Where to go if you can’t write your essay?

Writing an academic paper is not easy. It requires research, analysis and technical writing skills. Because of multiple intelligences, some students who are good in other areas may not be good in writing. After all, it almost always carries that those who read a lot are the ones that excel in writing.

There are also individuals who are good in expressing their thoughts through informal writing such as blogging, for example, but aren’t really familiar with the rules of technical writing.

Sure, before students are given tasks to write essays or term papers, professors guide them on doing it. However, polishing a really good piece requires more than just technicalities. It demands God-given gift too.

Of course you can argue, a gift itself isn't sufficient to produce a piece that’s worth an A+ grade without practice. Practice makes perfect, therefore whoever practices writing as often as they can has a bigger chance of developing that great writing gift.

But we’re talking here about individuals whose passion lies on other things, maybe not academics, such as sports or music for example, that they’d rather spend their precious time enhancing their passion. What option is left for them if they are to submit high quality essays or term papers just to pass a course?

Thankfully, there are essays online available to aid them in their need. Whoever has difficulty meeting up such requirements, for whatever reason – be it their lack of ability to meet the professor’s demand or limited time left before submission – they are rest assured that they need not fail the course.

All they’ll have to do is go online and contact the essayists who are always ready to produce the papers that they’d need. They are always available to assist their customers throughout the process. All they would need are the important details of your project. They will handle the research and the overall polishing of tour paper.

Many professionals also hire essayists. If they’re running a big business and they’re schedule is busy, even if they are very capable of writing their papers, they would prefer to do something else that would impact more their business. Why bother spending too much time writing, if there are lots of professional writers available for hire. You can trust them with your life.

You don’t need to be an expert in technical writing to become a great musician, a celebrity, a model, a fashion designer, a technician, or a famous football player. So if you are having troubles in your technical writing courses, don’t panic, tell your self - “someone can write my essay.”

How IQ and Personality Tests Contribute for IQ and Personality Development?

I became adept in understanding my personality traits through my habitual answering of personality tests available in magazines and books. I used to spend my free time in our University library or city library during college which enabled me to have free access to all the types of magazines and books. When I enter the library, I always spent my time immediately at the periodicals section scanning and reading all my favorite magazines; women’s magazine, reader’s digest, etc. and never left any available personality tests unanswered before I’d move to the circulation section. It never failed to amaze me how the interpretations of results were always true and applicable to me.

When the internet became accessible after I landed a competitive job, I no longer had to travel to libraries to have access to all those tests. From printed periodicals, I moved online. Online testing is so much fun because it provides easy access to tons of personality or development tests as well as IQ tests. The methods used to execute those tests are always convenient and quick. Many style of tests available online are not available on prints. I exhausted almost all personality tests that were available to me before I focused on the IQ tests. It was always important to me to understand “Who I am?” “How people see me?” “What message do I tell others about me?” “What makes me unique?” “Why I behave that way?” and so much more about being me before I had to address the question “How smart am I?” It took me several years to entirely understand myself. While life experiences played a major role in the process, orienting me about psychological principles and theories through personality tests - which are not all provided in the classroom – made a significant contribution.

If there are reliable personality tests that truly help in understanding one’s self, there are also not quality tests that are created purely for fun. Examples of these are some but not all tests available at facebook. You would know the degree of the test’s reliability mainly through the quality and quantity of questions they ask. For several times it occurred to me how it is possible for these individuals to create quizzes. They may or may not psychology experts but they were able to come up with tests/quizzes with purposes targeted for a specific audience.

While we struggled to absorb the lectures of our psychology instructors about the learning theory for some basic psychology courses: behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism of which are three main philosophical frameworks, we do understand that in this era, multimedia learning is becoming more effective to a lot of students, to a lot of people.

Multimedia resources were scarce during my time but I had books and periodicals. Yet, no matter which era you are blessed to live, it is always necessary to take advantage of learning whether it is to satisfy your intellect or personality development, or both.

How to choose an International School in Thailand

“There are numerous international schools in Thailand and in Bangkok in particular. Some of these schools are very well run and have the students’ best interest in mind. Unfortunately, they are in the minority. The majority are owned and run by private owners whose main concern is making a profit. It is very unfortunate because children’s education should be of paramount concern and profit should not be made at the cost of quality education.”

“So how do schools in Thailand become international schools? Apparently, there is a lengthy process, but in the end, it seems like those who can afford to pay for an international school are the ones who build them. So you often see rich people buying schools in an attempt to make some money. Again, the wrong motives at work.”

A well-known educator, under the alias name Mr. Messier, talked to Thailand calendar about how to choose an international school in Thailand.

I was seated in our school library one free period when my co-teacher handed me a Thai Calendar magazine urging me to read an article. The heading immediately caught my attention. And after reading the article, I couldn’t help but give a nod in approval.

Five years of working in Thailand exposed me to the educational system of the country as well as the educational objectives of most of the schools.

