On Wed, 12 Nov 2003, Pablo Manalastas wrote: > How come they're so good, and we're so bad? > > 1. Because the foreign teams (including the Chinese) have to > pass British-style Level-A Maths and Science before they can > enter the University. The first two to three years of our > Science and Engineering programs is the poor equivalent of > Level-A.
Like Germany, tertiary education is not a right -- it is a privilege, that is if you can get the scores. If not, you are "doomed" to a blue collar job. I say "doomed" not in the negative context but that generally is the feeling of our youth when they can't get to enroll in accounting, computer science or engineering. Usually they say, "Ah, Education na *lang* ako", as if they gotten the really short end of the stick. Blame the society. There is a need for carpenters, janitors, taxi drivers, assembly line workers and these jobs do not need college degrees. Only the top and brightest students are given the privilege to go to higher education. That way, you do not spread your resources too thin and produce mediocre, if not outright bad and useless graduates. > 2. Because we have to do senior high-school material in college > (History, Theology, Philosophy, elementary algebra), together > with some sprinkling of computer science (programming). Our > foreign counterparts do nothing but hard computer science in > the University. Whoever mandated that college should be well-rounded education? Is this because of the failure of high school to teach these subjects well? > 3. Because for our foreign counterparts, programming is a way > of life, like walking or breathing. For us, programming is > a homework assignment due in three weeks, which we try to finish > one or two nights before the deadline. I blame this on in-breeding. Just like hazing, whatever was thought to the student, the student eventually becomes the teacher who teaches the same way he was taught. > 4. Because they love to program, and they get orgasm when they > finally get that elusive code to compute the incenter given > the coordinates of the three vertices, or generate all proper > subgroups of a finite group, etc. We, we get our orgasm the > normal way. I would love to get orgasm the normal way. But getting it another way also wouldn't hurt. > So, if we like to code like the Chinese wizards, we have to live > like they live, think like they think, and love programming > like they love. > > To put this on track: Why doesn't U.A. & P use Linux for > the ACM programming contest? After all, PC^2 runs on Linux! Yeah...why not? -- Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Official Website: http://plug.linux.org.ph Searchable Archives: http://marc.free.net.ph . To leave, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/plug . Are you a Linux newbie? To join the newbie list, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/ph-linux-newbie
