Digital Ink on Paper

I Learned These in High School But I Don’t Know Why

// July 20th, 2009 // Blog-a-holic, Funnies, Life in General

Pardon the long title.  I just couldn’t think of any other way to say it.  Since I had a day of reminiscing the bad ol’ high school days, some of the things I remembered are the silly lessons we had to learn in the classroom.  Til now, I still don’t get it why we had to learn:

1. All about phonemes. Back in first year high school, we were taught how to properly pronounce words (which is absolutely fine) in this cool speech lab.  There were headsets, microphones, and cubes per student. But one thing I don’t understand is why the heck we had to learn how to write them. Lemme give you a sample, /krapE/ for crappy. And this phonemic representation I made could be wrong cos I wasn’t very good in this subject. What’s funny was we took this subject in English with Ms. Raindrops in the afternoon (of course her last name isn’t really raindrops but it sounded like it so it stuck) and in Filipino during the day (“Ang ponema ay ang pinakamaliit na yunit…” according to Ms. Zafra).
2. Really ancient Tagalog words. I received one of those Excel sheets that turn out as a quiz meant to measure your knowledge of old Tagalog words and I was able to translate 95% of those English words into old Tagalog and vice versa. If you think Pisika is the Tagalog word for Physics, you are wrong.  Pisika is still considered as hiram na salita or borrowed from its English counterpart. It’s actually, Hipnayan.  Okay, how about another one. I majored in Biochem so it’s a shame if I don’t know the Tagalog word for Chemistry. Any guesses? Kimika? No way, that’s still borrowed from the original word! It’s actually Kapnayan. All I can say is, man, ang hirap arukin! [It's difficult to understand!] So why the heck teach us words that are no longer being used? People no longer say, salumpuwit.  They just simply say, Orocan (if you’re poor) or Lazy Boy if you’re simply well-off. I just don’t get it.
3. How to translate a French song in English. I was very lucky that our school’s curriculum included two years of learning the French language.  A couple of days before Christmas, our Claus-like teacher, Monsieur Ribery, brought some French bread and cheese that smelled like a dead rat.  We had nothing to do since all the lessons are done.  While the smell of the cheese wafted inside the classroom our teacher decided that we should translate the most popular French pop song during that time.  Must be the smell of the cheese that led him to do that.  Anyway, if you haven’t heard of Larusso, then I don’t know from which jungle you came from.  But anyway, we decided to translate the song, On Ne S’aimera Plus Jamais. It was simple.  The title means you don’t love me anymore. I don’t understand why exactly we did that but there’s one thing I know, I can still sing that song and pronounce each word properly until this very day. (And I have secretly fallen in love with some more French songs.)
4. Constitution. Ahhh, Consti.  We fondly call this subject Consti.  Our teacher was a loud woman.  I don’t remember her name anymore but boy, I can still remember what she looks like plus she’s chummies with the librarians.  She’d yell at us if we walked really slow on our way to her class. (Punyeta! I didn’t say that! She did! Haha.)  Anyway, if you think I am referring to the Philippine Constitution, please allow me to say this.  It is normal and I think it’s just plain right to learn about the Philippine Constitution since we are in the Philippines.  But back in the day, on top of our own consti, we had to read through, discuss, and test on American and Japanese constitutions. I can feel the headache now. Gosh, why did we have to study that?!

I checked the current curriculum and nothing much has changed (except they added this subject called Makabayan. What the heck is Makabayan anyway?)  Students still had to endure 13 units per year. And I bet they still carry as much books and notebooks we had to carry back then.

So now, I still haven’t figured out how I’m supposed to use all those stuff I learned in school.  I wish they taught us how to compute for our taxes, how to deal with people from diverse backgrounds, how to survive college, sex education (believe me, there was none and I think this is beneficial for the sake of learning), plus some other things that I couldn’t remember at the moment.  These stuff might come in handy as compared to knowing how to say “You don’t love me anymore” but not know how to ask for help if I were lost in France, penniless.