Mr. Messier was right in saying that the rich buy schools [either international or bilingual school] generally with profit-driven objectives. They build up a school and run it by themselves. Thus, you would not be surprised if you see a businessman ending up as a principle of his own school or someone without even any units in education running a school. In my country, for someone to be a principal of a school, regardless of its size, should have a minimum of PhD. But in Thailand, there are no clear qualifications for the said position.

For the money-making-schools, the students and parents are very powerful. The teachers are there to entertain and to baby sit with so many unwritten rules. For instance, there was an American who landed a job as a teacher in one of the most expensive schools in Bangkok. He was receiving a very handsome salary; however, he had no power to discipline his students. At one time, he was having an activity for his English class when one girl came close to him and grabbed his private part, held for a moment, laughed, and walked away. The teacher was stunned but chose to be quiet. He knew, that should he make an action regarding the behavior, the school would have to take the side of the student. Obviously, she brings in handsome dough.

Some schools fake the quality of their education by having magnificent buildings and educational equipments and therefore, collecting very expensive fees. Some schools however, undermine the necessity of advance educational equipments and materials because instead of investing the profit on the school, they use the money in buying elegant cars or other personal investments thereby pressuring the teachers to somehow make quality education out of scarce resources.

Mr. Messier held that as a parent, you can quickly determine which schools are more concerned about education than about making money. He further gave some important things to look for or questions to ask:

1. Does the school have a board of governors, which democratically votes on decisions made concerning the school? Most “for profit schools” will only have one owner making all the school’s decisions – dictatorial vs. democratic. Ask to see the names of board members. This is the single most important thing to look for in international schools anywhere in the world.

2. Is the school a non-profit school? If so, then you know that all your hard-earned salary will be going back into the school and your child’s education, not the owner’s wallet.

3. What is the length of tenure of teachers? If it is a good school, teachers will stay a long time. If not, there will be high turnover of teachers.

4. What is the percent of non-Thai students at the school? if the school is 80% Thai students or 80% of a particular race, then it is not truly an international school. It is basically an ESL school with a small minority of foreign students thrown into mix. The unfortunate result of this being that the foreign students feel like a huge minority and are often treated as such.

Furthermore, Mr. Messier advised that “you should go and take a look at the school. Don’t be fooled by nice tress and beautiful flowers. Take a look in the classrooms. Do you see a lot of resources and supplies? Are there a number of athletic facilities including an exercise room? Take a look at the cafeteria. Does it look like the students have a great of selection to choose from, or is a budget lunch being served? It is very easy to see if money is being put back to the school.”

“Also, ask other parents about the school and how they feel about it. Find out about the reputation of the school.”

“Don’t be fooled by fancy advertisements. Most top schools don’t even need to advertise. Their reputation is what they rely on.”

“A high tuition cost does not guarantee a good quality; you don’t always get what you pay for.”


Source: Thailand Calendar

Teach the teachers

I didn’t realize that it is already two years now since I found myself seated face to face with six young faces across the table trying to figure out how to produce good debaters within eight sessions, a month prior to a competition. [Read the story Giving birth to great debaters] Time flew too quickly. I saw myself once again seated across the table, but this time not as the trainer, but as the supervisor [technically]. Seeing my former junior debaters teach and coach the aspiring new members of the team, I felt very accomplished. I realized how much they have grown. I had not produced only good debaters, I had also produced good teachers.

If asked about where did I draw my motivation to go through all the pain of putting up a debating club for the school, and to bear all the exhaustion in prepping and sending teams to at least two competitions each year, and to work hard to meet the expectations of parents, teachers and employers, I am not certain. However, I can say, that it is my passion that drove me to make a difference in the lives of my young debaters. It was that passion in debating and my strong character towards a challenge that made me take the mission and do what were supposed to be done.

It is true that your passion towards what you do can be so powerful to influence and attract others to follow you. It can motivate them to set a goal. It can push them to work hard to achieve that goal.

Whenever I see my debaters take a floor and speak, it makes me smile. I smile because they serve as a mirror of me. But seeing them mentor their junior debaters is even more fulfilling. Their love on sharing what they learnt from me, coupled by what they learnt from their own experiences, is what I call, the greater passion.

How to improve your English: for English as a Second Language

When people hear me speak, they usually mistake me as one who studied English as a field of expertise. Not only do I speak English with fluency, I also speak with an accent that is natural and effortless [I stick to American accent]. My English skills enable me to communicate with people of any race and status with ease and confidence. However, far from being an English major, my field of expertise is actually Mathematics. It is my bread and butter.

So how did I develop my English skills?

For someone who grew up in Asia who speaks and understands three languages and three local dialects, learning English was never difficult. In fact, my journey to better English was so much fun.

