Educational System of MHCS (Chinese) Compared to Chapter 19 of Noli Me Tangere

As you may be aware, the 3rd year students of MHCS (Makati Hope Christian School, if you are unaware) tackle Jose Rizal’s novel Noli Me Tangere for their Filipino class. Of course, being part of that 3rd year batch, I am studying this work as well, not in Filipino though, I can't understand it in Filipino. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that if I'm comparing something in Noli Me Tangere to something in life, I can understand the story; therefore, I must be reading it in English. Yeah, duh, English…

And if you're wondering, you can buy the English version of Noli Me Tangere, with a translation of El Filibusterismo at the back, in National Bookstore for more than P400. That’s quite a good deal, considering the alternatives. Those alternatives being: A. Buy the comic (in Filipino, I haven't seen an English version) B. Deal with the Filipino version you get from school, and slave over it with a Filipino-English dictionary (No thank you) or C. Ask about it from a classmate/batchmate (No thank you once again, as much as possible I’d like to handle stuff by myself). Anyway, away from the somewhat brief advertisement and back to the post…

So… Since I've been keeping myself aware of it by reading the English version of the thing and pretty much ignoring the Filipino version (Poor book…) but listening to the reports of my classmates on the chapters do help. Anyway, it’s so much more understandable and helpful for tests when I read the book, but one chapter really hit me. It was chapter 19. Now, boys and girls, turn to page 86 if you have the same book as I do. (Teehee, 86… Lols insanely)

The basic summary of the chapter is that there is this schoolteacher, who's name I didn’t catch, telling his story to Crisostomo Ibarra. His story is, well, that kinda that he noticed stuff about the way he was teaching. He noticed that the kids he was teaching weren't encouraged to study, due to the way they would be punished if they made a mistake, and that their location was bad. They couldn’t read aloud because they studied in a church of some kind (I think a parish one or something) and if they did the priest would scold them.

The teacher tried to teach the kids Spanish, but after a bit of time the priest, Damaso, called him over to his office and insulted him. So he couldn’t teach Spanish, if he did he would lose his career, as Damaso was one of the most powerful men in San Diego (The “town” the story mainly occurs in). It resulted in the teacher losing heart in his work, but he wanted to fight back still.

Anyway… I'm continuing where I left of and don’t feel like finishing the summary. My comparison is based on what the teacher wanted to change by teaching Spanish, actual Spanish, and not pure memory Spanish without really understanding what it means.

That is basically how it is in our Chinese class. We have to memorize this sentence and that sentence, without really understand what it says. I appreciate the fact that our Chinese teacher is trying to teach us the meaning of what we studying, but I think that it is somewhat unsatisfactory. I'm not saying this to smite out teacher. No way, she's a wonderful teacher. She's very kind and nice, and funny to boot. That’s very rare for a Chinese teacher in our school. The only other teacher I remember myself favoring this much was our teacher in Grade Two and that was because he used to tell us stories of the Monkey King – or something along the lines of that – if we were good little kiddies. *eye roll* But, yeah he was very nice.

I remember hearing from someone, whose name I can no longer recall, that the Chinese in our school is a joke. I mean, compare it to the Chinese of other schools like St. Jude. Compared to St. Jude, what we’re studying is pretty much nothing. I mean, they studied History, Science and other subjects in Chinese. So they were trained to speak, write, and think in Chinese. When all we can do is pretty much write what we copy in Chinese. For proof, look at our transferees from St. Jude, they're all pretty much honor students in MHCS in Chinese.

We need someone to do what this brave schoolteacher did. We need to get back to the ground basics. There is no real point in studying Chinese by memory, everything flies out the window the day after the test, and possibly wasn’t even there in the first place.
Children study so they can prepare for “real life”, working and such. Chinese is supposed to be an advantage, but studying Chinese like this could be something we could use in our resumes, but when it comes to the actual usage, be better put on a paper bag before we g