Be careful with your digital power!
This time, I will talk about what (1) the world’s media as one is doing to the world of digital citizens, and (2) what the University of the Philippines College of Education, UPCE, is doing for and to the children. Neither is a sight for sore eyes!
World Media as Enemy of the People:If you look at Larry Spelcher’s sharing of the data on “Global Deaths,” you will note that between 01 January 2020 and 30 March 2020, there were only 35,000 deaths worldwide from the coronavirus, but there are 2 times more deaths of mothers during childbirth, 3.4 times more from seasonal flu … and 297 times more from abortions. So, our media have been scaring the shit out of us in terms of this virus but not giving a damn on maternal deaths, flu… and abortions!
In a national emergency, the first best use of the media is to calm the people, to reassure them.
UP Media as Failed Educator of the People:Now, we talk about the UPCE Dictionary For Children: What Is COVID-19? Alexandria Dennise San Juan writes about it in the Manila Bulletin, “UP Creates COVID-19 Dictionary For Children[1],” where the entire book contains 10 terms defined very briefly with graphics each, published 03 April 2020. Here are the terms:
(1) Covid-19 (shown in the superimposed image above).
(2) Virus
(3) Coronavirus
(4) Symptoms
(5) Cough
(6) Fever
(7) Sore throat
(8) Shortness of breath
(9) Tiredness
(10) Ventilator
Dean Jerome Buenviaje of the UPCE said:
We simplified definitions provided by scientists so children will more easily understand COVID-19 and how it could affect them.
Ms Alexandria wrote: “The college head also urged parents to talk about the contents of the dictionary with their children for them to also learn how to protect themselves from the disease.”
Sorry, but there is nothing in the Dictionary for Children – total 10 pages in pdf – that tells the children, or their parents, how to protect themselves from the disease!
Perhaps that was the Outlook, but that is not the Output.
I don’t know what happened, but let me now establish some credentials. This is a UP teacher speaking, BSA major in Ag Education, UP '65. I passed the very first Teacher’s Exam in 1964, with a grade of 80.6% The next year, in the Pangasinan Teacher’s Entrance Exam, I got a grade of 90.5%, co-#1 with a UP Diliman teacher and her 90.6%. I am also the only recipient, in the entire 100-year UP alumni history, of the award “Outstanding Alumnus for Creative Writing” given by the UPLB Alumni Association in 2011. So, I should know whereof I speak, right?
If I were UPCE, I would have written a book for the parents, not the children. And it would have been how to protect the family by building everyone’s immune system – that is, building the defenses of the body.
The best time to fight a disease is before it happens, not when it is already there!@517
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