Giving Wealth Away

Giving wealth away

By Michael Tan
Inquirer
Last updated 00:46am (Mla time) 06/28/2006

Published on Page A13 of the June 28, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

FIRST it was news about Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, announcing that he was giving up his job at Microsoft so he could devote his time to his charity, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That foundation has given billions of dollars in grants, mainly to global health programs to fight diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

Yesterday, there was even more earth-shaking news: Warren Buffett, sometimes described as the world’s second richest man, announced that over the next five years, he would be giving away 85 percent of his wealth, in the form of stocks in his investment company, Berkshire. Based on the current prices of the stocks, it is estimated he could give away as much as $37 billion.

Buffett will be giving the shares to five foundations, including the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation named after his wife. But of the five foundations, the largest recipient will be the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Family foundations

Our schools, especially those teaching business, should pick up on these recent developments as case studies on philanthropy, social responsibility and business ethics.

Buffett represents a growing number of business people who believe that one shouldn’t aspire for wealth for the sake of wealth itself. Instead, wealth is seen as a means for doing good. These businesspeople also believe profits should be returned back to a society that generated it in the first place.

It’s an intriguing concept, especially coming from the United States with its cut-throat competitive capitalism. But I’ve had to work with some of these foundations and have been quite impressed, particularly with the family foundations. These are different from corporate foundations. For example, there is a Hewlett-Packard corporate foundation, but there are also separate family foundations set up by that company’s founders: the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation as well as the David and Lucile Packard Foundation

The story goes that David and Lucile Packard first processed project proposals in their kitchen, as people would write them to solicit donations for various causes. Over the years, as Hewlett-Packard grew, so too did their personal donations. All over California you’ll find the legacies of their philanthropy, from the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in Stanford University to the Monterey Aquarium, to an old movie theater in Palo Alto preserved for its architecture. (If only some Filipino philanthropist had done that for the art-deco Avenue Theater, now being demolished.)

After David and Lucile Packard passed away, they left much of their stocks to the foundation. Today, the foundation has an entire building to house its staff, and gave away $201 million last year to American and international non-profit organizations.

Mega-philanthropy

If Forbes magazine has its listing of the world’s 400 richest people, there’s also the Slate 60, an annual compilation by Slate (Washington Post’s online news and features service) that monitors what has been called mega-philanthropy. The Slate 60 lists America’s largest charitable contributions by individuals.

Leading the list for 2005 was Cordelia Scaife May, who died in January and left behind $404 million to various charities. Second in the Slate 60 list were Bill and Melinda Gates, who gave $320 million to their foundation. Hollywood celebrities have always been conspicuously absent from the Slate 60, with the exception of Oprah Winfrey, who last year donated $51.8 million to her own foundation, which works mainly with programs for women and children.

“Buffett’s billions” will be sure to top the Slate 60 for 2006, and will unlikely be surpassed for many years, but we can expect to continue to see multimillion-dollar donations, with a distinct trend of people donating while they are still alive.

Many of these donations go to universities, something we’re starting to see in the Philippines with the likes of Angelo King and the Gokongwei family. In the United States, the philanthropies have diversified into all kinds of causes. George Soros funds projects to promote more democratic systems, particularly in Eastern Europe. David and Cheryl Duffield, who made their money from PeopleSoft, a software company, donated $93 million last year to their own Maddie’s Fund, named after their miniature Schnauzer, which concentrates on animal welfare projects.

Mega-poverty

Mega-philanthropy accompanies mega-wealth. The global consulting firm Capgemini estimates that in 1996 there were only 4.5 million millionaires throughout the world. Recently it released a new study estimating the number had nearly doubled to about 8.7 million. (If you’re wondering, the million has to be in US dollars.)

There are now so many millionaires that a new term -- “ultra-high income” -- is now used to those whose assets exceed $30 million. I don’t know how we should call billionaires, with Forbes magazine reporting that in 2006, there were 793 of these people, including, I think, two or three in the Philippines.

The more radical will say charity donations can only be a stop-gap measure, but mega-philanthropy does bring out new potentials for dealing with the world’s mega-problems. It’s not surprising that Bill Gates is giving up his job at Microsoft. It’s not just a matter of not needing the money, but of administering the huge funds in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, especially with the influx of Buffett’s donation.

Buffett is intriguing, too, because of his decision to donate the bulk of his wealth to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has led to jokes about the world’s second richest man giving all his money to the world’s richest man. Buffett explains that rather than building up the Buffett Foundation, he felt it would be better to just give to the Gates’ foundation, which is already scaled up. Most of the other mega-philanthropists have donated to their own foundations, so it’ll be interesting to see if Buffett sets a new trend.

Let’s see what happens in the Philippines. There is mega-wealth in our country, amid mega-poverty. American philanthropy reminds us that there has to be limits to wealth. Andrew Carnegie, who had migrated from Scotland to the United States in the 19th century, and rose from rags to riches, decided quite early that he would not take a salary of more than $50,000 per year and that income beyond that amount he would spend for “benevolent purposes.”

