K+12 helped prepare the minds of students.

Juan Apolinario C. Reyes

I wish to share with you my experience with one of my students and I hope to present this is as counterargument to people who bashes K+12 on account that it is not an addition of years which students need; it is quality. My point is students need quantity (length of time) just as just as they need quality. We do not teach calculus to 5-year-olds.

Diego sat in my class in Algebra. From his looks, I can see right away that he was not among the normal students I meet in the campus. He's burly. Big, wide, muscled. He was big for a freshman. His demeanor was also not normal. He comported himself like a gentleman when his classmates all going from 16–17-year-old still tease each other like a bunch of bosom buddies in high school.

As weeks and months passed by, I became more impressed with the results of his quizzes and exams. One day, I was so perplexed, I approached and said to him straight on "You are different, you are not like the rest". Then he told me his story.

He stopped schooling after graduating 4th year high school. He was second among 8 siblings. He helped his father in the farm for two years. I knew he was not lying because the size of his hands and arms told me he wrestles with cows and carabaos. His fingers are so huge they do not fit the numbers in the calculator.

I said to him, it is a pleasure to have him as student because everything I talked about math in the class went straight to his mind. But it is a different case with his classmates. To teach them math is like pounding a nail through a granite. It won't get through.

How old are you now? He said he is now 18 years old.

As years passed by, I continued to meet students like him. One or two would sit in my classmates who are two or three years older than their classmates. It was always a pleasure to have them.

I grappled with the issues of the MIND for decades. I was always so introspective; I became curious about the instrument that allowed me to be introspective. The MIND. I talked to my mind, I watched it, observed its many strange operations.

And this is what I have to say, "The mind needs time just as it needs content".

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