Why Johnny’s not reading
November 5, 2001 | 12:00am
I had a long and very interesting lunch the other week with Lirio Sandoval, president of the Book Development Association of the Philippines and the co-publisher, some years ago, of the ten-volume Kasaysayan: The Story of the Filipino People (Manila: Asia Publishing, 1998), for which I served as the executive editor. We’d been running into each other at various book fairs and launchings since then, and finally found the time to sit down to a proper lunch.
Lirio does more than publish; he distributes and sells books and magazines, as boss man of A-Z Direct Marketing, which brings, among others, the Reader’s Digest to your doorstep. Lirio is also president of the Direct Marketing Association of the Philippines. This sounds like a brief for Lirio to run for Congress, but I have a point in citing Mr. Sandoval’s qualifications: better than most of us, he knows books and how to get them into the hands of the people who should be reading them.
That’s why I believe Lirio when he gives me his reasons who Johnny de la Cruz isn’t reading as much as he should: chiefly, because the National Book Development Board–the government agency whose job it is to promote books and reading–has been a colossal disappointment over its six years of existence.
The BDAP has about 80 members, representing various subsectors of the book industry, the academe, and book associations. The NBDB, its public counterpart, was created in 1995 to formulate a National Book Policy and a National Book Development Plan, to enable the production and dissemination of good-quality and affordable books throughout the country. The National Book Policy was finally adopted in 1999–after four years! The BDAP acknowledges that it’s "a fine document," but laments the fact that no action plan has yet been drawn up to implement the policy, and that the NBDB’s activities–awards, seminars, exhibits, and conventions–have been arbitrarily thought up and undertaken.
The tax-free importation of paper for locally published books–an incentive long sought by local publishers to allow them to compete more evenly with imported books–has been approved by the NBDB, but has attracted few applications, because it takes 18 signatures and several months to process the requested exemption.
Over the past six years, the NBDB has received a budget of some P150 million–of which, it’s been alleged, 80 percent has gone to administrative overhead; of its P25 million budget for 2001, only P4 million has been allotted for actual book development projects.
There’s a lot more that the NBDB needs to account for, and the BDAP, among other industry associations, plans to ask Malacañang to look into the situation before it gets any worse.
This isn’t the first time that the NBDB has found itself at the center of a storm. In 1998, citizens’ groups called for the resignation of top NBDB officials who also happened to be major private book publishers, citing conflict of interest. Two years later, NBDB employees urged President Estrada to sack four board members for alleged acts of corruption and mismanagement. The board and its own secretariat have been at each other’s throats, lodging cases against one another with the Ombudsman and in the regular courts.
Given this background–and we haven’t even gone into the infamous payola schemes at the DECS–is it any wonder that our schoolchildren, as usual, are left wanting and waiting for the good books they need to make a generational improvement over their predecessors?
I asked Lirio what the BDAP itself was doing to help the industry and the Filipino reader. They’re planning, he said, to set up a National Book Network that would put up bookstores in far-flung Philippine cities not currently served by a major bookseller such as National or Goodwill, such as Vigan and Tacloban. The network should eventually cover all the provinces; its stores will sell trade books (books meant for the general public) and maintain stocks of textbooks, with a preference for local materials.
Lirio assured me that such a system would not only be socially beneficial but also commercially viable; he had the feasibility study to prove it. If he says he can sell books, I believe him–after all, his private outfit still manages to sell 5,000 to 20,000 copies of fairly expensive Reader’s Digest books, even in these hard times, through direct marketing campaigns. (The Digest itself sells about 150,000 copies a month in the Philippines; for the curious, the top-selling specialty magazine in the country is FHM, at 75,000 copies, or so I’m told.)
Speaking of DECS (or "DepEd," as it now prefers to be known), that lunch with Lirio Sandoval brought me another surprise in the form of a full set of copies of Kaysaysayan–a truly unique set in that it was the very one evaluated and annotated by someone at the "DECS-IMCS Evaluation and Training Division," to which Lirio had submitted the 10 volumes for accreditation. (The idea, I suppose, was to have the set approved for purchase by schools and public libraries, given its intrinsic value but its relatively high cost, at P16,000 for the full set.) Since I personally reviewed and edited the nearly one million words in the series, I had more than a passing interest in finding out what the DECS had to say about our work.
The very first scribbled note should have given me an idea of what to expect. Commenting on the title itself, the evaluator said: "[‘Filipino’ should be] spelled with a P when referring to people and with an F when referring to the language. However, if there’s a new DECS order regarding the use of F & P, please disregard this." Pilipino people? I wasn’t even aware that there was a DECS order to this effect–and if there was, I’m glad I never heard of it! (And so, I presume, are the writers of Filipino Heritage and Reinventing the Filipino, among others.)
A short essay contributed by the late National Artist NVM Gonzalez on Philippine islands had this to say at one point: "Hence we might ask: which one of the over 7,000 islands that make up our archipelago can today still claim a virgin strip of beach?" The evaluator said "Omit ‘over’" and helpfully penned in "7,107" to remind NVM of the 107 islets he missed. But the DECS wasn’t done with Gonzalez just yet. NVM wrote: "We need to keep the illusion that islands and island living bespeak beauty, if nothing else. How measure civilization and progress otherwise?" The evaluator took polite exception to the latter sentence: "Please rephrase this sentence–has no meaning." No, I agree, it doesn’t–unless you take it in context, and remember how experienced writers can and do use elliptical constructions for occasional flourish and emphasis. ("What price freedom?" countless editorialists have asked. Don’t ask DECS–they can’t answer you!)