The following reasons helped to enhance my English skills:

I was very obsessed with reading. I always hungered for reading. This was essentially during my high school and college years. There was no best thing to spend my spare time but to read. During the time, very few people owned a cell phone. When my friends wanted to see me, they looked for me in the city library where they would always find me in the same corner, in the same table, buried with books. [The library was smaller compared to the university or school libraries in the city but it was more peaceful compared to the rest].

I only read English. Well, there might be a little of exaggeration here but it is 99.9 percent true. The only time I could read non-English materials was when I had to learn for my Filipino subjects. Otherwise, I enjoyed reading English materials more. I read a lot of fiction novels from the genres of romance, adventure, action/thriller and mystery. I read a lot of history books too as well as literature. Along side the history and literature books were encyclopedias. Obviously, so I could have an immediate check on the background of authors, places or characters that I would come across. And oh, I always craved for women’s magazines, Time magazines and Reader’s Digests [actually, they’re the very first that I pick up when I enter the library].

I prefer to see English movies. I saw more of English movies simply because I could get to hear new words and I could mimic the way the characters say the word/s. I always pick up one or two liners and would keep repeating them even if I was having a shower.

I prefer to hear English songs. Not that I am bias, but I just have more collections of English songs compared to non-English songs.

I was friend to people who were studying English. I was a member of the Math society in the campus and a member of the debate club in our department but my friends were the best English students in the entire University. They rule the spelling, essay writing and public speaking competitions. They even graduated Cum Laudes. Every time we got together, they discussed, brain stormed and shared things that they knew. I was there absorbing.

I used to find ways to get to talk to westerners. This is a little bit funny but is true. When I was younger, whenever I could spot some westerners around, I would make some stunts just to get his/her attention so I could talk to them. I would then go home feeling fulfilled, lol. But years later, working with westerners just became a daily part of my life. I never looked at them as superiors unless otherwise they are my immediate superiors. They are simply my even that I enjoy company with.

I welcome corrections and constructive criticisms. When I was younger, and even now as an adult, I always welcome corrections and positive critiquing. Instead of feeling upset if corrected by someone who is more superior in English, I feel happy and thankful. I always stand corrected.

Do teachers only go into teaching because they’re a big kid inside?

This is a very interesting question that I came across tonight. Is it because teachers do not want to leave school and hang out with older people out in the real world that they go into teaching? Is it because they can woo younger people while at the same time get paid? Is it because that teachers do not have lives and they would rather kill their time doing all the mountains of school work even bringing them at home while their pay check reflects a not so impressive salary? Is it because these teachers are just lame they could not apply the theories they learned so they would rather teach? Or is it that teachers are simply retards they got their jobs so they can boss kids around?

An answer to these questions could be that teachers chose their profession because they are attracted to it. They have a love of learning and an even greater love of sharing it with others. It is a very unselfish profession.

Teaching in general is a poorly paid and mostly a thankless profession. Teachers are not appreciated for their commitment and for their effort to do their best to give what they have and to teach what they learnt to their students.

If everyone decides to hang out with the older people in the real world, could you imagine how the real world would be like?

What makes students hold on to extra-curricular activities or organizations?

Students who are members of any organization or who actively participate in extra-curricular activities are mainly driven by their interests. Nobody wants to be in a group that is not in line with his interests. Being involved in an organization that caters one’s needs and skills makes a person productive and well satisfied. Some students hold on to some associations because they look forward for the experiences that they would gain such as exposure, appreciation, or even monetary profit from the group's earnings. Extra curricular activities or associations can also be a means to earn social status and symbol. While some students join a group simply to find a sense of belonging.

Making enemies is easy, making friends is hard…

Helping a teenage girl with a social interrelationship problem is a challenge. It is much more complicated than it appears on the surface. It requires gentleness, patience, love and knowledge of psychology.

I am a homeroom teacher of year 7 section A in our school. There are only seventeen students in the class and it is easy to manage. The only problem that occurs repeatedly in my class is the fight between two students, a boy and a girl, with a history back from their early primary years. Additional to that problem is the bullying thrown back and forth between this girl and the rest of her classmates [although I was able to address this problem, it is not fully eliminated].

The girl, I will name her Tricia, was very ill when she was a baby and was dying. The only way that the doctors found to save her life was to use steroids in her body. Eventually, the girl lived and grew normally except that she became obese. She lives in a country where petite figure is the norm and is beautiful. Expectedly, she is being bullied because of her size despite her pretty face. Because of excessive bullying that she endures ever since she was young, she developed a defense mechanism in herself. Before she gets bullied, she bullies other kids first. This bullying will then result to violent fights and at the end of the fight, at least one of the involved is bleeding. This pattern occurs repeatedly in spite of the school counselor’s assistance.

