Can Pinoys be good in math?
May 1, 2005 | 12:00am
The advancement and perfection of mathematics are intimately connected with the prosperity of the state.– Napoleon Bonaparte
God wrote the universe in the language of mathematics.– Galileo
Mathematics is the Queen of the Sciences.– Carl Friedrich Gauss
I do not believe that Filipinos are naturally poor in mathematics. It is just that the prevailing culture is biased against math or does not encourage excellence in mathematics. In the same way, ethnic Chinese Filipinos like me who cherish their ancestry are stereotyped to be great in math, maybe because our prevailing culture encourages excellence in math, and our parents impress on us the attitude that math is essential for business or professional success.
Charlie Chaplin was believed to have told Albert Einstein: "The people applaud me because everyone understands me, and they applaud you because no one understands you." Although it is embarrassing to admit, I’m not a hopeless failure in mathematics, but I’m not a math whiz either, like my cousin and Ateneo math department chairman Dr. Queena Lee-Chua, or my late dad, or my younger sister Marilou, who used to tutor me in college algebra when she was still in high school.
I confess that I am writing this column not just out of altruistic and civic duty to help a noble cause, but to atone for my many transgressions against my former math teachers. Some of these great but unappreciated teachers include my high school trigonometry teacher and now Mathematics Trainers’ Guild Philippines (TMGP) vice president for internal affairs Lucy O. Sia of Grace Christian High School, my former business statistics teacher Victor Agabayani who is now the dynamic (belated sipsip!) governor of Pangasinan (I used to sleep in his class in the back row, with a textbook covering my face) and my former accounting teacher who is now a top executive of Equitable PCIBank Maurice Lim. I wish to thank him for his liberal and open mind – he gave me passing grades while many studious classmates failed in our horrific final exams, even though I used elegant handwriting, the best English language and rhetorical logic and absolutely-zero numbers to answer all his case problems! I also received a math textbook from Phoenix Publishing authored by CKS College pre-school English head Lana Lim, who reads this column, but my atraso is I have misplaced the book like all my math textbooks when I was a student.
This column is my "better-late-than-never" penance for often dozing off and under-performing in their math classes.
Can we have a change in cultural bias regarding mathematics? Is promoting excellence in mathematics for all Filipinos possible? Is hosting a prestigious international math Olympiad in the Philippines viable?
Why not?
Why is there an eerie silence on, and a lack of appreciation and enthusiasm nationwide for an international event to be staged by the Philippines in years – the Philippine Elementary Mathematics International Contest 2005, scheduled from May 23 to 28? This will be the first time the country is hosting an international math Olympiad, with 52 teams in the elementary, and 32 in high school, all representing different cities from 19 countries. It is tragic, because it seems easier to raise funds for beauty pageants, political elections or basketball tournaments than for this international math Olympiad, which can bring honor to the Philippines and help raise mathematics consciousness among school kids nationwide.
What is great about this math festival is that its organizers, the Mathematics Trainers’ Guild Philippines (MTGP), is bringing this prestigious event to Tagbilaran, Bohol. Why here? The MTGP wanted to promote rural Philippine tourism through this event. The 19 countries and territories represented in this math Olympiad include Bulgaria, Brunei, China, Cyprus, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, South Africa, Vietnam, Mexico and the Philippines.
What is sad about this event is not just the lack of national awareness and enthusiasm for it, but the MTGP sorely lacks funds to stage this event, which is set for next month. MTGP is an organization of over 1,000 math teachers nationwide, volunteers with no salaries for their work, who screen and then train top Filipino students nationwide to represent the Philippines in international math competitions every year.
MTGP president Dr. Simon L. Chua and vice president for training and development Dr. Eduardo de la Cruz Jr. said total costs for hosting the math Olympiad in Bohol would be P6 million. So far, they have only raised P2.6 million. First Gentleman Atty. Mike Arroyo donated P1 million. He earlier declined to be named honorary chairman of the event due to his commitment to the Southeast Asian Games, which will also be held in the Philippines this year, but eventually agreed to the offer on April 28. Concerned parents raised last December P800,000 in donations, while anonymous parents donated P500,000 and P300,000 cash. For those who wish to help, call 0917-847-9525 and 992-3045, or e-mail mtgphil@zambonet.ph and info@pemic2005.org
I believe that the Philippines’ deficiency in math and our bias against math excellence are daunting but surmountable obstacles to socio-economic progress. There is corruption in progressive China, Taiwan and South Korea, but I believe that a lack of mathematical perspective in many of our politicians has caused greed and corruption, which are insidious and anti-business, because they fail to grasp the consequences of wasted opportunities, failed contracts or inefficiencies in the state of the national economy. In fact, I suspect our legislators failed to appropriately vote on the VAT bill because of their failure to study its ramifications on our economy.