Of course, $50,000 was a lot of money at that time, but Carnegie’s new take on wealth translated into an early form of mega-philanthropy, mainly donations to educational institutions and libraries. Before he died, Carnegie had given away some $350 million, probably equivalent to Buffett’s billions when we factor in inflation. After he died, he still had $30 million, all of which was bequeathed to charity.

"Yari"

Pinoy Kasi : ‘Yari’

First posted 00:09am (Mla time) June 21, 2006
By Michael L. Tan
Inquirer

Editor's Note: Published on Page A13 of the June 21, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

“WALANG mangyayari” [“Nothing will happen”], Jun argued. He was shrugging off the possibility that he would get Lizette, his live-in girlfriend, pregnant. (I’m not using their real names.)

Times are hard, he acknowledged, and he and his girlfriend can barely make ends meet. She works as a waitress while he picks up casual jobs here and there. They pay P3,500 a month, almost half of their combined income, for a 4-square-meter room in one of Quezon City’s slum colonies, where I’ve been conducting research.

He’s 24, married but separated. She’s 21 and agreed to live in with him a month after they met. He’s had a string of live-in partners and says he fell in love with Lizette because she was “decent,” unlike his previous girlfriends, and yet willing to live in with him.

Both of them agreed a baby was out of the question and yet they were not using any reliable family planning method. When he first told me, “Walang mangyayari,” it was said in a boastful tone. Occasionally, he’d use withdrawal and he was sure this was effective because of his prowess with “timing.” When I explained that a pregnancy could still occur even with small amounts of ejaculate, he looked incredulous.

The next time we talked, he was still adamant that nothing would happen, but was clearly less confident. He rambled about how he had an hernia operation three years ago and that had probably made him sterile, comparing the operation to a vasectomy. When I explained how different the two operations were, he shrugged: “It’s all the same. When they operate you there, it weakens your sperm. Look, none of my other live-in partners got pregnant.”

“How sure are you?” I threw the question back at him, and he seemed almost titillated by the idea that he might have sired children -- and escaped. “Problema nila ’yan” [“That’s their problem”], he said, referring to his former girlfriends.

He said he and Lizette monitor her menstrual cycle, but when I asked him when a woman was fertile during her menstrual cycle, he mumbled something about five days before and after -- a common and dangerous misconception.

Each time I ask him what he would do if something does happen, he shoots back, “Di, ipalaglag” [“Then have it aborted”]. He says Lizette has agreed as well to an abortion, if something happens.

PMS

This year, of the 2.4 million pregnancies that will occur in the Philippines, more than half will be unplanned and unwanted, many occurring in circumstances similar to what I have just described.

One of my anthropology students, a Catholic nun, is finishing her dissertation with “May Nangyari Na” [“Something’s Happened”] as the title, describing the lives of young women, no, girls, who get pregnant before marriage.

Don’t imagine “liberated” girls in Metro Manila who sleep around, those women are usually smart enough to protect themselves. We’re talking here about girls from very impoverished families, who fall in love with boys as poor as they are but who are able to seduce their girlfriends with promises of a better life. Many will describe how almost accidental the sex was, sometimes only occurring once but leading to a pregnancy.

When something happens, an abortion is one option, often suggested by the girl’s own mother, who knows what pregnancy will mean for their family. Others, again often parents deciding for their children, will march the young lovers to church, or to a judge, for a quick wedding. The baby is born, and is soon followed by another one. They come in succession, but no one’s concerned about these pregnancies because they occur within marriage.

Like Jun and Lizette, almost all of the girls interviewed by my student got little or no information about sex from their parents, except of course for the usual warnings about premarital sex and the shame that a pregnancy would cause.

We’re fixated over premarital sex as the problem, even coining the abbreviation PMS to describe it. But we do little to talk about sex, about learning to be more discerning with relationships. All we do is to tell our young that PMS is wrong. We also tell them sex should always be accompanied by love. So when two young people fall in love, they figure yes, PMS is “wrong,” but maybe they’re in love and that love makes the sex “less wrong.”

Homes are silent about sex. And so are the schools. When the Department of Education came out recently with modules for students in public high schools teaching them about family planning and the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, the “pro-life” groups protested, claiming this will just encourage the young to have sex. Conservatives threatened to file charges against the education secretary, through the Office of the Ombudsman. The secretary has since suspended the distribution of the modules.

What about the health centers? When I asked Jun why he and Lizette couldn’t at least get some advice from these centers, he said it was shameful (“nakakahiya”) since they were not married.