Tricia had made a permanent enemy out of her classmate named Jake [not a real name]. I observed that Jake appears to be nice and he portrays himself as blameless whenever there were fights but he is a good instigator of others in hating Tricia. The fight between them started as early as year 3 and the fight was even extended to their parents. Now they are in year 7 and the hatred between them is already cemented. On the first month of the school year, I wondered if I would be able to help them. As the school year progressed, there were times that I just felt like giving up and just stopping to care but a sense of motherhood in me refuses to give up. It does not help that the rest of the class had already established their prejudice towards her even before they came to my class. Nobody would want to sit beside her. Nobody would want to be in a group with her because they said she does not participate and that she becomes a problem in the group. Tricia herself does not want to belong in a group for any group activity; she just stays in her seat and resolves herself by doing anything that entertains her such as drawing or coloring. She also tends to do things that would get her attention such as ruining the classroom’s décor or someone else’s projects. When she gets scolded, she felts satisfied. Her classmates are always watching what next move she will do and so that they will immediately tell to the teacher. Everyone has nothing in their mouth but “Tricia did this, Tricia did that…”

I realized that Tricia will never be able to move out from this isolation unless her environment is changed. So what I did was, I made her sit beside the very people who hated most to sit beside her. Also, I made it a rule that who ever say the words “Tricia did this, or Tricia did that” will have to repeat the name “Tricia” one hundred times in front of the class. If Tricia is not around, I talk to the class and explain to them how they contribute to Tricia’s behavior and how they are liable to her actions.

I found this approach actually working. I saw Tricia slowly building connections with her girl classmates and the girls were more welcoming to her. Because I observed that Tricia wants to be needed by others, I always make her run errands for me. This makes her happy. It helps boast her self esteem.

One day however, just very recently, I was absent because I had to process some papers, there was a fight between Tricia and Jake once again. There were exchanges of abusive words and physical attacks [which is normal for their fights, actually]. The principal broke this news to me early morning on the next when I came to school in front of my students. I felt very upset. For the first time, these two teenagers received a lengthy sermon from me. I made them realize the consequences of their actions. Jake is a topper in class. He has outstanding grades because he works hard for it. Tricia is also a bright girl and heard good feedbacks from her teachers saying that there are times that even the brightest students in class could not answer some difficult questions but Tricia will be the only one to give the right answers. But I said, these good feedbacks, these all achievements which they got through hard work will simply be overshadowed by the negative feedbacks about their fights and violence they inflict on each other. I also explained to them how they both are slaves of their hatred. They are being controlled by their anger and they can never be fully happy no matter what they do. Unless they learn to forgive and be friends, they will continue to be prisoners of hatred. I made those words sink in to them.

While everyone was in their group doing some class activity, I called Jake to come over my table at the back of the class room. I took a paper and a pencil and talked with Jake through writing.

Me: Did you understand what I meant?
Jake: Yes.
Me; Do you agree?
Jake: Yes.
Me: Which part?
Jake: That we have to forgive and be friends or else we will never be fully happy throughout our lives.
Me: Do you think that’s possible?
Jake: Yes. But teacher, even if I don’t respond to her when she bullies me, she still hit me first. Or even if it’s someone else who bullies her, it’s me that she hits.
Me: Therefore, if you see or hear others bully her, you have to stop them and not encourage them to do it. That’s the best step you can do in making friends with her. Can you do that?
Jake: Yes teacher.

Then I called Tricia and did the same thing with her, talked with her through writing. I used this approach because that she does not respond through verbal conversation. I found it effective.

Me: Did you understand what I meant?
Tricia: Yes.
Me: Do you agree?
Tricia: Yes.
Me: Which part?
Tricia: About our marks.
Me: What else?
Tricia: Nothing else.
Me: What about the forgiveness part? What do you think with it?
Tricia: That we have to forgive each other and be friends.
Me: Do you think you can do it? Do you think it’s easy?
Tricia: No.
Me: Why?
Tricia: Because it’s hard to make friends. It’s easy to make enemies.
Me: But the result of making enemies is even harder for you. Yes or No?
Tricia: Yes.
Me: Do you want people to hate or love you?
Tricia: Love.
Me: Do you think people are willing to love you?
Tricia: Yes.
Me: Are you willing to love them back?
Tricia: Yes.
Me: Do you know that I like you a lot?
Tricia: Yes.
Me; Do you know that it makes me happy to hear good thing about you and it hurts me to hear bad things about you?
Tricia: Yes.
Me: Do you want to hurt that’s why you are giving me bad news about you?
Tricia: No.
Me: So can you promise me to give me only good news and be good girl as you are?
Tricia: Yes.

So it’s settled. Both teenagers promised to try their best to be friends with each other. But it hit me, that Tricia found it easy to make enemies and hard to make friends. I found it almost hard to address this issue. How to help the girl deal with this personality issue remains a puzzle to me.

If you are the teacher, how would you help the girl recover from her interpersonal problem?

Giving birth to great debaters...

It was a year ago; I was sitting beside a long table in front of six young faces. Hand outs were on their hands, reading and scanning the pages with blank expressions on their faces. Not very surprising, it was a complete zero knowledge. My plight was to produce debaters in a month’s training because the school wanted to participate in the 4th EU-Intercollegiate Tournament in Thailand, April 2008. Fraught with tears, stress and extended overtime work, I was able to shape these six young minds into their first journey in the world of debate.

