Dying things
Dying things
Posted 11:22pm (Mla time) Mar 20, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the March 21, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
IT'S reason to be deeply bothered, if not openly alarmed-elementary and high school graduating students are faring badly in English and Science and Math. In the last National Achievement Test and High School Readiness Test, examinees scored only 32 percent and 38 percent for English and Science and Math. The passing mark was 60 percent.
"It's all a function of reading," says Juan Miguel Luz, an undersecretary of the Department of Education. "The kids are not reading, or are not reading with comprehension."
He is probably completely right. But that explanation itself requires an explanation. Why are the kids not reading or not reading with comprehension?
I can imagine several reasons for it, but I don't know that most of them are solved easily.
The first is right there in the very subject that encapsulates reading: English. The reading-and writing-is done in English. As local teachers of Science and Math have pointed out long ago, their students double the work of their counterparts in the English-speaking world. They have to learn the language first, and then express scientific and mathematical concepts in it. Their counterparts merely have to deal with the second.
Language is the one formidable barrier to literacy in this country. Nothing shows it more than the circulation of newspapers, a mind-boggling fact that hit me like a thunderbolt in the course of attending media conferences in various parts of Asia. We are the odd-man-out in the region in many respects, chief of them being that our mass-circulation papers are in English. Elsewhere, the mass-circulation papers are in the local languages, with only the publications for expatriate audiences using English.
Now here's the kicker. The mass circulation broadsheets in this country come up to a total of only a million, probably less. The mass circulation newspapers in Bangkok, Malaysia, Japan, India and elsewhere in Asia run into millions individually. Those newspapers are read by mass and elite alike, by young and old alike. There and then you see the monumental obstacle to literacy that language poses in this country. We do not have a mass base of people reading newspapers.
But there's the rub, I don't know what the solution is. Because we also have a unique problem: while most of us can understand Filipino-or Tagalog-most of us read in English. While all of the talk shows on TV have converted to Tagalog because that is the language best understood in the country, newspapers cannot convert as well to it because that is not the language best read in the country. That is a huge divide, our spoken and written language, our oral and visual language, and I myself welcome suggestions on how to bridge it.
The second reason for the plunge in the reading skills of students is more patent. It is the same reason reading has declined in other parts of the world. That is the overrunning of TV and digital technology of the world. At least, digital technology, which is interactive, still offers reading by way of the Internet and the e-mail, though their horrendous impact on literate-ness, if not literacy, has been noted by no small number of teachers, particularly of grammar. TV, in particular, has wreaked havoc on a population that to begin with has never been universally or widely literate.
The decline in reading from the 1960s to the present is real, but also a little exaggerated. Even then, literacy was rife only among the upper and middle classes, never among the lower ones. But the fact that there was a strong middle class then made the gains in reading palpable. Bookstores did make money on books and not just on school supplies. There were several of them, competing ferociously in Avenida Rizal and elsewhere. Few people owned TV sets, and TV largely featured only canned serials. Journalism was print, and writers and editors carried a lot of clout with the public. They were the ones Marcos put in jail when he declared martial law in 1972.
Today, the quip, "I'll just wait for the movie" (rather than read the book), is not a quip at all. Reading, particularly of books, has fallen to an all-time low, no small thanks to the advent of Cable TV and the plenitude of (pirated) video.
Now here I can only hope that the downward trend can be slowed down, or curbed. It can't be stopped altogether. Indeed, I have friends who once read voraciously, who now tell me it's all they can do to read a few books a year, they'd rather watch DVDs. Alternatively, we can always explore the advantages digital technology offers. The e-mail was one of the biggest contributors to Edsa II: It allowed expatriate Filipinos to participate in their country's affairs in real time. The youth, in particular, grasping their world in more iconic ways; maybe we can improve their visual aesthetics while trying to impress upon them the need to supplement it with reading. I do know the problem of reading is more than one that can be solved in, or by, the classroom.
One last important reason is that the DepEd now exists as an adjunct of the Department of Foreign Affairs. Education is there to prepare students to become OFWs, a development particularly demonstrated by the mushrooming of nursing courses or departments. That is, also quite incidentally how-and why-English is taught, which is not to open vistas to the world but to open up contractual visitations on the world. Then people read for the pure pleasure of reading, now people read for the sheer drudgery of communicating with employers. Then people read books, now people read immigration forms.
But this at least can be helped. That is by making education do what it is supposed to do. That is to educate.