If citizens are not trained to think and assess matters mathematically, it is easy for abusive leaders to cheat, steal, waste scarce resources, misappropriate funds, and make digits disappear in accounting records like magic. Why is there no public or media outcry of politicians who paid government payrolls with ghost employees? Why has the government suffered from a budget deficit for years, and our foreign debts continued to swell to record highs? Who was counting the costs and keeping track of the numbers? Why do we allow government bureaucrats and their political cohorts to feign deficient math skills when they miscalculate the real costs of public toilets, waiting sheds, public roads, bridges and even public schools financed by our taxes – bloated or imaginary numbers which insult our intelligence and should have infuriated us all?
If we do not strengthen math education, bureaucrats and politicos will forever use our weakness in math as an alibi to foul up in election counting. If we do not demand higher levels of math proficiency, politicians will continue to lie using rosy statistics and fancy economic graphs to explain widespread poverty and hunger. If we do not upgrade math education, communist rebels and radical labor unions will continue to lie using skewed versions of history and economic numbers.
Let us count the overwhelming costs of ignoring math in our schools, in governance, in industrial or farm productivity. Collective greed and consistent ill governance have for decades had a lose-lose effect on all of us. On the other hand, if we demand better governance, higher efficiency, accountability and lesser levels of corruption, these can have a powerful win-win plus-plus effect on us all.
If our legions of politicians and the power elite were better in math, rather than just in law, political science, glib-tongued oratory or skullduggery, maybe they could comprehend that corruption not only impoverishes the masses or the whole economy, but that their shenanigans’ negative impact on the Philippine peso diminishes the value of their families’ ill-gotten wealth in the long-term.
"Arithmetic is being able to count up to 20 without taking off your shoes," says Mickey Mouse. Perhaps former First Lady Imelda Romualdez Marcos wouldn’t have been in trouble for her shoes if her mathematics were as good as her love of singing or dancing.
Healthy doses of good, common-sense mathematics can help clear our brains of muddled thinking, enhance logical thinking and promote a culture of efficiency nationwide. S. Gudder once said: "The essence of mathematics is not to make simple things complicated, but to make complicated things simple."
Let us support the math teachers. Let us promote a new culture of mathematics excellence in schools nationwide, for the sake of true social justice and economic liberation from poverty, for the sake of burying for good that age-old, cop-out, unfair and negative self-stereotype that Filipinos are naturally poor in math!
Thanks for all your messages. Comments are welcome at wilson_lee_flores@yahoo.com, wilson_lee_flores@hotmail.com, wilsonleeflores777@gmail.com, or PO Box 14277, Ortigas Center, Pasig City.
God wrote the universe in the language of mathematics.– Galileo
Mathematics is the Queen of the Sciences.– Carl Friedrich Gauss
I do not believe that Filipinos are naturally poor in mathematics. It is just that the prevailing culture is biased against math or does not encourage excellence in mathematics. In the same way, ethnic Chinese Filipinos like me who cherish their ancestry are stereotyped to be great in math, maybe because our prevailing culture encourages excellence in math, and our parents impress on us the attitude that math is essential for business or professional success.
I confess that I am writing this column not just out of altruistic and civic duty to help a noble cause, but to atone for my many transgressions against my former math teachers. Some of these great but unappreciated teachers include my high school trigonometry teacher and now Mathematics Trainers’ Guild Philippines (TMGP) vice president for internal affairs Lucy O. Sia of Grace Christian High School, my former business statistics teacher Victor Agabayani who is now the dynamic (belated sipsip!) governor of Pangasinan (I used to sleep in his class in the back row, with a textbook covering my face) and my former accounting teacher who is now a top executive of Equitable PCIBank Maurice Lim. I wish to thank him for his liberal and open mind – he gave me passing grades while many studious classmates failed in our horrific final exams, even though I used elegant handwriting, the best English language and rhetorical logic and absolutely-zero numbers to answer all his case problems! I also received a math textbook from Phoenix Publishing authored by CKS College pre-school English head Lana Lim, who reads this column, but my atraso is I have misplaced the book like all my math textbooks when I was a student.