I picked three boys from year 8 to make up my first team, and 2 boys and one girl from year 9 to make up the second team. Not withstanding the difficulty of the motions, of which as the youngest debaters would complain as all university terms, the team set out and prepared to debate against other participating teams from different universities and high schools. They researched and had practice debate for twelve motions out of sixteen all from six categories: Thailand issues, Environment, Asia/Middle East, European Union, Economics, and Ethics.

Came the tournament and they became the apple of the eyes of all the participants – debaters and adjudicators. Why not? They were the smallest and far way the youngest of all debaters. They debated against university teams or senior high school teams. No words could express what I felt when I saw them took a podium and debate with all their might. I knew in my heart, they will make great debaters. Adjudicators would asked them during the oral adjudication right after each debate round, “how long have you been debating and you are so amazing?” They’ll get a simple answer with a shrug, “In less than a month?”

They did not get into the final round, but it wasn’t bad. They finished 20th and 26th out of 47 teams. It was just a start.

They again entered the next competition, National High School Debate Tournament in November 2008. This time they did a lot better. Both teams broke into the breaking round. IPS1 and IPS2 both got into the octo-finals finishing 8th and 11th place out of thirty-six participating teams in the preliminary rounds. A best speaker award was won by one of my debaters from the senior team. Yet, they did not make it to the final round.

The most recent tournament that they participated is again, the 5th EU-Intercollegiate Debate Tournament in April 2009. They were much more grown up, responsible and capable this time. They had harnessed their debating style in a more professional level. It surprised me, that the organizers of the tournament where seemed to be aware of my debaters capabilities [given that these debaters had made an image and are famous in the debate society by this time] that they were matched up with well experienced university teams in the first two rounds in the preliminary on the first day of the tournament. It did not really matter anyway, they conquered both rounds on that first day and we went home in the evening all beaming with pride. On the second day of the competition, however, my second team [the youngest ones] were surprisingly teamed up with the defending champion university level from Mahidol University of which debaters are had even won best speakers awards in the previous year. My debaters stood small compared to the giant debaters. I could see the fear on their faces; but an encouraging smile from me never failed to boast their confidence and as they took the floor, they we’re very impressive that even the opponents addressed them as the best high school debaters. They lost the third round, but it was a good debate. Thus my team earned very high margins for that round.

During the break night party on the second day of the competition, we were all tensed waiting for the announcement of the results. My senior team did not break in but the junior team [the one that debated against Mahidol university] broke in really well that they finished 13th place out of 70 participating teams and broke in 3rd of all octo-finalists for high school level.

On our way back to our guest house on that second night, we were very happy and were looking forward for the third day, the octofinals. We were all consumed by excitement. My senior debaters were so darling to stay by the side of their junior debaters to help them prepare and anticipate any possible motion for the breaking round as well as give emotional support.

In the octo-final round, my debaters displayed their unquestionable skills in debating when the motion was given only 30 minutes before the round, “This house would make sex offenders choose castration as a punishment”. My team ended as government side and they had a pretty good model “a choice between castration or 5 years imprisonment plus 5 years house arrest”. They maneuvered the debate well and outsmarted the opponents in many areas. However, my team surprisingly lost the debate. Everyone in the room was shocked when the result came “the opposition won”. Even the opposition could not believe what they were hearing. And my debaters, while looking on the adjudication sheets studying the results, asked me with questions that I could not answer such as “how could the opposition third speaker, the whip, get higher score than our whip, when he totally messed up his speech and could not handle our points of information?”

The result was disheartening. My debaters went to a toilet and cried for a long time. As young as they are, not used to losing, they were completely broken hearted.

“Things at times do not come up as we want them to no matter how hard we work”. This was the morale that I had to teach on that situation. “There are reasons that we don’t understand and may seem unfair but they are part of the game. It is how we handle and accept them that make us the real victors” With a hug, I made it known to my debaters that they are the greatest debaters I’ve ever known. 

Why colleges should require algebra for graduation?

Mathematics is a subject not designed for everyone to appreciate. Too many people complain about its difficulty and absurdity. In fact, a number of people hold that they quit college because of a failing grade in Algebra. Others claim that they never used any mathematical skills other than addition and subtraction. Thus, the question of whether Algebra should be a pre-requisite in graduation.

Algebra is far from being a difficult subject. It is only the first step in learning higher and more complicated courses such as Differential Calculus, Analytical Calculus, Differential Equation, etc. But these higher courses are obviously taken only by those who found mathematics interesting, which, the exposure in basic mathematics courses such as General mathematics and Algebra or sometimes Trigonometry allowed them to realize.

