Eastern Visayas DepEd Denies Cheating in National Aptitude Tests
By Ced Solidon • Jan 7th, 2008 • Category: NewsThe Department of Education’s Eastern Visayas office is out to set the record straight on allegations that the region’s public schools top national aptitude tests because of cheating. This is according to Joey A. Gabieta’s article on the Inquirer website.
According to the article, “the region’s track record of topping the national tests has been put into question, with some suspecting that the feat was achieved mainly by cheating.”
One of the schools mentioned was the Bobon National High School in Mercedes, Eastern Samar which is a topnotcher in the high school level.
You can read the whole article by visiting Jnewsinfo.inquirer.net.
Ced Solidon is the blog's founder. He currently works as a freelance writer. Aside from that, he also maintains a writing blog, Write Like a Rock Star! He loves to read books and play music.
Email this author | All posts by Ced Solidon
My take on this issue is that it is a merely a manifestation of the imperial Manila mentality, a symptom of the ethnic prejudice the Tagalogs have against the Bisaya in general, and against the Waray-waray in particular, to explain the apparent inexplicability of the “poor” and “unsophisticated” students/pupils from a “backward” locale topping over and outperforming their “seemingly more knowledgeable” peers from Metro Manila and highly urbanized centers in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, totaly discounting the fact that the “poor and “unsophisticated” students/pupils from Region VIII may really have the talent and intellect to achieve such feat.
This attitude of Tagalog ethnic prejudice against anything that is Bisaya (or Waray-waray for that metter) is quite prevalent here in Luzon, especially here in Metro Manila as best exemplied in such utterance as “Ano ka ba, para kang Bisaya!”
This prejudice is usually born out of the overly-hard or over-soft pronunciation that a Bisaya or a Waray-waray exhibits when talking to Tagalogs and in response Tagalogs wrongly presume that the speaker is stupid or backward.
But compatriots from Region VIII need not worry or get overly concerned about this matter because many and in fact countless Waray-warays have managed to overcome and even surpass the so-called “Tagalog imperialists” in the professional, corporate and entertainment sectors both here and abroad despite such prejudice because prejudice is only that, a perception which may or may not correct, but oftentimes not an accurate assessment of the subject person or ethnic group. But it does not in any way reflect the true capacity or inner qualities a person has that really measure and determine the extent of success one is capable of because that is essentially internal and personal.
I commend the EV DepEd for taking a positive action regarding the matter. However, I have experienced cheating firsthand in a national aptitude exam when I was in high school in the province.
I was surprised when our proctor told us to help raise the rankings of the province by sharing our answers with our seat mates. Alright I heard of stories about cheating during the NSAT before but I never thought it would be that blatant.
I remember the time when I took the NCEE a long time ago (the National College Entrance Examination, which at that time could make or break one’s collegiate studies’ prospects), the predecessor of the NSAT, where our exam proctor stood right behind me almost all throughout the entire duration of the examination obviously copying my answers and then handing them out to the other examinees in the room. At first I was apprehensive because I felt she was suspecting me of cheating but when I saw her writing down on a piece of paper while looking down on my work as I was answering the exam questions, I ignored her altogether from then on. When the results of the NCEE were finally given out several months later (if I remember it right, it was almost the end of the school year; we were already practicing for our graduation exercises), I got the second highest rating in our school: 98%ile.
The essence of this story is not that I got the second highest score but how I got it. Of course, I did not cheat – that’s a non-debatable fact. People may not believe me but I self-reviewed; at the very start of the school year in my 4th year, I took hold of the sole government-printed and -issued NCEE reviewer in our school, had it all xeroxed and went on to keenly study and master it from cover to cover in such a way that I could practically recite the entire contents of the pamphlete from memory. Our school never initiated any formal review classes for the grduating fourth year classes (we were four sections in all); basically we were left to our own devices as far as reviewing for the upcoming NCEE was concerned.
Proof of the neglect was the fact that one of our batchmates even received a negative NCEE percentile rating. This batchmate of ours even had one of his proctors (a friend of his mother’s) literally handing out to him the answer sheet for the entire exam (copied from known honor students who were also taking the exams) but the irony was that he could not even copy properly the answers (some even say he did not know how to copy at all). He took the NCEE repeatedly receiving the same help from the same proctor time and again but he could not pass it until he simply gave up and surrendered; his mother even complaining that how could his son fail the exams when they had the financial means to support him in college while those who were financially hard-up and thus could not be assured of their college studies could pass it and with ease (medyo patama din sa mga katulad ko noon dahil hirap naman talaga ang mga magulang ko nung mga panahon na yun).