Power and ‘yari’

“Walang mangyayari.” “May nangyari na.” The two phrases have haunted me the last few weeks because of the interviews with Jun, and because of my student’s dissertation. “Yari” is the root word here, related to “ari,” one’s possession. “Yari” is also the root for “kapangyarihan,” or power. Power is so closely tied to control or possession of something or someone, which allows a person to make things happen (or, if we are to believe Jun, to make things not happen).

It’s not surprising “yari” has sexual meanings as well: It can also mean to “have sex.” And “ari,” well, can refer to the genitals. “Yari ka!” is also used in a way similar to the English “You’re screwed,” meaning you’re in deep trouble now. “Yari ka” can be a warning, or a threat, coming from someone powerful. And the one on the receiving end will sometimes respond, in despair, “Yari ako” [“I’m screwed”].

Ideally, two people involved in a sexual relationship should be equally empowered, but in the real world, many relationships are skewed, with one partner much more powerful than the other. But the worst cases are those we find with our young people, where both parties are disempowered. Sure, Jun reeks of machismo, but his boasting about being able to control himself is empty, and betrays powerlessness. Perversely, it is this powerless boasting, “Walang mangyayari,” that eventually leads to a pregnancy, which is then described as “may nangyari na.”

The “pro-life” groups claim that the Department of Education’s modules on sex will encourage young people to have sex, and that the materials don’t have enough warnings about the dangers of contraception. The conservatives seem to underestimate themselves. Like many other young people, Jun and Lizette have heard the myths being spread by these moralists about pills causing cancer, about condoms having holes. Jun even echoes something he heard during a priest’s homily: “You shouldn’t use condoms with people you love.”

“Yari tayo.” [We are screwed.]

Zsa Zsa vs MMDA

Pinoy Kasi : Zsa Zsa vs MMDA

First posted 00:19am (Mla time) June 16, 2006
By Michael L. Tan
Inquirer

Editor's Note: Published on Page A15 of the June 16, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

ZSA ZSA Zaturnah, that is, and for those who are still caught in a 20th century time-warp, Zsa Zsa’s the amazing comic book character created by Carlo Vergara, the popular strip converted into a box-office hit of a play and now about to become a film that I am certain will be a block-buster.

Zsa Zsa starts out as a homely beautician who, by swallowing a magic stone, is transformed into a kind of combination Darna and Eula Valdez, indomitable and sultry, who fights all kinds of evil scum of the earth.

Now, what does Zsa Zsa have to do with the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA)?

Well, you see, since we’re on the topic of evil, have you noticed how Metro Manila has been under siege lately from hordes of highway robbers -- in MMDA uniforms?

Over the summer, the MMDA began to field large numbers of traffic aides and at that time, I thought, oh, just in time to help decongest the traffic, which had turned from bad to horrendously bad after they lifted the number-coding scheme. But lo and behold, the traffic worsened and, no wonder, it looks like the traffic aides have been too busy extorting money from motorists.

To show how bad the situation is, twice in a month, I was nearly victimized, both times along Ortigas Avenue, in a kind of godforsaken Bermuda Triangle between the Greenmeadows Avenue and Medical City populated by droves of MMDA ghouls waiting for prey.

That area isn’t their only haunt. I have friends reporting similar colonies of these scoundrels in other parts of the city, usually when it’s close to merienda or meal time.

Wimp

Before going on, let me explain that I am the most scrupulous person when it comes to observing traffic rules. I use my seat belts. I stop at all red signals, even if it’s 2 a.m. and there aren’t any other cars coming in any direction. In other words, I’m a law-abiding wimp when I’m behind the wheel, and even when I’m not. My friends will attest to that because they get an earful from me when they’re driving: “Seat belts,” “Slow down, yellow ahead,” “Stop, red light,” “Careful, there’s a dog,” “Wait, there’s a frog crossing.” (Okay, okay, so that last one was just to keep you reading.)

Now, with that explanation, let me narrate my encounters with the MMDA’s low life -- and with Zsa Zsa. I’m writing about the incidents partly in the hope of getting the attention of MMDA officials but, having little faith in the authorities, also hoping that you as motorists might be able to arm yourselves against these road bandits.

The first incident occurred about a month ago. I had driven past the intersection of Rodriguez-Lanuza Avenue and Ortigas just as the traffic light changed from green to yellow. Mind you, green to yellow, not yellow to red, which would still have been fine. An aide came strutting forward and tried to flag me down. I glared at him and drove on, but that incident irritated me. I noticed there were quite a few of them hanging around, so I knew there was something insidious going on in that area.

Last week’s incident was more serious. This time, I was in my friend Jepoy’s car and he was driving. After years of my backseat driving, he’s learned to follow most of the rules, at least when I’m around. That day, he stopped dutifully on a red light, then turned right on a green. Guess what? It was like we’d driven into hell, with Lucifer’s minions descending upon us. This time there was no escape. They had formed a gauntlet and forced two or three cars to the curb, with each car taken over by one aide.

