Rational Insanity
Busting the thesis con
This revelation may be disturbing to most and expected to some teachers. Most of your students are not the authors of the researches or theses they submit to you. I can personally attest to this claim because I am one of those people your students pay to make them a complete thesis as a requirement for them to graduate or pass a certain subject. I am part of the thesis con and instead of feeling great because I earn from the inability of students to do their own research, I am seriously alarmed at the kind of graduates we might have if cons like this are overlooked and treated with the passiveness that we are treating it with now.
First the facts: A full thesis would cost from Php 5,000 -- Php 10,000, depending on who makes it and the demands of a particular research. Some researchers even charge separate to be grammarians or statisticians for a research (this of course is widely accepted in thesis making because not all people are good in grammar or statistics). There are blatant thesis makers mushrooming all over our place, one even has a huge painted sign along the road somewhere in the Tagbac-Jaro area; most teachers in certain universities here in our region DON'T KNOW HOW TO TEACH THESIS WRITING, ARE TERRIBLY BOOKISH, AND MAKE THESIS WRITING SEEM LIKE A REAL TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (hence, an explanation for why students fear the subject so much) -- here's something to further illustrate this point: I have done a thesis for a certain group of students from a prestigious CATHOLIC, PRIVATE SCHOOL in Iloilo and the thesis came back to me with the teacher's corrections, you wanna know what those corrections were? Well, the teacher just told the students to use ALL the statistical tools she found in some obsolete book (namely the percentiles, quartiles, chi square, pearson moment coefficient, etc.) without even considering that the research topic did not actually require all these statistical tools just as long as all the statistical tools were used! Worse -- the thesis was the qualitative type of research! Now, what kind of teacher would do that? I was flabbergasted when I saw the corrections. Schools should spend more on training their teachers on how to handle a thesis class! Shame on this school that boasts of an impeccable (kuno) research center that is known all over the region. Do something about it!
All right, now to the painful truths -- because of the growing number of students in the region who would rather pay to have their researches done by somebody else, students are steadily growing duller and duller. Modesty aside, I have not had one single research of mine done by anybody, whether for a high school, college, graduate, or personal requirement and all of my researches had a flat one stamped all over them and before you tell me that I don't know what I am talking about, I should defend myself by saying that I finished a research-intensive Masters course so I would definitely know what is going wrong not only among students asked to do a thesis as a requirement but also among the thesis teachers of our region. There are only a handful of teachers in our region who really know what they are doing when it comes to thesis writing. It seems to me that the reason that students don't see the beauty of research is the plain fact that the teachers themselves don't give a hoot about the subject they are teaching. Half of what people know should come from personal research whether it is from reading books, surfing the net, or having worthwhile acquaintances with worthwhile people. What happens to this fifty percent if most of the teachers here in our region DON'T MIND WHETHER THE RESEARCHES ARE DONE BY THEIR STUDENTS AS LONG AS THEY CAN SUBMIT THESE REQUIREMENTS (or don't bother to ensure that these researches are actually done by the students), DON'T HAVE THE SAME PASSION FOR THE SUBJECT THE WAY REALLY RESEARCHERS DO, CHOKE ON WHAT THEIR BOOKS TELL THEM AND DON'T BOTHER TO CONSIDER PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS OF THEORIES IN THE BOOKS, AND MAKE FANTASTIC DEMANDS OUT OF THEIR STUDENTS THEREBY DESTROYING THE GOOD REPUTATION THAT RESEARCH SHOULD HAVE AMONG YOUNGER MINDS! Whew!
Anyway, the whole point here is that students should do their theses themselves and as far as I am concerned, the reason why students don't do what they are supposed to do is that their teachers either tolerate having these theses done by people other than their students or just plain scare away the students by creating the false illusion of research being all long-haired windedness and uninteresting stuff! The culprits are the teachers -- no other. Research is vital to this developing society and there is no other way to put it. I may lose clients on this but I would rather ensure the future of the world with brilliant graduates instead of earn ten thousand pesos that I can easily spend in one bout. Teachers, I challenge you -- make your students love research the way I do.
Be rational; be insane, every once in a while! TTFN!
Hello to my dearest readers, to Vanessa, to Lea, Jenny, Am-am, Dot, Verona, James, Sheen, Hellpen, Anne, Mary Dale, Chan,Michelle, Zarthus, Jonald, Mr. Bobot, Vic, Vincent, and Rex, Alex, Arvin, Corz, Jim, Kiara, Malikh, Audrae, Franz, Hendrick, Janice, Jay, Jim, Jonathan, Mark, Marz, Mel, Pres, Nhonoy, Niel, Piper, Rheavil, Joey, Alma, Rodolfo, Ecker, Ryan, Roni, Ian, Narle, Sunny and to Anuj of CMC, I love you all! Byers! Salamat gid sa mga walang-hintong text and reactions nyo! Catch Rational Insanity in TNT's online edition, check us out at www.thenewstoday.info, text me at (0920)9254269, or email me at prague@eudoramail.com. Byers! Mmmmmmmwah!