The suggestion to implement color-coding or number-coding for vehicles plying the streets of Mandaue and Cebu cities to solve the traffic mess is blaming the victim. The simultaneous and sudden repair and widening of roads without any logical planning for alternative routes is the culprit. I do not agree with observations that traffic in these two cities is already like that of Metro Manila. The traffic situation is artificial and due to these simultaneous repairs. If only these repairs were staggered and not carried out only in 2014, we would not have all cars converging on very narrow and pockmarked diversion roads which congest fast as cars barely move.
The other culprit is the entry of huge trucks and prime movers in these alternative routes. Take Jayme Street, for example, as one weaves through so-called BarLaps (short for, you guessed it, Barrio Lapok). Why not order these trucks to move their cargo during lean hours of the evening? Why do this during daytime when cars need the alternative route moving from Cebu City to Mandaue City by avoiding the simultaneous and slow-paced repairs on A.S. Fortuna and M.L. Quezon Avenue?
The same is true for, say, Junquera Street leading to the University of San Carlos, which fills to the brim with delivery trucks during daytime and is as quiet as a ghost town at night. (In Hong Kong, all delivery trucks must finish their deliveries on narrow streets before 7 in the morning. Only vehicles delivering mails and packages from the post office or private commercial firms are allowed to deliver during daytime.)
What Cebu City and Mandaue City can immediately do for now, I think, is to call for a civil engineering summit. These two cities need to get all non-contractors who are civil engineers to study how these simulatenous, snail-paced road repairs can be avoided next time, even if it means amending the National Government Procurement Law.
As these cities continue to grow, we will always have road repairs and road widening events. And since we do not want to spend on permanent infrastructure like expressways and subway tunnels because we can always make money with these year-long repairs from time to time, we better get the best and brightest of engineers to set up a protocol so that we do not get an illogical framework from a government agency that decides to repair all major thoroughfares in only one year.
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Teachers handling kindergarten classes in an elementary school somewhere in Lapu-Lapu City are in a quandary. Department of Education (DepEd) secretary Armin Luistro issued DepEd Memorandum No. 8, Series of 2015 last April 11 with the self-explanatory title “Policy Guidelines on Classroom Assessment for the K to 12 Basic Education Program.” The order details the kinds of assessments and tests for students from Kindergarten to Grade 12.
In it, the guidelines for kindergarten are very clear: checklists and anecdotal records are used instead of numerical grades. A Powerpoint presentation on this DepEd order elucidates on further, thus: “It’s important for teachers to keep a portfolio, which is a record or compilation of the learner’s output, such as writing samples, accomplished activity sheets, and artwork. The portfolio can provide concrete evidence of how much or how well the learner is able to accomplish skills and competencies.”
These teachers—whom I accidentally got acquainted with as we shared one table at a department store food court in Mactan—eventually told me their problem. You see, their model for kindergarten assessment, as determined by their district supervisor, is another teacher assigned to handle gifted learners. And this particular teacher uses periodic assessments complete with numerical grades, contrary to the DepEd Order. As a result, pupils or learners in other kindergarten classes are pushed hard to perform as if they too were gifted kids. These teachers confessed to me that they pity their learners.
Now, if we were in an advanced European country where the pace of knowledge acquisition by preschoolers is relatively the same in every family, it most probably would make little or no difference if a kindergarten class chuck-full of gifted and intellectually advanced pupils is used as a model. Indeed, one would probably not notice any difference at all. Unfortunately for us, due to massive poverty and corresponding income disparity in Filipino families, one cannot expect all kids to have the same opportunities for intellectual growth and to learn in the same manner as everyone else.
Just recently, in fact, Cebuanos were suddenly touched by the image of a young learner who had to study under a lamppost beside a McDonald’s outlet.
Embarrassing for a country that purports to be developed already, isn’t it? Embarrassing still for the rich to just suddenly notice what people living in slum areas have been going through since, well, the introduction of electricity in Cebu!
If I remember our conversations correctly, these teachers already brought their concern to their district supervisor to no avail. They could only watch, in fact, with awe at the performance rating of the kindergarten teachers under the DepEd districts of Mandaue City during one gathering in which they all watched their supervisor closely if he could see through the folly of deciding not to follow the DepEd order.
These teachers begged me at first not to write about their difficult circumstances but when I assured them that I am bound by law not to divulge their names if they requested anonymity, they acceded. I now therefore wish that the Department of Education will look closely at the allegations they raised.