Magic stone

The face of corruption can be so deceptive. Our aide was courteous but went straight to the point, claiming we had turned right on a red signal.

“Hulidap,” I thought: a hold-up in the guise of “huli” [apprehension]. I kept calm but was firm about maintaining that we had not turned on a red signal, and asked if there was proof we did. Of course, the aide didn’t have any, and he kept muttering that they didn’t apprehend people unless they’d violated a rule.

I stood my ground, and then shifted the argument: Even if the traffic light was red, which wasn’t the case, we had every right to turn unless there was a sign that said “No right turn on a red signal.” He insisted there was such a sign. “Oh?” I asked, “I drive through nearly every day of the week and I’ve never seen it.” I wanted to go back with the aide so he could show me the sign, but the fateful intersection was about 100 meters back.

I marveled at the amazing vision these devils had to be able to spot erring motorists from such a distance. It was clear they were corrupt to the core, and that I had to shift tactics.

No, I didn’t invoke some politician’s name, or flash a general’s calling card. I swallowed my magic stone. And voila, this wimp metamorphosed into Zsa Zsa minus the sexy outfit. I smiled and told the aide to go ahead and issue a ticket, and as Jepoy squirmed in his seat, I looked at the aide straight in his eye and then at his name patch. Then I whipped out paper and pen, declaring that I needed his identification card so I could get his complete name and address.

The aide paused, clearly caught off guard, then resumed his mantra about not apprehending people who had not violated the law. I assured him I understood what he was saying and that there was no problem since I was ready to meet him in court, but I wanted to make sure he would be there as well so could he please give me his ID and do it fast because I had an appointment to catch.

There was a brief stalemate. Then he waved us on, still insisting he never flagged people down unless they had violated the law.

The next day, I went back to the intersection. There was no sign barring a right turn on a red light. But let me emphasize again, we turned on a green light. This was pure extortion.

I’m not naming the aide. The jerk probably has three or four families to feed and really, he’s just another cog in a corrupt system. But the MMDA better get its act together. Other people are noticing the rising incidence of “hulidap” from among these aides -- on and off the road. One official in an international business association complained to me the other day that aides had approached him, offering to “adjust” the wired MMDA fences near his office so his car could pass through -- for a fee of course.

He doesn’t want to be named, which tells us about where we are today: at the mercy of mere aides turned terrorists, acting with impunity. Pay up and you encourage the thugs to go on victimizing other motorists.

If one of these hoodlums accosts you and you are certain you’re right, do what I did and ask for their ID. I know there’s a risk here that they would issue a ticket, which could mean additional hassles, so you’ll have to assess whether you can afford that. You could think of other ways to argue your way through, maybe threaten to report them to Inquirer’s Ramon Tulfo. (Don’t drop my name. Goodness, those illiterates don’t, can’t, read my column.)

As for the magic stone, I was joking. But then again, maybe there's a bit of Zsa Zsa in all of us.

More on TIMSS

Pinoy Kasi : More on TIMSS

First posted 01:48am (Mla time) June 14, 2006
By Michael L. Tan
Inquirer

Editor's Note: Published on page A13 of the June 14, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

LAST WEEK, I wrote about the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) conducted in several countries including the Philippines. I had gone into the Internet to retrieve the international report (http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2005/2005005.pdf) and shared some of the dismal findings from the Philippines, while wondering why our government wasn’t using the statistics to find ways to address the problems.

A few days later I got a letter from a colleague at the University of the Philippines, Prof. Vivien Talisayon, who it turns out was the national research coordinator for TIMSS in the Philippines. She sent me additional information about TIMSS which should bring us some hope.

But before going into her letter, I did want to underscore the urgency of our educational crisis by sharing a bit more information about our scores compared to the other countries. For the 4th graders, we ranked 23^rd among 25 countries in both math and science. With the tests for 8th graders (second year high school in the Philippines), the Philippines ranked 40th for math and 41st in science among 45 countries.

Among the Asian countries that participated -- Chinese Taipei (Taiwan), Hong Kong SAR, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia and Singapore -- we had the lowest scores for 4th and 8th grade science and math.

Just to show how grave the situation is, let me give the results of one of the test questions used for 4th graders: If there are 600 balls in a box, and 1/3 of them is red, how many red balls are there? Only 14 percent of Filipino fourth-graders got the correct answer for that item.

I think that should set the proper context for TIMSS and why need to act quickly.

Mining the reports

Let’s move now to Professor Talisayon’s letter. First, she describes how TIMSS is truly a multinational effort, conducted “under the auspices of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) based in Amsterdam and managed by Boston College in USA. Sampling was handled by Statistics Canada; data processing was done in Hamburg, Germany; IEA supervised translation of tests and questionnaires; and Educational Testing Service in New Jersey, USA, took care of data analysis.”