This column is my "better-late-than-never" penance for often dozing off and under-performing in their math classes.
Why not?
Why is there an eerie silence on, and a lack of appreciation and enthusiasm nationwide for an international event to be staged by the Philippines in years – the Philippine Elementary Mathematics International Contest 2005, scheduled from May 23 to 28? This will be the first time the country is hosting an international math Olympiad, with 52 teams in the elementary, and 32 in high school, all representing different cities from 19 countries. It is tragic, because it seems easier to raise funds for beauty pageants, political elections or basketball tournaments than for this international math Olympiad, which can bring honor to the Philippines and help raise mathematics consciousness among school kids nationwide.
What is great about this math festival is that its organizers, the Mathematics Trainers’ Guild Philippines (MTGP), is bringing this prestigious event to Tagbilaran, Bohol. Why here? The MTGP wanted to promote rural Philippine tourism through this event. The 19 countries and territories represented in this math Olympiad include Bulgaria, Brunei, China, Cyprus, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, South Africa, Vietnam, Mexico and the Philippines.
What is sad about this event is not just the lack of national awareness and enthusiasm for it, but the MTGP sorely lacks funds to stage this event, which is set for next month. MTGP is an organization of over 1,000 math teachers nationwide, volunteers with no salaries for their work, who screen and then train top Filipino students nationwide to represent the Philippines in international math competitions every year.
MTGP president Dr. Simon L. Chua and vice president for training and development Dr. Eduardo de la Cruz Jr. said total costs for hosting the math Olympiad in Bohol would be P6 million. So far, they have only raised P2.6 million. First Gentleman Atty. Mike Arroyo donated P1 million. He earlier declined to be named honorary chairman of the event due to his commitment to the Southeast Asian Games, which will also be held in the Philippines this year, but eventually agreed to the offer on April 28. Concerned parents raised last December P800,000 in donations, while anonymous parents donated P500,000 and P300,000 cash. For those who wish to help, call 0917-847-9525 and 992-3045, or e-mail mtgphil@zambonet.ph and info@pemic2005.org
If citizens are not trained to think and assess matters mathematically, it is easy for abusive leaders to cheat, steal, waste scarce resources, misappropriate funds, and make digits disappear in accounting records like magic. Why is there no public or media outcry of politicians who paid government payrolls with ghost employees? Why has the government suffered from a budget deficit for years, and our foreign debts continued to swell to record highs? Who was counting the costs and keeping track of the numbers? Why do we allow government bureaucrats and their political cohorts to feign deficient math skills when they miscalculate the real costs of public toilets, waiting sheds, public roads, bridges and even public schools financed by our taxes – bloated or imaginary numbers which insult our intelligence and should have infuriated us all?
If we do not strengthen math education, bureaucrats and politicos will forever use our weakness in math as an alibi to foul up in election counting. If we do not demand higher levels of math proficiency, politicians will continue to lie using rosy statistics and fancy economic graphs to explain widespread poverty and hunger. If we do not upgrade math education, communist rebels and radical labor unions will continue to lie using skewed versions of history and economic numbers.
Let us count the overwhelming costs of ignoring math in our schools, in governance, in industrial or farm productivity. Collective greed and consistent ill governance have for decades had a lose-lose effect on all of us. On the other hand, if we demand better governance, higher efficiency, accountability and lesser levels of corruption, these can have a powerful win-win plus-plus effect on us all.
If our legions of politicians and the power elite were better in math, rather than just in law, political science, glib-tongued oratory or skullduggery, maybe they could comprehend that corruption not only impoverishes the masses or the whole economy, but that their shenanigans’ negative impact on the Philippine peso diminishes the value of their families’ ill-gotten wealth in the long-term.
"Arithmetic is being able to count up to 20 without taking off your shoes," says Mickey Mouse. Perhaps former First Lady Imelda Romualdez Marcos wouldn’t have been in trouble for her shoes if her mathematics were as good as her love of singing or dancing.
Healthy doses of good, common-sense mathematics can help clear our brains of muddled thinking, enhance logical thinking and promote a culture of efficiency nationwide. S. Gudder once said: "The essence of mathematics is not to make simple things complicated, but to make complicated things simple."
Let us support the math teachers. Let us promote a new culture of mathematics excellence in schools nationwide, for the sake of true social justice and economic liberation from poverty, for the sake of burying for good that age-old, cop-out, unfair and negative self-stereotype that Filipinos are naturally poor in math!
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