TIMMS in the time of COVid-19

Epelyn O. Bamba

Rigor without support

Is a prescription for failure Support without rigor

Is a tragic wasrte of potential -Mary Catherine Watson

Math is one of dreaded subject in TIMMS, and Philippines lag behind on it, but our own Secretary of Education ask for apology regarding on the comments they based the data on the first time that the Philippines joined TIMMS and according to her it is a welcome development for the Department of Education when it surpassed the record in the recent evaluation. TIMMS will be a challenged for any DepEd Secretary to be appointed

.When we learned math in school we really learned it backward. Our mathematics education- particulary our arithmetic education – began with the least important number and worked through the years to get us to the more important ones I guess that follows the theory of having to learn to walk before you can run and defers to the lower xcapacity of the young child’s mind to grasp more complex models. We need to learn the basics of Mathematics before we learn the intricacies of Math.

We need to keep it simple, tomorrow’s school should look more a community. More rigor. More support. Deeper relationships between students and teachers. Higher expectations for achievemet. Greater tolerance.. TIMMS can be defeated by the ingenuity of teachers, students, and parents working with administrators could create a wide variety of approaches. The key is to keep trying new ways until a problem is solved, then move on the next one.

--oOo-The author is SST-III at Sta Cruz High Integrated School, Sta. Cruz, Lubao