There are many reasons why some people hate Mathematics and one of these is the bad experience or poor foundation in primary or secondary education in the subject. It is very essential that the mathematics teachers in primary years as well as in secondary years are able to encourage interest in the students. The teacher must be able to make learning fun. This will prepare them to handle Algebra in college. Another reason why college students dread the thought of taking College Algebra is because most, if not all, of the college or university instructors and professors do not care much into teaching strategies that will enable the students to learn. The unspoken principle in colleges or universities is, “who cares if you fail as long as the syllabus is done.” The students are left digging in their heels just to pass the course.

But still, why Algebra is a requirement in college? Algebra has a lot of practical applications in daily life that most people are not aware of. For example, cooking uses recipes and if you want to double the batch, you must double all the ingredients. This is an application of the algebraic equation principle, do unto one side what you do unto the other side. Stopping in a gasoline station for a quick refill requires algebra too. How much a full gasoline tank will cost you given a price per liter; or how much liters would your money allow you to fill – a quick estimation. Even youngsters who are planning to host a weekend party unsurprisingly use algebra in predicting how much people will come to the party. Take a look at this experience of Robert S. from yahoo answers.

“I'm 25 and so is the dude I share an apartment with. We had a large party a few months ago, and we needed to estimate how many people would show up. We knew that not everyone we invited would come, and some people we invited would bring guests. So, we estimated it like this:

1) Half of the people we invite won't come.
2) Half of the people who do come will bring one guest.

So, how many people will come?


Well, let N be the number of people we invite. By assumption (1), we estimate N/2 regular invitees will come, and the number of guests will be (N/2)/2 (half of the number of regular invitees, by assumption (2)).

So, we have:
N/2 + (N/2)/2 = 3N/4 = .75N

As it turned out, the assumptions were pretty accurate, and we did in have roughly .75N people at our party, where N was just over 100.”

Furthermore, not everyone is certain what will happen later in their life and career and they might just stumble in a profession that requires basic algebraic skills. For example, a commodity broker, buyer, seller and reseller witnessed that he uses algebra on a daily basis even using formulas to calculate basic percentage averages for certain types of commodities on any given day. He says that he was not a great algebra student back in his days but that if it were not for algebra, he would not live a lifestyle that he lives today.
There are still so much of practical applications of algebra worth mentioning starting from fencing your home lot, to shopping or making a living. But above all, algebra is a big help in planning and calculating how much you need and ought to do to get a good future.

ACHIEVING MILLENNIUM EDUCATION DEVELOPMENT

Overview:
Ensuring access to primary education for all children by 2015; "Will we make it?" is the most common question from all the concerned citizens of the world. But Education for all is neither an illusive dream nor an easy task. This essay discusses the ways on how to make education accessible to all in relevance and/or contradiction to Dr. Tooley's conclusions on Private Education and Entrepreneurship.

aWorldConnected.org
2006 essay competition

ACHIEVING MILLENNIUM EDUCATION DEVELOPMENT

Dr. Tooley: His conclusions on Private Education and Entrepreneurship

Professor James Tooley criticized the United Nations’ proposals to eliminate all fees in state primary schools globally to meet its goal of universal education by 2015. Dr. Tooley says the UN, which is placing particular emphasis on those regions doing worse at moving towards ‘education for all’ namely sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, is “backing the wrong horse”.1

On his extensive research in the world poorest countries such as Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, India, and China, Dr. Tooley found that private unaided schools in the slum areas outperform their public counterparts. A significant number of a large majority of school children came from unrecognized schools and children from such schools outperform similar students in government schools in key school subjects.2 Private schools for the poor are counterparts for private schools for the elite. While elite private schools cater the needs of the privilege classes, there come the non-elite private schools which, as the entrepreneurs claimed, were set up in a mixture of philanthropy and commerce, from scarce resources. These private sector aims to serve the poor by offering the best quality they could while charging affordable fees.3
Thus, Dr. Tooley concluded that private education can be made available for all. He suggested that the quality of private education especially the private unaided schools can be raised through the help of International Aid. If the World Bank and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) could find ways to invest in private schools, then genuine education could result. 4 Offering loans to help schools improve their infrastructure or worthwhile teacher training, or creating partial vouchers to help even more of the poor to gain access to private schools are other strategies to be considered. Dr. Tooley holds that since many poor parents use private and not state schools, then “Education for All is going to be much easier to achieve than is currently believed”.

Hurdles in Achieving the MED

Teachers are the key factor in the learning phenomenon. They must now become the centerpiece of national efforts to achieve the dream that every child can have an education of good quality by 2015. Yet 18 million more teachers are needed if every child is to receive a quality education. 100 million children are still denied the opportunity of going to school. Millions are sitting in over-crowded classrooms for only a few hours a day.5 Too many excellent teachers who make learning exciting will change professions for higher paid opportunities while less productive teachers will retire on the job and coast toward their pension.6 How can we provide millions of more teachers?