I was glad to hear the Philippine government did invest in TIMSS. The local study, Professor Talisayon says, “was financed by the Department of Education and Department of Science and Technology, and managed by the University of the Philippines College of Education, in collaboration with UP National Institute for Science and Mathematics Education Development and Integrated School.”

Professor Talisayon says the results “have been presented and explained to stakeholders in several forums” and a four-volume report is now in the press, for distribution to the Department of Education’s regional and division offices and to the schools that participated. She agrees that the reports can still be “mined for secondary analysis.”

I’m encouraged to hear that the government has this perspective about stakeholders, but hope they can explore ways to make the reports more accessible. I asked the professor if I could request for a copy of the report, but she said the print run was limited. However, she suggested uploading the reports on the Internet. I hope they do that since there’s so much yet that can be done with TIMSS.

Teaching teachers

Professor Talisayon says that once the reports are out, the recipients “can examine areas and test items (skills and concepts) where students scored lowest and implement interventions, specifically, addressing these weaknesses and monitor the effect on student achievement of the class, school and division.”

She acknowledges that our students tend to score lower in items that test abstract concepts, and that this was probably due to a lack of exposure to such kinds of questions.

UP has been offering courses for our teachers to help them change their teaching methods, going “beyond memorization” and giving students lessons that require more analysis.

I’m hopeful, but I wonder too how far we can go with teaching the teachers. Our current problems began many years ago, back to the colonial period, when we adopted rigid educational methods. There’s still room for rote work but the times also demand a more problem-oriented approach. The question now is whether our educators are willing to move into such methods. Critical learning will also mean a more inquisitive population, something many of our leaders would loath. I’ll write more about this in a future column.

Gender

Besides the matter of teaching methods, I pointed out last week that there was a gender angle that needed to be examined in TIMSS. I observed, from the international TIMSS report’s tables, that in the Philippines, females did better than the males in both math and science. Professor Talisayon’s letter clarified what was statistically significant:

“Internationally, there was no significant (could be due to chance alone) gender difference in mathematics performance (Grades 4 and 8). In science, there was no significant gender difference at Grade 4; however, at Grade 8, the boys significantly performed better. In the Philippines, the girls significantly scored higher than the boys in mathematics (Grades 4 and 8) and in Grade 4 science; there was no significant gender difference in Grade 8 science.”

There we have it. Internationally, there were no statistically significant differences except in Grade 8, with boys doing better. Yet in the Philippines, the girls scored better than the boys in 4th and 8th grade math, as well as 4th grade science. Professor Talisayon suggests: “Maybe there are gender differences in study habits and class participation in our culture. A further study can look into reasons for gender differences.”

This gender analysis is just one example of what you can do with studies like TIMSS. For years now, there have been scientists who say that “by nature” males tend to do better than females in math and science. The TIMSS study doesn’t support that hypothesis: some countries have males doing better than females while others, like the Philippines, have females doing better than males. Moreover, taken as one international study, the TIMSS results did not show statistically significant differences.

The better performance of Filipino female students does give us another area to look at. But let me save the issue of gender, as well as the matter of teaching methods in our schools, for future columns.

I thank Professor Talisayon for providing additional food for thought around TIMSS.

Catholic education

Pinoy Kasi : Catholic education

First posted 01:01am (Mla time) June 09, 2006
By Michael L. Tan
Inquirer

Editor's Note: Published on Page A15 of the June 9, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

TWO Catholic schools mark important anniversaries this year: Xavier School in San Juan marks its 50th year today, and St. Scholastica’s College will have its centennial in a few weeks.

I’m writing about them because I studied in Xavier and my mother in St. Scholastica’s. But I don’t want non-Xaverians and non-Scholasticans to stop reading, so let me assure you I’m going to take a different take on these anniversaries, sharing a few historical footnotes as my way of paying tribute to its founders and of tackling the issue of Catholic education itself.

Saving souls

Both Xavier and St. Scholastica’s were started by foreign Catholic religious. St. Scholastica’s is most identified with German Benedictine sisters. Xavier was founded by a team of Jesuits, mostly Basques and French-Canadians, and many others of different nationalities. What brought these men together was a passion not for the Philippines but for China. They were all originally assigned to work as missionaries

in China but they were expelled after the communist victory in 1949. So they moved to the Philippines, hoping to minister the Chinese community in the Philippines. There was already a girls’ school, Immaculate Conception Academy, so they set up one for boys.

It was not accidental that these schools were started by foreign Catholic religious. After the Americans occupied the Philippines in 1898, the Catholic Church realized that they now faced competition from American Protestant missionaries. Even if the country already had many Catholic schools, there was more work for Catholic religious. So you had new schools set up like St. Scholastica’s -- and Maryknoll College (now Miriam College), which was established by American sisters.

The Jesuits faced a different kind of competition. The Protestants had been quite active prosletyzing with the local Chinese, and had set up schools like St. Stephen’s and Grace Christian, offering the full range of Chinese subjects. The Jesuits knew they had a niche to carve, offering Chinese subjects through a Catholic institution for boys.

