Children need to learn how to read instead of relying too much on the internet. This was the statement of Irene Camua, head librarian of Quezon City District III library as she appealed to teachers to bring their students to a real library and learn to do proper research.
On the district’s first education summit held at the Quezon City Hall on Dec. 6 in partnership with Synergeia Foundation and UNICEF, Camua lamented that students no longer put any effort in doing their assignments and instead resort to the ‘cut and paste’ method wherein they extract prepared studies from internet sources like Wikipedia.org. They don’t even bother to edit or cross-reference materials and just submit the text with its online formatting intact.
“Students will improve through reading and writing,” Camua said explaining that these skills cannot be honed if the students keep on resorting to Google or Yahoo to do information search for them. She said that with support from the local government, the local library has been upgraded to cater to the students’ needs. They only need to go there to take advantage of the available resources. “Magaganda po ang collection namin,” she said as she invited everyone to visit the library.
Apart from infrastructure, Councilor Allan Benedict Reyes said during the summit that the city has enough funds to support educational programs to make Quezon City kids at par with world standards. “It is not enough to just build schools. It is also important to provide good teachers and a good curriculum. That is why partnering with groups like Synergeia is a very welcome move for us,” Reyes said.
Department of Education District Supervisor Jun Lever Sipagan joined in the call for unity saying that DepEd needs the partnership of the community and the schools for the benefit of QC District 3 children.
A series of education summits have been making its rounds in all Quezon City districts through the initiative of its district. The summit in District III was facilitated by a team from Synergeia Foundation headed University of Asia & Pacific Dean and Synergeia trustee Dr. Antonio “Tonton” Torralba.