Discrimination in girls access to education persists in many areas, owing to customary attitudes, early marriages and pregnancies, inadequate and gender-biased teaching and educational materials, sexual harassment and lack of adequate and physically and other wise accessible schooling facilities. 7

Child labor is common among the third world countries. Too many children undertake heavy domestic works at early age and are expected to manage heavy responsibilities. Numerous children rarely enjoy proper nutrition and are forced to do laborious toils.

Peace and economic struggles are other things to consider. The Bhutan country for example, has to take hurdles of high population growth (3%), vast mountainous areas with low population density, a limited resources base and unemployment. Sri Lanka reported an impressive record, yet, civil war is affecting its ability to mobilize funds since spending on defense eats up a quarter of the national budget.8

Putting children into school may not be enough. Bangladesh’s Education minister, A. S. H. Sadique, announced a 65% literacy rate, 3% increase since Dakar and a 30% rise since 1990. While basic education and literacy had improved in his country, he said that quality had been sacrificed in the pursuit of number.9 According to Nigel Fisher of UNICEF Kathmandu, “fewer children in his country survive to Grade 5 than in any region of the world. Repetition was a gross wastage of resources”.

Furthermore, other challenges in meeting the goal include: (1) How to reach out with education to HIV/AIDS orphans in regions such as Africa when the pandemic is wreaking havoc. (2) How to offer education to ever-increasing number of refugees and displaced people. (3) How to help teachers acquire a new understanding of their role and how to harness the new technologies to benefit the poor. And (4), in a world with 700 million people living in a forty-two highly indebted countries – how to help education overcome poverty and give millions of children a chance to realize their full potential.10

Education for All: How?

The goal is simple: Get the 100 million kids missing an education into school.
The question: How?

The first most essential problem in education is the lack of teachers and it has to be addressed first. Teacher corps should be improved through better recruitment strategies, mentoring and enhancing training academies. 11 Assistant teachers could be trained. Through mentoring, assistant teachers will develop the skills to become good teachers. In order to build a higher quality teacher workforce; selective hiring, a lengthy apprenticeship with comprehensive evaluation, follow ups with regular and rigorous personnel evaluations with pay-for-performance rewards, should be considered.12 Remuneration of teaching staff will motivate good teachers to stay and the unfruitful ones to do better.

Problems regarding sex discrimination and child labor should be eliminated. The Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA), for example, addressed the problem of gender inequality. BPFA calls on governments and relevant sectors to create an education and social environment, in which women and men, girls and boys, are treated equally, and to provide access for and retention of girls and women at all levels of education.13 The Global Task Force on Child Labor and Education and its proposed role for advocacy, coordination and research, were endorsed by the participants in Beijing. The UN added that incentives should be provided to the poorest families to support their children’s education.14

Highly indebted countries complain on lack of resources. Most of these countries spend on education and health as much as debt repayments. If these countries are with pro-poor programs that have a strong bias for basic education, will debt cancellation help them? Should these regions be a lobby for debt relief?

Partly explains the lack of progress, the rich countries, by paying themselves a piece dividend at the end of the Cold War, had reduced their international development assistance. In 2000, the real value of aid flows stood at only
about 80% of their 1990 levels. Furthermore, the share of the aid going to education fell by 30% between 1990 and 2000 represented 7% of bilateral aid by that time. 15

Given this case, what is the chance of the United Nations’ call to the donors to double the billion of dollars of aid? According to John Daniel, Assistant Director-General for Education, UNESCO (2001-04), at present, 97% of the resources devoted to education in the developing countries come from the countries themselves and only 3% from the international resources. The key principle is that the primary
responsibility for achieving ‘education for all’ lies with the national governments.

International and bilateral agencies can help, but the drive has to come from the country itself. These countries are advised to chart a sustainable strategy for achieving education for all. This could mean reallocation of resources to education from other expenditures. It will often mean reallocation of resources within the education budget to basic education and away from other levels. 16


A Closer Look: Private and Public Schools

Some of the most disadvantage people on this planet vote with their feet: exit the public schools and move their children in private schools. Why are private schools better than state schools?

Teachers in the private schools are more accountable. There are more classroom activities and levels of teachers’ dedication. The teachers are accountable to the manager who can fire them whenever they are seen with incompetence. The manager as well is accountable to the parents who can withdraw their children.17 Thus; basically, the private schools are driven with negative reinforcements. These drives, however, bear positive results. Private schools are able to carry quality education better than state schools. The new research found that private schools for the poor exist in the slum areas aiming to help the very disadvantage have access to quality education. The poor subsidized the poorest.

Such accountability is not present in the government schools. Teachers in the public schools cannot be fired mainly because of incompetence. Principals/head teachers are not accountable to the parents if their children are not given adequate education. Researchers noted of irresponsible teachers ‘keeping a school closed … for months at a time, many cases of drunk teachers, and head teachers who asked children to do domestic chores including baby sitting. These actions are ‘plainly negligence’.

