Gov't mulls assigning teachers to Internet commenters

Government announced yesterday it is considering assigning public school teachers to every Internet commenter in the Philippines.

It said it is alarmed by a trend where, apparently, Filipinos don't bother to read online articles before reacting.

As a result, they post misinformed statements, making them, in the words of one official, "look really stupid."

According to bogus official Darwin Dimagets, under the proposed scheme, one schoolteacher will be assigned to each online commenter to make sure that person completely reads and understands each article. The teacher will then check comments for mistakes in logic, grammar, consistency and spelling.

"We hope this will promote critical thinking, the development of inquiring minds and reasoned argument.

"And if commenters don't pass scrutiny, the teachers are authorized to hit them on the head with a wooden ruler. Each and every time they make a mistake."

In the case of commenters who react to satire by saying "it's not funny" or "I wrote better satire than that when I was in high school", school teachers will be authorized to additionally twist the person's ears.

"Pretty hard," Dimagets said.

He pointed out how "it seems to be the habit of many Filipinos to read only the headlines and first few words of an article and then react immediately.

"We believe this is the same attention span they display when voting candidates into public office."

He said "we've even heard that when people were told they hadn't read the story they just commented on, instead of going back and actually reading it, they posted even more comments, such as 'I have nothing to be ashamed for.'

"Then there are those people who say always say 'pls make a thorough research' as if they were MA holders when they clearly have the academic credentials of tofu."

The official surmised that "commenters act this way because they're rebelling against bad memories of being shouted at in school for saying things like 'you are bias' - it's BIASED you dimwits."

After calming down, Dimagets said the new regulation will probably be folded into the Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) of the Cybercrime Law.

"We might also assign joint responsibility to the Department of Education and Culture. It would be like their program 'K Plus 12'.
"Only we'll call it 'Idiot Plus Teacher.' "

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