DAVAO CITY – Thanks to the efforts of the Department of Education (DepEd) and Philippine Postal Corporation (Philpost), high school students put away their mobile phones and gadgets for awhile and enjoy the feeling of writing letters to their loved ones.
More than 300 high school students from both public and private secondary schools spend the morning on Thursday writing down and mailing the letters to their loved ones.
The activity is the central focus of the the Second National Letter Writing Day initiated by the Philpost, DepEd and Komisyon ng Wikang Filipino held at the SM Ecoland.
“The objective of this activity is to prepare our students, their generation to know how to write letters, how to spell correctly, and to learn grammar which they can use even after graduating from college,” said Bernardito Gonzales, area director of Philpost.
Compared with using social media to communicate or make their feelings known, Gonzales insists that hand-written letters can be preserved and treasured.
“You can treasure it, you may put it in an album. And when you get old, you can read it again and look back to your happy moments before,” he said.
DepEd Region 11 spokesperson Jenielito Atillo, said the new social media technology is “actually killing the letter-writing skills of students.”
Marathon Gonzales, a fourth year student from Sta.Ana National High School, said writing messages using the new technology tends to hide one’s emotions since you can send it with just one click.
“Sa technology dili kaayo sincere, ang uban pwede ra gyud maatik. Sa writing makita gyud ang emotion sa pagsulat (One can’t be sincere enough in the social media, others can be easily tricked. In paper writing, one can see the emotion while writing),” he said.
Kent Lloyd Linugao, Grade 8 student of Sta. Ana, believed that writing letters should continue “because it was a practice used by our ancestors, even our national heroes.” “I think if letter-writing did not exist, we wouldn’t be where we are right now,” he added.
While 13 year-old Arvin Darryl Macasa, a Grade 7 student from Rizal Memorial College, said “writing letter is more eco- friendly because it does not require energy unlike using the Internet.”
After writing down their letters, the students were given free stamps to enable them to drop their mails at the designated mailboxes.
When asked by news reporters if there were still those who send letters through Philpost, Gonzales said agency was affected by technology.
“It was really affected by technology. But we diverted our logistics. Our clients are now sending cargoes. We transport computers, printers anything within the region. We reach as far as Cotabato, Surigao and General Santos City,” he said.
“The Philippine Postal Corporation will remain because we were able to pass the value of writing and receiving letters to each generation,” Gonzales said.
Philpost said the number of students who came in to the activity increased from 100 last year to 300 on Thursday. (davaotoday.com)