My point here is that even with limited resources or even in unlikely places, talent even if repressed or suppressed will and shall always come out like sand being squeezed by hand and comes out between one’s fingers. Talent does not recognize location, race, gender, age, looks, creed or social statu; it’s there or it is not there.
The better response to this charge of cheating is to find out the truth.
An investigation like the ones held in the Senate where witnesses are grossly oppressed, threatened, insulted, humiliated, disparaged and even unjustly detained would not be a good avenue for settling this controversy because that is precisely I think the kind of response that the one who made that so-called expose would want to elicit because in so doing, the resulting muckraking, whether true or not or whether relevant to the issue at hand or not, would only bring to the surface all sorts of unfounded allegations and baseless accusations and would in the end result only in the collective calumny of the people of Region VIII.
[...] Eastern Visayas DepEd Denies Cheating in National Aptitude Tests [...]
I hope the administrator will give me some leeway when I post this comment because even if it is somewhat extant to the topic at hand, I believe this is equally important in the sense that it is highly relevant to the current times.
During the last congressional, local and barangay elections, the Department of Education (DepEd) central ofice in Manila transmitted to Ms. Myrna Catudio-Cardona, the present City Treasurer of Borongan, the entire amount of the funds involving several millions of pesos meant to pay for the election work of all teachers of the city.
However, contrary to everyone’s expectations, the payment of the teachers’ allowances were delayed, so appropriate complaints were made to the concerned authorities why they were not being paid.
The matter could not be resolved at the local level because nobody seemed to know where the funds went or what happened to it.
Finally, the issue reached the DepEd central office and a Boronganon native who is now a department Director in the DepEd central office, Mr. Maximo Aljibe, inquired with the Borongan City Treasurer’s Office why the teachers’ allowances could not be paid when the funds for such purpose had already long been transmitted to the local government unit concerned.
It was then discovered after proper inquiries were made with the Borongan City Treasurer personnel that the LandBank check representing the entire amount for the teachers’ allowances were personally taken by the City Treasurer, Ms. Myrna Catudio-Cardona, and encashed with the bank.
After encashing the LandBank check, she gave the entire amount to her husband, Mr. Rhodo Cardona, who was at the time running as a political candidate for City Councilor of Borongan City and apparently used the whole amount to finance his political campaign.
But karma really works because Mr. Rhodo Cardona lost in his electoral bid.
Now, the City Treasurer, Ms. Myrna Catudio-Cardona, is trying to pay back the amount she malversed in installment. Meanwhile, the teachers of the city who rendered election duties have to endure not being paid for their honest and hard work, all because of the corrupt and dishonest machinations of the husband-and-wife tandem of Ms. Myrna Catudio-Cardona and Mr. Rhodo Cardona.
The question now is, why is the City Mayor of Borongan, the Hon. Fidel Anacta, Jr., eerily silent on this major financial scandal? Did he get a part of the money for his own political campaign at the time that’s why his own stony silence on the issue?
The people and the electorate of the City of Borongan awaits your explanation!!!
For the information of those who are uninitiated, Mr. Rhodo Cardona is not an employee of the Borongan City Treasurer’s Office nor is he an employee of any of the other departments of the city government.
Mr. Rhodo Cardona is an unemployed person; a mere dependent of the City Treasurer of Borongan, Ms. Myrna Catudio-Cardona. As to his other activities, just ask the habitues of the Borongan Cockpit Arena and the various mahjong and blackjack venues in the city.
Oh, missed this blog. I didn’t know that discussions here have elicited participation from more people and have become more lively, substantial and purposive, all, thanks to Mav, the language maven.
Fhen, the literati, has also contributed to the current state of this blog.
The inarticulate, shallow, and those who have no ideas on matters of consequence have all kept mum or have gone to other sites worthy of them.
there you are balangaw! it hardly rains that’s why you are also seldom caught here… rock on bai!
He nanay,he taty,sugad man han akon mga sangkay…
Note: Blano, salamat han contribution. Alayon na la pag login hit im account hit sunod nim nga pagsubmit hin siday o bisan ano. Kon nahingalimot ka hit im password, alayon na la pag e-mail ha ak ha info @ sinirangan.com. Ig re-reset ko hiya para ha imo. Salamat!
- Ced