A teacher!

[abufarsi]

edwin,

I see that you feel empathy with some teachers, and then argue that "some teachers..."

I have already lived in the Philippines for several years. The greatest challenge for a retired guy in the PI is to keep busy. My lead activity was culture comparison. I am not sure of the date, but I am guessing 2000. The head of the schools in the Philippines started a campaign "drink milk for strong bones and teeth". I saw at least 2 billboards and many placards in schools using this slogan. I even attended a "health seminar" where this slogan was in letters at least 6" tall behind the speaker.

Well... I recognized that this is poor advise on many fronts.

1. The idea that you should use any specific product to solve any particular problem is a poor nutritional advise as, good nutrition depends on you eating a variety of items to be sure you have a cross section of nutriments, as, it is impossible to know the true and complete nutritional value of any food before it is eaten, and, nobody knows the exact requirements of any specific person.

2. Now perhaps some argument could be made that some person was indeed deficient in calcium, that they could remedy it by drinking milk. Uh huh. I have visited many rural households. Poverty is the rule. Rare are household with refrigerators. Milk must be refrigerated or mixed. Water to mix with milk is of dubious quality to feed to babies. and how much milk to drink for calcium needs? about 3 OZ a day. So to address this problem I can only assume that the federal government wants every man woman and child to buy ice cream a day. No provision was made for implementing this ice cream delivery scheme. Silent were the teachers also in that an equal amount of calcium could be placed into the diet by putting egg shells in their vinegar, something every Filipino household I ever visited had.

3. Filipinos already have strong bones and teeth, in no place any documentation did I see statistical evidence that a calcium deficiency was a national problem. So it addresses a problem that does not exist.

4. It ignores scientific process. We are where we are today because of the thinking of Sir Davies bacon, Issiac Newton and Descartes. Before coming to a conclusion, steps must be taken to determine the type of evidences needed to any particular process, or "scientific process".

5. I don't know but i am going to suggest that this might have something to do with the president of the Philippines have very close connections with the major stockholders of Alaska Milk. God forbid the president of the Philippines making a decision to harm the health of millions of children in the hope of selling more milk, but, I can come to no other conclusion. This is often refereed to as graft or corruption.

Enough about "drink milk.." When I first got to the Philippines I noticed that I knew lots of stuff that apparently many did not. the old peace core slogan cam into my heart. I first saw the "drink milk..." program when attending a school function designed to highlight "drink milk" with a very good friend of mine who's children were attending that school. I interviewed that day several teachers, the principal, about my concerns of "drink milk..." essentially what terrible advise it so obviously was. Lets face it these are teachers who job it is to prepare that nations children for the future, they would want to know of possible errors... RIGHT??? At that time I was buying firewood for an oil mill and did lots of driving around, and stopped at several, i am going to say 15 schools all in all. I found not a single teacher, principal, or school official who would consider challenging their instructions received from on high. 100% used the Nuremberg defense. When that did not satisfy me many other excuses offered like "that is not my position", " i know nothing of that", "If you think this is true you can petition the schools in Manila to change this". I could not believe it, and I literally went from one school to the next making the same remarks and finding not a single teacher willing to make any change in any part of what he was to teach. NOT ONE.

I will admit that about 20% of the teachers i spoke with agreed with my thinking.

As to the charges of corruption, 100% of the teachers felt that corruption might be part of the reason for the slogan and programs. That they knew of corruption in the Philippines but they themselves were not corrupt.

This is a school system where teachers teach by example that it is wrong to speak out against wrong doing. This is a school where teachers refuse to tell on each other and thus perpetuate activities that are harmful to those most vulnerable, into whose charge parents have placed their most valuable possession.

In front of today teachers are the future of the Philippines. If change is to be made, would not the most likely place to make that change be with the children? Those who have to exist in a system but did not design it? Where else can true change take place?

You edwin can say that there must be at least one teacher who is worthy of my personal respect, but, I will never respect anybody who has sold his soul at the expense of babies.

[Rhusette_me]

Rhusette-,me

First off I am going to offer you a personal apology. I am sorry, I was wrong to personally attack anybody in this forum. When making my first post on this topic I did not think I was indeed making that personal attack, but re-reading it I see that you might easily have been offended, personally.

I was also wrong to use your light hearted joke to as a stage to launch my own agenda.

To me, this topic is near the root cause as to much of the suffering that I have witnessed while visiting the Philippines. You can't help but to have empathy with those peoples who try hard to make your visit rewarding, who have such open lives to foreigners, and hardships that are so obvious. This is not an excuse to excuse the inexcusable, but, an explanation as to why I made the mistake in the first place.

Again, sorry, everybody else in here is a nice guy, I don't know why I can't be one.

ill tell you why you can't be one Mr. Abufarsi... Because you choose not to be one! What you are is your own choice! Remember that we all have ou free agncy which means that God has given us the freedom to choose what's right or wrong!... please ponder on that...

[needeflorgo]

Cool! Write again!

[Edwin]

Rhusette-,me

First off I am going to offer you a personal apology. I am sorry, I was wrong to personally attack anybody in this forum. When making my first post on this topic I did not think I was indeed making that personal attack, but re-reading it I see that you might easily have been offended, personally.

I was also wrong to use your light hearted joke to as a stage to launch my own agenda.

To me, this topic is near the root cause as to much of the suffering that I have witnessed while visiting the Philippines. You can't help but to have empathy with those peoples who try hard to make your visit rewarding, who have such open lives to foreigners, and hardships that are so obvious. This is not an excuse to excuse the inexcusable, but, an explanation as to why I made the mistake in the first place.

Again, sorry, everybody else in here is a nice guy, I don't know why I can't be one.

ill tell you why you can't be one Mr. Abufarsi... Because you choose not to be one! What you are is your own choice! Remember that we all have ou free agncy which means that God has given us the freedom to choose what's right or wrong!... please ponder on that...

We'll all vote for you on that one, Rhusette!

[ruffa2010]

yeah! I also vote for u rhusette. Hehe...

[Rhusette_me]

yeah! I also vote for u rhusette. Hehe...

hahaha! thanks a lot!

[Rhusette_me]

Rhusette-,me

First off I am going to offer you a personal apology. I am sorry, I was wrong to personally attack anybody in this forum. When making my first post on this topic I did not think I was indeed making that personal attack, but re-reading it I see that you might easily have been offended, personally.

I was also wrong to use your light hearted joke to as a stage to launch my own agenda.

To me, this topic is near the root cause as to much of the suffering that I have witnessed while visiting the Philippines. You can't help but to have empathy with those peoples who try hard to make your visit rewarding, who have such open lives to foreigners, and hardships that are so obvious. This is not an excuse to excuse the inexcusable, but, an explanation as to why I made the mistake in the first place.

Again, sorry, everybody else in here is a nice guy, I don't know why I can't be one.

ill tell you why you can't be one Mr. Abufarsi... Because you choose not to be one! What you are is your own choice! Remember that we all have ou free agncy which means that God has given us the freedom to choose what's right or wrong!... please ponder on that...

We'll all vote for you on that one, Rhusette!

Thanks a lot, Mr. Edwin!

[Rhusette_me]

Cool! Write again!

hahaha! What do u mean, write again??? lol

[Edwin]

yeah! I also vote for u rhusette. Hehe...

Rhusette has all our votes, huh?

[Edwin]

You are most welcome, Rhusette!