Are there any means to battle the system of negligence that pulls the state schools into failing? Should international aids be invested solely to private schools that are performing better and leave the state schools in total collapse? If private education seems to be the hope in achieving education for all, why not privatize all low performing state schools? Should the public schools be developed through a systematic change, will the competition between the public and the private schools result to much better outcomes? What is the chance that all educational entrepreneurs of the world will adapt the spirit of dedication and social works – offering free places for the poorest students and catering their needs?

Public schools can be made better. They can be made great schools if the resources are there, the community is included and teachers and other school workers get the support and respect they need. The government has to be hands on in improving the quality of education of state schools. In New York City for example, ACORN formed a collaborative with other community groups and the teachers union to improve 10 low-performing district 9 schools. The collaborative won $1.6 million in funding for most of its comprehensive plan to hire more effective principals, support the development of a highly teaching force and build strong family-school partnerships. 18

Standardized tests are also vital in improving schools and student achievements. It provides comparable information about schools and identifies schools that are doing fine, schools that are doing badly and some that are barely functioning. The data on student achievement provided by the standardized tests are essential diagnostic tool to improve performance. 19

The privatization of public schools is not the answer at all. Take for instance the idea of charter schools. As an alternative to failed public schools and government bureaucracy, local communities in America used public funds to start their own schools. And what started in a handful of states became a nationwide phenomenon. But according to a new national comparison of test scores among children in charter schools and regular public schools, most charter schools aren’t measuring up. The Education Department’s findings showed that in almost every racial, economic and geographic category, fourth graders in traditional public schools outperform fourth graders in charter schools. 20

If the government can harness the quality of state schools, and if the World Bank and the Bilateral Agencies could find ways to invest on both the private and the public schools - instead of putting money only on the private schools where only a small fraction of students will have access to quality education while the majority are left behind – then ‘genuine education’ could result.

Conclusion

Education for all apparently is a simple goal, yet, is taking a long time for the world to achieve. Several of destructive forces are blocking its way to meet the goal and the fear of failure is strong. Numerous solutions are available to fix the failed system of public schools but the best solution is still unknown. Several challenges are faced by the private schools to meet their accountabilities, but the resources are scarce. Every country is committed to develop its education to bring every child into school but most are still struggling with mountainous debts.

‘Primary education for all by 2015’ will not be easy. However, everyone must be assured that the millennium development goal is possible and attainable. Since the Dakar meeting, several countries reported their progress in education. In Africa, for example, thirteen countries have, or should have attained Universal Primary Education (UPE) by the target date of 2015. 23 It challenges other countries, those that are lagging behind in achieving universal education to base their policies on programs that have proved effective in other African nations. Many more are working for the goal, each progressing in different paces. One thing is clear; the World is committed to meet its goal. The challenge is not to make that commitment falter, because a well-educated world will be a world that can better cope with conflicts and difficulties: thus, a better place to live.



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1 “Leading educationalist critises UN proposals for global state primary schooling”, 2005
Available: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-09/uonu-lec090705.php
2 Tooley, James. Essay on”Private Schools for the Poor”, 2005
Available: http://www.educationnext.org/20054/22.html
3 Tooley and Dixon. Chapter 2, “The Failures of State Schooling in Developing Countries and the People’s Response”, Index of Economic Freedom. 2006
4 Tooley, James. Essay on “Private Schools for the Poor”, 2005
5 All Eyes Turn to Teachers, Global Action Week 24-30th April 2006
available: http://www.campaignforeduction.org/action/action country updates.html
6 Watkins, Tom. “Public Education Continues to Make Our lives Better”, Fall 2001
7 Toolkit for Women, Earth Summit 2002
8 Padgaonkar, Latika. “Education for All Update”, UNESCO New Delhi
9. Ibid.
10 Looking Ahead, EFA 2000 Assessment. Available:http://www.unesco.org/education/efa/ed_for_all/background/07Bpubl.shml
11 Moskow, Michael H. “Remarks”. The Fourth Annual Newman Lecture. May 24, 2005
12 Ibid. emphasis added.
13 Zabala, Earnest M. “Gender Equality in education: world fails to meet MDG 3”
14 UN-backed meeting calls for more donor aid to meet education for all shortfall
available: http//www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?News ID = 16751 & crl =
15 Daniel, John. :Education As a Development Priority, 718th Wilton Park Conference, 1-5
Sept. 2003
16. Ibid
17 E.G. West Centre, School of Education, University of Newcastle, England, NE1 7RU
00 44 191 222 3503-egwest@ncl.ac.uk
18 ACORN: Working for Better Public Schools. www. ACORN.org
19 Michigan Education Report (2001-04) “Standartized tests vital for improving school and student acheivement”. Fall 2001 Issue
20 Charter Schools in America. Aired: Tuesday, August 17, 2004 7-8 PM ET
21 Education for All in Africa: paving the Way for Action.
Available: http//www.unesco.org/education/efa/ed_for_all/background/07Bpubl.shml