There then is part of the story behind these schools: a battle for souls.

Not clones

There can be no doubts about how committed the schools’ founders were to the Catholic Church. They left comfortable lives -- there were always rumors of a German princess or two in St. Scholastica’s -- to work under the most difficult of conditions. When the Jesuits arrived in Manila, the city was still recovering from World War II, and so Xavier started out in an old barracks building in Echague, Quiapo.

The anniversaries of St. Scholastica’s and Xavier offer us an opportunity to look at how the founders combined their religious faith with their commitment to a different mission: that of education. Looking now, in 2006, at what they’ve established, I have no doubts that they were effective as Catholic educators because they were able to transcend the stereotypes associated with missionary work.

To the credit of the Jesuits and Benedictine sisters, their schools didn’t quite try to mold students in their own image, at least not in a rigid sense.

I think back now of Xavier’s priests and how staunchly anti-communist they were. There were summers where the priests organized groups of Xaverians to go to Taiwan. Besides sight-seeing, we were herded into rallies with crowds chanting out slogans about driving the communists out of the mainland and freeing China.

In high school, when I submitted a term paper about an Indian named Vinoba Bhave who fought for land reform, my English teacher, an American, scribbled on my paper: “Bhave was a communist.”

Actually, Bhave was a socialist, not a communist; but in retrospect, I can understand where the priests were coming from. It was the height of the Cold War, and the priests had gone through persecution in China.

Yet, in fairness, they never tried to impose their views on us. Our teachers were a mixed lot, allowed to air their own opinions. One of my favorites was a Chinese woman who had married a Filipino. I’m not giving her name because even today, I’m not sure how her family feels about what she did. She spoke Chinese languages fluently and knew her history well -- she had little sympathy for Taiwan and the Kuomintang government there, talking about the corruption in China that eventually led to the communists’ victory. Those were very radical views for her times.

There was diversity in school -- non-Catholics were not required to attend Mass, or to convert. The world was there for us to explore, daily from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. We had a great library, with an even greater librarian, Reynaldo Alejandro, who eventually left for New York but still comes home regularly and is known for his wonderful books about the Philippines. The priests fully supported him in developing an excellent library, without censorship. Much of my curiosity about the world, which I try to share through this column, was nurtured in Mr. Alejandro’s library.

Feisty

St. Scholastica’s is more intriguing. The sisters were German, and you know what the stereotypes are about the German fixation on orderliness and routine. As if being German wasn’t enough, they were Benedictine, an order which sought to glorify God through work on days divided into rigid routines.

My mother remembers, and appreciates, the discipline of St. Scholastica’s, but she also remembers the nuns encouraging creativity, and taking on the outside world. They must have done something right, because eventually, some of their Filipina students took over the school, as nuns and lay people. With strong programs on social awareness and on gender sensitivity, you can see a real difference between a Scholastican and your other Filipina “colegialas” (convent school girls).

A few weeks back, I caught TV footage showing Rep. Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel of the Akbayan party-list group being arrested at a rally and arguing with the police. I ran into her a few days later and congratulated her: “They should know better than to pick on a Scholastican.” Actually, quite a few of the Hontiveros women went through St. Scholastica’s, the more visible ones being Risa and Pia on ABS-CBN television.

Xaverians? They’re a bit more conservative, mostly business people and professionals, but I’d still like to think Xaverians also come from a different mold. Xaverians are comfortable straddling different worlds, seeing no contradiction between being Chinese and Filipino, between being a businessman and appreciating a good play, or a good film. I’d like to think, too, that even if Xaverians pale in comparison to strong and independent women like my mother and the Hontiveroses, we do know what our principles are, and stand for them.

The Jesuits and Benedictine sisters taught us the importance of faith and mission, of conviction without falling into the traps of bigotry and intolerance. Each in their own way, Xavier and St. Scholastica’s offer us models for Catholic education.

Illiterate

Pinoy Kasi : Illiterate

First posted 01:01am (Mla time) June 07, 2006
By Michael L. Tan
Inquirer

Editor's Note: Published on Page A15 of the June 7, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

IT LOOKS like we have an extended Lenten penance period in the Philippines. Every start of a new school year, the broadcast and print media lead the nation in self-flagellation over the dismal state of our educational system.

I think that’s needed, but I also hope that after this first week of classes, we can continue to face up to the problems in our schools, going beyond the usual lamentations.

The last few days we’ve been treated to the Inquirer Investigative Team report on the state of education in the Philippines. Tuesday’s installment focused on the Philippines’ low scores in the international Trends in Math and Science Study (TIMSS) conducted in 2003. The Inquirer featured our scores in comparison with those of the United States and several neighboring Asian countries where we were at the bottom of the league.

