Books for burning
Books for burning
Updated 00:34am (Mla time) Sept 23, 2004
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the September 23, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
IF former president Joseph Estrada is thinking of putting out a sequel to his popular book "Eraptions," he ought to consider including the following items:
In India, there is a class of people who cannot be touched ("hindi magalaw").
The sitar is a musical instrument whose strings are made from teakwood.
Warlords are people who own land.
Ramadan is not the holy month of fasting as Muslims know it to be, but a commemoration of the occasion when "Muhammad" accepted the holy writ written in Arabic.
Sun Yat Sen founded the Chinese Communist Party.
Mao Tse-tung conquered China and turned it into the most populous communist country in the world.
Funny? Well, yes -- until one finds out that these are contained not in a book of jokes, but in a high school textbook used in all public high schools. In other words, these are some of the lessons second-year high school students will absorb and perhaps carry with them for the rest of their lives, unless their teachers know enough and care enough to correct these errors contained in the prescribed textbook for "Heograpiya, Kasaysayan and Kultura."
Such mistakes do not come few and far between in the textbook, "Asya: Noon, Ngayon at sa Hinaharap" [“Asia: Past, Present and Future”] published by SD Publications and printed in Thailand. Antonio Calipjo Go, academic supervisor of the Marian School of Quezon City, has counted a total of 431 errors in the book of 316 pages or an average of more than one error per page, including passages that are confusing or simply unintelligible. In fact, some information contained in the books can be downright insulting and incendiary to some people. For instance, how do the Chinese feel about being described as a people who like to use opium? And how do Muslims feel about being told that many Islamic ideas come from Judaism, Christianity and the Old Testament as well as from the Virgin and Saint Michael? Or that many of their mosques were designed by Christian architects and are lavishly decorated?
Go, who has made it his personal crusade to denounce substandard textbooks being used in both public and private schools, came out with a paid ad Monday branding the distribution of the textbook as an "invisible crime." And indeed it is a crime, in more ways than one. Out of carelessness or ignorance, the authors have been spreading wrong information about geography, history and culture. If these are the things students learn, then truly ignorance is bliss. At least those who don't get such lessons wouldn't get confused when they know the truth.
And the Department of Education is abetting the spread of ignorance by approving the textbook for use in public secondary schools, the only one on this particular subject that has such an official imprimatur. But doesn't the DepEd have a committee of experts who read and review textbooks before they are approved for use in schools? Where were they when this book was reviewed, or were all of the committee members blissfully unaware of all the 431 errors in this one single textbook?
If the DepEd still thinks that its principal duty is to impart the right education, it should immediately order the recall of this textbook from schools and bookstores. If the government bought copies of the textbook and distributed them to public schools, it should order the publisher to withdraw them and reimburse whatever amounts were paid, as required by the Government Procurement Reform Law. Then it should burn them before the minds of millions more of our students are poisoned by all the wrong information it contains.
Updated 00:34am (Mla time) Sept 23, 2004
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the September 23, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
IF former president Joseph Estrada is thinking of putting out a sequel to his popular book "Eraptions," he ought to consider including the following items:
In India, there is a class of people who cannot be touched ("hindi magalaw").
The sitar is a musical instrument whose strings are made from teakwood.
Warlords are people who own land.
Ramadan is not the holy month of fasting as Muslims know it to be, but a commemoration of the occasion when "Muhammad" accepted the holy writ written in Arabic.
Sun Yat Sen founded the Chinese Communist Party.
Mao Tse-tung conquered China and turned it into the most populous communist country in the world.
Funny? Well, yes -- until one finds out that these are contained not in a book of jokes, but in a high school textbook used in all public high schools. In other words, these are some of the lessons second-year high school students will absorb and perhaps carry with them for the rest of their lives, unless their teachers know enough and care enough to correct these errors contained in the prescribed textbook for "Heograpiya, Kasaysayan and Kultura."
Such mistakes do not come few and far between in the textbook, "Asya: Noon, Ngayon at sa Hinaharap" [“Asia: Past, Present and Future”] published by SD Publications and printed in Thailand. Antonio Calipjo Go, academic supervisor of the Marian School of Quezon City, has counted a total of 431 errors in the book of 316 pages or an average of more than one error per page, including passages that are confusing or simply unintelligible. In fact, some information contained in the books can be downright insulting and incendiary to some people. For instance, how do the Chinese feel about being described as a people who like to use opium? And how do Muslims feel about being told that many Islamic ideas come from Judaism, Christianity and the Old Testament as well as from the Virgin and Saint Michael? Or that many of their mosques were designed by Christian architects and are lavishly decorated?
Go, who has made it his personal crusade to denounce substandard textbooks being used in both public and private schools, came out with a paid ad Monday branding the distribution of the textbook as an "invisible crime." And indeed it is a crime, in more ways than one. Out of carelessness or ignorance, the authors have been spreading wrong information about geography, history and culture. If these are the things students learn, then truly ignorance is bliss. At least those who don't get such lessons wouldn't get confused when they know the truth.
And the Department of Education is abetting the spread of ignorance by approving the textbook for use in public secondary schools, the only one on this particular subject that has such an official imprimatur. But doesn't the DepEd have a committee of experts who read and review textbooks before they are approved for use in schools? Where were they when this book was reviewed, or were all of the committee members blissfully unaware of all the 431 errors in this one single textbook?
If the DepEd still thinks that its principal duty is to impart the right education, it should immediately order the recall of this textbook from schools and bookstores. If the government bought copies of the textbook and distributed them to public schools, it should order the publisher to withdraw them and reimburse whatever amounts were paid, as required by the Government Procurement Reform Law. Then it should burn them before the minds of millions more of our students are poisoned by all the wrong information it contains.
posted by Dante at 12:00 AM
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