Barely a week into the opening of classes, netizens blasted the Department of Education (DepEd) for airing an erroneous math equation on its distance learning channel. An official from the agency prompty apologized.
Episode 2 of Mathematics 9 showed the equation 2X equals zero and solved for X by dividing both sides by zero instead of two, which is correct. In math, dividing any number by zero would result to an undefined answer.
Education Undersecretary Alain Pascua acknowledged the mistake and admitted that it slipped past quality assurance ."Humihingi po kami ng paumanhin sa ating mga mag-aaral, sa mga magulang at teachers sa pagkakamaling ito," he wrote on Facebook
(We would like to apologize to our students, parents, and teachers for this error. We will be stricter with QA so that DepEd TV episodes will be perfect.)
The episode with the error will be fixed before it is uploaded to the DepEd Commons and DepEd YouTube channel, he said. If there was one good thing that came out of all this, Pascua said criticism underscored the importance of QA and constant reviewing of materials.
"Nalaman na rin ng buong bansa, bata o matanda, na hindi pwedeng maging divisor ang zero (The entire population, both children and adults, were reminded that zero cannot be a divisor)," he ended.
Back in August, DepEd TV also presented grammatically incorrect content for Grade 8 English during its dry run.