Peer review

Curious, I went into the Internet and was able to download the highlights from the TIMSS report. Mind you, “highlights” here still meant more than a hundred pages but the data had been “crunched” to the most essential points, allowing more people to review and analyze the numbers.

Let me bring out the major points I uncovered in a fairly quick browse-and-analyze session:

First, we should know who conducts the study and what their methodology is. TIMSS is administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) under the US Department of Education. The center is described as “the primary federal entity for collecting, analyzing and reporting data related to education in the United States and other nations.”

Now, why would the US government be interested in looking at other nations’ educational performance? Mainly it’s for comparison purposes, a kind of review among peers. For years now, educators in the US have warned that American students are lagging behind their peers in other developed countries, especially in the fields of science and math. The educators rightly realize that their status as the world’s most powerful nation could be threatened if they don’t improve on their educational system. TIMSS is there to help the US keep track of its educational system’s performance.

There have been three rounds of TIMSS conducted so far, the first in 1995, then 1999 and the latest in 2003. The last survey’s results were released in December 2004. It’s an impressive study, involving students at the fourth and eighth-grade levels in 46 countries. (I presume that eighth-grade level in the Philippines means 2nd year high school, given that we have six elementary school years.) The samples are quite large in each country; for the Philippines, it was 6,917 students from 137 schools.

The tests are designed to probe into “PSI,” or problem solving and inquiry tasks, looking at how students are able to integrate information in various math and science fields, some of which I’ll name later. The tests were similar throughout the world, with efforts made to adjust for cultural differences.

It’s interesting that fourth graders were not allowed to use calculators but for the eight graders, countries were left to decide on their own whether they’d allow it or not. American students were allowed calculators “to reflect conditions in the real world.”

Problem areas

The test results were broken down by countries, test areas and even sex. For the US, the results were also broken down according to poverty measures, ethnicities, public/private schools.

To show the wealth of information that’s in these statistics, let me share some insights I got from a very quick one-hour browsing of the data for the Philippines. The percentages here refer to correct scores.

In the math tests, our 8th graders seemed to struggle with measurements (e.g., temperature differences), scoring 35 percent, compared with the international average of 44 percent. But they did badly in algebra (23 percent, compared with the international average of 45 percent) and geometry (11 percent for Filipinos, 28 percent internationally). The fourth graders were again not too bad with measurements, but did miserably with basic numbers (e.g., proportions). I suspect all this has something to do with the difficulties students have with abstractions. It doesn’t help that these concepts have to be taught in English to students who can barely speak the language.

In the sciences, our fourth graders fared very badly with the life sciences (5 percent, compared with the international average of 29 percent), but did better with the earth sciences (33 percent compared to 37 percent internationally).

That situation is reversed with 8th graders: they did better in the life sciences (45 percent versus an international average of 58 percent) but fared poorly in the earth sciences (38 percent versus 62 percent internationally). Their worst scores were in chemistry, with only 5 percent, compared with an international average of 46 percent.

Are the learning problems rooted in teaching methods? In textbooks? In the teachers’ own grasp of the subjects? That’s what we should be probing into, and finding remedial measures for.

Functional literacy

There’s more waiting to be analyzed in these statistics. If it’s any consolation, the Philippines did show improvement in both math and science scores between 1999 and 2003.

I’m also intrigued by the gender aspect. In the US, girls have lower scores than boys in math and science. In the Philippines, it’s the reverse.

TIMSS is important to help us assess how functional our literacy is. For years now, we’ve boasted about having one of the world’s highest literacy rates and how that literacy, together with some command of English, allows us to export workers to the world. The TIMSS results warn us that we could lose our edge for the overseas labor market, even as we stagnate with domestic development because the next generation won’t be able to tackle simple problems that require literacy in math and science.

We need to maximize the use of these tests. Some years back, I was asked by the University of the Philippines School of Economics to analyze results from the National Elementary Achievement Test (NEAT) and the National Secondary Achievement Test (NSAT) and I was amazed at how much information was waiting to be mined from the data. Unfortunately, the two exams degenerated into a contest among schools, with teachers giving review classes and test results leaking out so the tests were no longer required for all schools. If it were properly administered, NSAT could be an important monitoring tool.

Alas, we maltreat our statistics. Politicians and government officials mangle the figures to suit their own interests, or, neglect the figures, failing to use them for policy reforms. Our leaders’ attitudes toward statistics are themselves telling, showing how we’ve failed to educate Filipinos, even those from an earlier generation, about the value of science and math. Governed by dishonest illiterates, can we dare hope for a better educational system?

Brain gain

Pinoy Kasi : Brain gain

First posted 01:23am (Mla time) June 02, 2006
By Michael L. Tan
Inquirer

Editor's Note: Published on Page A15 of the June 2, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

THE United States’ new immigration law has been in the headlines lately, with even stricter conditions now for people wanting to work there -- unless you’re a nurse. The new law actually lifts current quotas on the number of foreign nurses that can enter the United States.

