MANILA, Philippines — The education department on Wednesday apologized for a mistake committed in a Mathematics solution aired on DepEd TV that has since gone viral on social media.
Facebook user Jemima Manansala on October 6 posted a portion of a broadcast lesson on IBC-13, where it showed a solution by trying 2x by 0 to get the value of x.
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Numbers, however, cannot be divided by zero as its result would only turn out to be undefined. The cirulating video has so far got 19,000 reactions and 23,000 shares.
DepEd Undersecretary for Administration Alain Pascua recognized that there was indeed an error on the solution and vowed to improve the episodes they produce.
"Totoo pong may mali," he wrote on Facebook. "Nakalusot sa QA ang portion na ito. Kaya't minabuti kong magpost para maituwid agad itong pagkakamali."
(It is true that there has been a mistake. This portion has been overlooked by the Quality Assurance team hence I took it for the error to be rectified immediately.)
Pascua apologized to students, parents and teachers but appealed for the public to also notice their teams' efforts.
"Sana naman ay ma-recognize rin ang galing at sakripisyo ng ating mga Teacher-Broadcaster, mga production team at buong DepEd TV, DepEd Commons, DepEd Youtube Channel teams," he said.
(We hope that our people's expertise and sacrifice would also be noticed, especially from our teacher-broadcasters to the whole DepEd TV, Commons and Youtube Channel teams.)
"May maganda ring naidulot ang pagkakamali na ito at ang pag-critique sa maling ito," Pascua added. "Nalaman na rin ng buong bansa, bata o matanda, na hindi puwedeng maging divisor ang zero."
(Something good has come out of pointing and criticizing this mistake. The country has finally learned that zero cannot be a divisor.)
The official said that the episode is the 56th they have produced and will be updated to reflect the correct solution before uploading it to DepEd Commons and its Youtube channel.
Netizens first noticed errors in DepEd TV's content in August which carried out grammatical and typographical errors in a multiple-choice question.
The agency has since vowed that such incidents will not happen again.
Education Secretary Leonor Briones later on said the original version of the said broadcast contained no errors and it was only in transferring it to video form that the mistake happened.
DepEd has tapped several television and radio stations to help in pushing for the reopening of classes under a blended-type of learning that began on October 5 for more than 24 million students.
This comes as President Rodrigo Duterte rejected proposals for face-to-face classes citing dangers brought by the coronavirus pandemic.