to see things in a different way. They were able to break conventional methods by introducing something others did not see before. Teachers ought to encourage that instead of quashing it. Egotistic teachers, however, see a different method as a bruise on their ego, especially if it was one they had never thought of before.

I remember, with much appreciation, my grade 6 teacher, Mrs. Lilia Peralta. During her lecture of a certain method, my classmate Anthony Montecillo’s hand shot up and he suggested a better, simpler way to solve the problem on the board. Mrs. Peralta invited him up to show and explain his solution. After he was done, she smiled and commended him saying, “We should name this the Montecillo method.” That cemented in my mind what a great math teacher should be.

At the heart of it, math is simply about solving problems. The particular solution doesn’t really matter (as long as it is logically correct and doesn’t break any rules). There is a famous story about a physics teacher who asked a student to measure the height of a building with a barometer. The supposedly correct answer was to use the pressure measured by the barometer, then plug it into a formula and solve for the height. But the student said he would simply tie the barometer with a string and lower it down from the roof of the building. The length of the string would be the height of the building.

The teacher complained that the solution didn’t demonstrate any physics principles. So the student rattled off several other ways like a) dropping the barometer from the roof and measuring the time it takes to hit the ground, from which he could compute the height; b) using the sun and measuring the barometer’s and building’s shadows then using simple ratio and proportion to compute the height; c) making a pendulum and measuring the periods from the top and bottom of the building and so on.

To top it all, the student added more wacky (but still correct) solutions like using the barometer as a ruler and slowly marking the height of the building while climbing the stairs to the top; or giving the building contractor the barometer as a bribe for telling him its exact height.

The point is that problems have many solutions and the teacher who is fixated on only one is doing his or her students a great disservice.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.