Posted 11:22pm (Mla time) Mar 20, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the March 21, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
IT'S reason to be deeply bothered, if not openly alarmed-elementary and high school graduating students are faring badly in English and Science and Math. In the last National Achievement Test and High School Readiness Test, examinees scored only 32 percent and 38 percent for English and Science and Math. The passing mark was 60 percent.
"It's all a function of reading," says Juan Miguel Luz, an undersecretary of the Department of Education. "The kids are not reading, or are not reading with comprehension."
He is probably completely right. But that explanation itself requires an explanation. Why are the kids not reading or not reading with comprehension?
I can imagine several reasons for it, but I don't know that most of them are solved easily.
The first is right there in the very subject that encapsulates reading: English. The reading-and writing-is done in English. As local teachers of Science and Math have pointed out long ago, their students double the work of their counterparts in the English-speaking world. They have to learn the language first, and then express scientific and mathematical concepts in it. Their counterparts merely have to deal with the second.
Language is the one formidable barrier to literacy in this country. Nothing shows it more than the circulation of newspapers, a mind-boggling fact that hit me like a thunderbolt in the course of attending media conferences in various parts of Asia. We are the odd-man-out in the region in many respects, chief of them being that our mass-circulation papers are in English. Elsewhere, the mass-circulation papers are in the local languages, with only the publications for expatriate audiences using English.
Now here's the kicker. The mass circulation broadsheets in this country come up to a total of only a million, probably less. The mass circulation newspapers in Bangkok, Malaysia, Japan, India and elsewhere in Asia run into millions individually. Those newspapers are read by mass and elite alike, by young and old alike. There and then you see the monumental obstacle to literacy that language poses in this country. We do not have a mass base of people reading newspapers.
But there's the rub, I don't know what the solution is. Because we also have a unique problem: while most of us can understand Filipino-or Tagalog-most of us read in English. While all of the talk shows on TV have converted to Tagalog because that is the language best understood in the country, newspapers cannot convert as well to it because that is not the language best read in the country. That is a huge divide, our spoken and written language, our oral and visual language, and I myself welcome suggestions on how to bridge it.
The second reason for the plunge in the reading skills of students is more patent. It is the same reason reading has declined in other parts of the world. That is the overrunning of TV and digital technology of the world. At least, digital technology, which is interactive, still offers reading by way of the Internet and the e-mail, though their horrendous impact on literate-ness, if not literacy, has been noted by no small number of teachers, particularly of grammar. TV, in particular, has wreaked havoc on a population that to begin with has never been universally or widely literate.
The decline in reading from the 1960s to the present is real, but also a little exaggerated. Even then, literacy was rife only among the upper and middle classes, never among the lower ones. But the fact that there was a strong middle class then made the gains in reading palpable. Bookstores did make money on books and not just on school supplies. There were several of them, competing ferociously in Avenida Rizal and elsewhere. Few people owned TV sets, and TV largely featured only canned serials. Journalism was print, and writers and editors carried a lot of clout with the public. They were the ones Marcos put in jail when he declared martial law in 1972.
Today, the quip, "I'll just wait for the movie" (rather than read the book), is not a quip at all. Reading, particularly of books, has fallen to an all-time low, no small thanks to the advent of Cable TV and the plenitude of (pirated) video.
Now here I can only hope that the downward trend can be slowed down, or curbed. It can't be stopped altogether. Indeed, I have friends who once read voraciously, who now tell me it's all they can do to read a few books a year, they'd rather watch DVDs. Alternatively, we can always explore the advantages digital technology offers. The e-mail was one of the biggest contributors to Edsa II: It allowed expatriate Filipinos to participate in their country's affairs in real time. The youth, in particular, grasping their world in more iconic ways; maybe we can improve their visual aesthetics while trying to impress upon them the need to supplement it with reading. I do know the problem of reading is more than one that can be solved in, or by, the classroom.
One last important reason is that the DepEd now exists as an adjunct of the Department of Foreign Affairs. Education is there to prepare students to become OFWs, a development particularly demonstrated by the mushrooming of nursing courses or departments. That is, also quite incidentally how-and why-English is taught, which is not to open vistas to the world but to open up contractual visitations on the world. Then people read for the pure pleasure of reading, now people read for the sheer drudgery of communicating with employers. Then people read books, now people read immigration forms.
But this at least can be helped. That is by making education do what it is supposed to do. That is to educate.
posted by Dante at 12:00 AM
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