Why teachers need a vacation?

Teachers deserve a long and paid vacation in the Caribbean Islands, right? Why, read the selected excerpts below from student tests:

"Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the organ of the species" (ADPRIMA, 1997-2009). 
"Benjamin Franklin produced electricity by rubbing cats backwards" (ADPRIMA, 1997-2009).

"The theory of evolution was greatly objected to because it made man think" (ADPRIMA, 1997-2009).

Home Education (Part 2)

What is a good learning home environment?

A well-modified (i.e., well-planned and organized) learning home environment is highly helpful in giving children, ages 0 to 3 years, a strong foundation for future schooling and life experiences. The content of the home environment as a learning place should be more than what a child could take as a learner. This is to maximize what his/her learning faculties would permit him/her to absorb. It's like an eat-all-you-can buffet set up in a restaurant where the foods are always more than what the diners could stuff into their stomach. Only in a similar arrangement could a child have the opportunity to learn so many things that are, nonetheless, just a fraction of what has been made available for him/her to learn. This, I believe, is the best kind of learning environment for infants, toddlers, and other pre-school children.

Home Education (Part 1)

The learning experience of the child in the home environment should be foundational to his/her future formal, informal, and non-formal education. Here, the purpose of teaching, prior to attending school, is to develop cognitive, creative, psychosocial, and other life skills. Learning in the home environment should, of course, include development of important habits and acquisition of certain values and attitudes. While play activities are a natural part of the infants’ and toddlers’ life, advanced learning of the said skills should be centrally¹ imbedded in the infants’ and toddlers’ home environment and daily routine. If this could be done from birth up to age 3, it is possible to turn out “home school graduates” who have the potential to learn things at a rate significantly and inconceivably faster than the speed of learning of average and above-average schoolchildren today.

An essay on guilt and forgiveness

Guilt and Forgiveness, this article caught my attention as it is probably related to my post titled Sinning and seeking forgiveness. I'll get back to this later.

Thesis / Dissertation Topic or Outline Proposal (Part 3)

What to write for an introduction?

Researchers usually begin with a brief history of the topic. Whether the issue is something new or not, the circumstances and facts surrounding the issue/s that the researcher wishes to address are usually presented. The introduction commonly informs the readers of what the planned or finished work is all about. It also states the most compelling reasons (e.g., important facts, relevance) for your wanting to do research on the topic.

Thesis / Dissertation Topic or Outline Proposal (Part 2)

"To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. 'Tis much better to do a little with certainty, and leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing." Isaac Newton

Would it still be possible to come up with an outstanding research that stems from a pioneering work or other similar projects?

On how to write your thesis / dissertation

You'll find a good piece of advice on thesis/dissertation writing here. You'll find some more here on what is good research, here on taking notes, and here on rewriting.

To be rich is to be happy

To be truly rich is to have all the things that you need to be happy and sustain happiness. If you're lonely, despite having oodles of money, it's difficult to say that you're truly wealthy. Of course, money is often necessary to indulge the needs of your body, but it's not enough to satisfy the higher wants (e.g., love, contentment, self-esteem, cognitive-intellectual growth, security, living with someone your equal or greater than you are) of the soul. Well, the matter is really nothing complicated. If you're not completely rich, then you're not rich at all. Money is very important, all right. It may not be everything, yet it's something. But, again, it's not a sufficient, much less necessary, condition to be rich and happy.

Do you believe in "it"?

This one is cool, but if you have a heart condition, I advise you not to click on the link. It might kill you, okay? I'm serious. I don't have a name for it. Just watch. Turn on the speaker or, better yet, wear your headphone so you won't miss a thing. Are you ready? You might not see it right away, but look closely.

Thesis / Dissertation Topic or Outline (Part 1)

Graduate students are forbidden to rehash any study and pass it as their thesis or dissertation. A mere change of research venue, subjects/participants, and retention of a more or less similar conceptual framework, related literature, problems, hypotheses, and instruments of a previous study will not amount to a pioneering research. For that means that one is not about to embark on an investigation that would bear a fresh contribution to the present pool of knowledge. Being the first of its kind should be a quality that all graduate theses and dissertations must hold in common. The UP College of Education should thus exhort its graduating masters and doctoral candidates to submit a proposed topic that could lead to a pioneering research in education.