A Business Graduate's Reviewing History Blog

I'm no historian and this blog is just written as a hobby . Yes, you got that right and I don't record or write history for a living. It's a shame that history is an interesting subject but people can lose interest . A person would be excited to learn mathematics but can be momentarily hating mathematics . It's because teachers, regardless of what subject, are made to teach any subject with too much memorization, too little emphasis on understanding, and too much focus on grades over learning. People tend to say that grades matter more because they want monuments of stone over monuments of learning. They value the praises of medals more than a lifetime of learning. That's why some honor students fail in real life.  I saw this meme and I can relate to it. I remember elementary Civics and Culture subjects. From the second year to the third year under K+10--there's Asian History and World History . There was the whole bland textbook. Teachers occasionally do film s...

As I continue to seek to improve Chinese education in the Philippines, I remember a mishap that happened 22 years ago. A Chinese singing contest was held in a Chinese school. Since the teachers were part-time from another school, somebody submitted a class journalism report on the Chinese singing contest last 2001. It might be a long time already. However, I do get amused just thinking about it even if I've already reconciled with the offender. The person had a certain proficiency in Chinese. Pinyin wasn't taught at that time. The Chinese classes were where the teachers from the other schools would introduce themselves by their Chinese names without telling us their real names . The Chinese classes were so focused on memorization instead of understanding. Since Chinese classes were treated rather casually (and I've been guilty of that)--Chinese teachers were the victims of students name-calling them .  In the Philippines, Chinese teachers are referred to as siansi in Hokkie...

There's the term MARITES which can be often said as Masters in the Art of Relaying Information Through Exaggerated Storytelling . Such people give a bad name to any woman named Marites. I wouldn't be surprised if women would stop naming their daughters Marites for that reason. I decided to make this simplistic meme to talk about what I'd call the MARITES Pyramid of Learning. The Pyramid of Learning has been used as a joke in many memes.  One of them has the caption "Trust Me Bro" (read more about that here ) at the tip which is the fallacy of Appeal to Emotion. If Trust Me Bro isn't enough then what happens next is, "If you don't believe them you must be (insert insult)." If there was a lesson I had to be taught many times, "Never get mad at insults. That just proves that the other person is either insecure, in the wrong, or has a very shaky ground that he or she is defensive. Get even and they'll play the victim."  If there's a...

It's very easy to say that Isaac Newton introduced the wondrous tool of calculus. Maybe, learning how to implement physics into calculus. However, one can think that the history of mathematics is very long. As far as history permits, we can learn about the mathematics of the Greeks. A lot of ancient structures are a testament to the usage of engineering mathematics in ancient times. From MacTutor , I would like to share this amazing fact about Archimedes of Syracuse with his amazing discovery: Archimedes was the greatest mathematician of his age. His contributions in geometry revolutionised the subject and his methods anticipated the integral calculus. He was a practical man who invented a wide variety of machines including pulleys and the Archimidean screw pumping device. At first, mathematics in the classroom feels dull and lifeless. I think it's because there's hardly any exposure to the applications. I felt that too that it was a dull mental exercise. I found in college...

  As a person born in the 1980s, I would say I saw a significant amount of technology and methods develop, I remembered typing my high school thesis stuck with a very old PC , working on my college group paper with a better PC, and finally had a laptop during my graduate school days. Back then, I remembered when Chinese schools taught Zhuyin (which I really dislike), I didn't pass my Zhuyin subject (good thing, the Chinese language teacher didn't make me take summer since I should be applying for college), and how pinyin was barely taught. It was pretty much like how some older Taiwanese folks had a bad attitude toward pinyin. Barriotic people do exist and I'm afraid that pinyin's potential was never explored back then. It's going to be obvious that names in Chinese will be written in pinyin in the history books. I really thought there was a typographical error when Mao Zedong was spelled as such. I was used to hearing Mao Zedong as Mao Tse Tung. People read the z a...

I think one of the biggest problems of Filipino-Chinese schools and their Chinese education is the method. I remembered how we were taught zhuyin and pinyin wasn't really taught. We had to memorize long sentences. More often, Chinese language teachers tend to act like we were in China than the Philippines. It wasn't until later that I developed an interest in learning Mandarin. I developed a sudden taste for Chinese media. It was there I learned about the existence of another dialect known as Cantonese. Pinyin was barely taught. Instead, we were taught zhuyin which was still widely used in Taiwan. Zhuyin was the standard Chinese alphabet. Then there was pinyin which is the proper Romanization.  We need to take a look at the history of pinyin with the late Zhou Yougang. He was born on January 13, 1906, and died on January 14, 2017 . As I was using the Tao Li, I got curious and Googled the inventor of Pinyin. I'd dare say that the inventor himself is a plain genius. I do have...

This is one topic I felt like I wanted to write down here. It's all about the boomer generation with people resistant to change. Boomers are typically born from 1946 to 1964. Having been a millennial (born 1991-1996) meant there were changes that would happen. Some things that are common today were luxuries yesterday. It was during the 1990s to early 2000s. I could remember being stuck with some obsolete technology back in the 2000s. It was a real challenge (actually) since I had to deal with a lot of boomers. A lot of boomers held the seats of authority. They can be parents, uncles, aunties, caretakers, and teachers just to name a few. I remembered wanting to have a personal computer. It was rather a convenient tool actually. I simply wanted to have that PC because it made encoding easier. What would the typical boomers say? Well, they say, "Back in our day, we had a typewriter so stop complaining and use the typewriter just like we did!" Then they get mad when the typew...