The nursing export industry is elated, but there’s also alarm and apprehension coming from the Department of Health, the hospitals and many others who see a greater health crisis ahead as we lose more nurses and doctors-turned-nurses.

As we desperately look for ways to stem this brain drain, we might be forgetting to address a more basic question that has plagued us since we first began exporting nurses, back in the 1950s: Just how do we look at our human resources for health?

Frontline workers

Through all these years, we’ve invested so much for the development of doctors and nurses, with the assumption that they would be the ones to move the health care system forward. For the most part, we’ve done quite well with this aspect of health resource development in the sense that we train them so well that they’re exportable to the most developed countries of the world.

They’re exportable because we train them mainly to work in the West. These doctors and nurses will have no problems handling the most complicated surgical procedures, and describing the various health problems of affluent countries, but would be at loss convincing an elderly Filipino patient she has a cataract, rather than “pasma sa mata,” or convincing a parent to use life-saving oral rehydration solution for diarrhea.

As we fret now about the impact of the exodus of doctors and nurses, we’re forgetting that the health care system can still move forward, maybe even improve, if we would just give more attention to our midwives and community health workers. They are the ones who man (or rather, woman) the front lines in our battle against our many health problems. Even more importantly, many have no intentions of migrating.

Many of the achievements of our health system in the last few decades would not have been possible without these frontline workers. To give just one important example, infant and child death rates have dropped dramatically in the past 50 years or so, plummeting from something like 15 percent of all births to about 5 percent now. This was achieved mainly through a package of interventions that Unicef called GOBI-FF: growth charts to detect malnutrition among children, oral rehydration drinks for diarrhea, breastfeeding, immunization, food programs and family planning.

It was the midwives and village health workers who delivered the GOBI-FF packages throughout the country, to the most remote villages. They still do that today, while handling many other responsibilities, including delivering babies, conducting health education, checking households for every kind of problem imaginable, from the lack of toilets to domestic violence.

While doctors and nurses complain about night shifts, the midwives and village health workers are on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Doctors and nurses grumble about heavy patient loads in hospitals. Our midwives and community health workers are responsible for literally hundreds and thousands of people, sometimes as a one-woman team.

Doctors and nurses whine about working conditions in hospitals and lack of equipment. Midwives and community health workers often have no equipment at all, no transport except their feet, and they work under the most difficult of conditions. A few months back, I featured in this column a story told by former secretary of health Dr. Alfredo Bengzon about how he had met a midwife who was working even as she was recovering from bullet wounds sustained during an encounter between government troops and rebels. A few months later, he learned that same midwife had drowned while trying to deliver vaccines during a storm.

How do we compensate our midwives and community health workers? Government midwives barely get the minimum wage, if they get anything at all (there are municipalities that can’t even afford to pay them). And the community health workers? Some get a token stipend; others work voluntarily.

Upgrading

I’ve always had a special affection for midwives and village health workers because I worked with them in community-based health programs for many years. Besides their commitment, what’s been so impressive has been their eagerness to learn and the speed with which they do pick up. I’ve had community health workers who had barely finished grade school and would sit through training sessions without taking notes and yet excelled at their work.

There’s so much they can learn to do, yet our laws still forbid them from handling many important procedures. For example, community health workers are, technically, still not allowed to give injections or to stitch a wound.

Amid the brain drain, we forget the potentials of “brain gain” in terms of the health personnel who have stayed. Don’t think that they do this because they have no choice; there is a growing overseas demand for midwives. In fact, with their two-year training, the midwives have an edge over those who have taken only a six-month caregiver course.

Solving the nursing brain drain requires a look at the big picture, trying to work out a better fit between our needs and the development of human resources. I’ve wondered, for example, if those short caregiver courses are deemed adequate for a Filipino to go off and care for other nations’ children and elderly, then an upgraded two-year midwifery course would work wonders. With a little more focused training, midwives should be certified as paramedics or practical nurses.

Our village health workers at present go through quick training, sometimes as short as a week of lectures, and yet they become quite effective. Why then can’t we develop a longer course that will upgrade their skills so that they can become health aides? Maybe the best village health workers can be given scholarships for a six-month course appropriate to the Philippines. Some of the six-month caregiver courses include such lifesaving skills as basic French, choosing a good wine and, lately, eating without a spoon. We could replace them with training for communications and health education. So many of our problems are rooted in low health literacy so good health communicators will work wonders.

I am not saying we should just let our doctors and nurses leave. We need to rethink our curriculum and training in medical and nursing schools. But even as we do that, we should be looking for ways to maximize the contributions of our front-line workers, the ones who intend to stay.

Think about it: Upgraded village health workers and midwives would mean more health problems handled at the household and community levels. We save more lives, and relieve pressures on the hospitals, so doctors and nurses can do what they’re best trained for -- right here in the Philippines.