The evaluator was also unhappy with our paragraphing style, which employs (like this paper does) what’s called a "drop cap" or an enlarged letter at the start of new chapters and no indention at the beginning of new, major sections of the text. "Observe correct paragraphing!" came the ubiquitous comment–which forgets that we were producing a book, and not a freshman essay.
A picture of a Chinese broker, illustrating a chapter on the transformation of the Philippine economy in the 19th century, provoked this suggestion: "Please use photo of a Pilipino broker. If not available, please delete this one. The text can go a long way without this. However, if a Pilipino is replaced here as a broker [meaning, I suppose, if we used an Indio’s picture instead, which begs the question of what "Filipino" meant at that time–BD], every Pilipino reader can be proud of this book and their spirit/patriotism is boosted. T. Y." Indeed–notwithstanding the fact that the chapter has much to do precisely with the role of Chinese mestizos in Philippine trade and agriculture!
Our writer said: "It is difficult to divine why Quezon ‘zigzagged’ on the issue of independence…." Wrong, said the evaluator, who insisted that "divine" should have been "define." Ah, define madness!
A quotation from Renato Constantino brought this rejoinder: "Opinionated and degrades our heroes–please rephrase." The quotation? "Unfortunately for us, the success of education as a colonial weapon was complete and permanent. In exchange for a smattering of English, we yielded our souls. The stories of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln made us forget our own nationalism." Opinionated? Thankfully so. Rephrase? I think not.
I could go on and on–there’s ten of these volumes, folks–but you get the idea. To be fair to the evaluator (whose name I am not privy to, and who must take these comments as professionally as I take his or hers), he or she spotted some typos that I missed, even after at least five readings, and proposed some turns of phrase that actually improved the readability of certain passages.
But let me suggest, to make the best use of our time and talents, that the hawk-eyed drones at DECS (or DepEd, or whatever) train their attentions instead on the textbooks they’ve been foisting on our kids. And I’m not talking about just the atrocious grammar and the distorted "facts." I was leafing recently through one of these–a CHED-approved college literature textbook, mind you–and found myself stumped by one of the "guide" questions: "What does an Ivatan look like?" What, indeed?
Secretary Roco, are you there? Do you know the answers?
Send e-mail to Butch Dalisay at penmanila@yahoo.com.
Lirio does more than publish; he distributes and sells books and magazines, as boss man of A-Z Direct Marketing, which brings, among others, the Reader’s Digest to your doorstep. Lirio is also president of the Direct Marketing Association of the Philippines. This sounds like a brief for Lirio to run for Congress, but I have a point in citing Mr. Sandoval’s qualifications: better than most of us, he knows books and how to get them into the hands of the people who should be reading them.
That’s why I believe Lirio when he gives me his reasons who Johnny de la Cruz isn’t reading as much as he should: chiefly, because the National Book Development Board–the government agency whose job it is to promote books and reading–has been a colossal disappointment over its six years of existence.
The BDAP has about 80 members, representing various subsectors of the book industry, the academe, and book associations. The NBDB, its public counterpart, was created in 1995 to formulate a National Book Policy and a National Book Development Plan, to enable the production and dissemination of good-quality and affordable books throughout the country. The National Book Policy was finally adopted in 1999–after four years! The BDAP acknowledges that it’s "a fine document," but laments the fact that no action plan has yet been drawn up to implement the policy, and that the NBDB’s activities–awards, seminars, exhibits, and conventions–have been arbitrarily thought up and undertaken.
The tax-free importation of paper for locally published books–an incentive long sought by local publishers to allow them to compete more evenly with imported books–has been approved by the NBDB, but has attracted few applications, because it takes 18 signatures and several months to process the requested exemption.
Over the past six years, the NBDB has received a budget of some P150 million–of which, it’s been alleged, 80 percent has gone to administrative overhead; of its P25 million budget for 2001, only P4 million has been allotted for actual book development projects.
There’s a lot more that the NBDB needs to account for, and the BDAP, among other industry associations, plans to ask Malacañang to look into the situation before it gets any worse.
This isn’t the first time that the NBDB has found itself at the center of a storm. In 1998, citizens’ groups called for the resignation of top NBDB officials who also happened to be major private book publishers, citing conflict of interest. Two years later, NBDB employees urged President Estrada to sack four board members for alleged acts of corruption and mismanagement. The board and its own secretariat have been at each other’s throats, lodging cases against one another with the Ombudsman and in the regular courts.
Given this background–and we haven’t even gone into the infamous payola schemes at the DECS–is it any wonder that our schoolchildren, as usual, are left wanting and waiting for the good books they need to make a generational improvement over their predecessors?
I asked Lirio what the BDAP itself was doing to help the industry and the Filipino reader. They’re planning, he said, to set up a National Book Network that would put up bookstores in far-flung Philippine cities not currently served by a major bookseller such as National or Goodwill, such as Vigan and Tacloban. The network should eventually cover all the provinces; its stores will sell trade books (books meant for the general public) and maintain stocks of textbooks, with a preference for local materials.
Lirio assured me that such a system would not only be socially beneficial but also commercially viable; he had the feasibility study to prove it. If he says he can sell books, I believe him–after all, his private outfit still manages to sell 5,000 to 20,000 copies of fairly expensive Reader’s Digest books, even in these hard times, through direct marketing campaigns. (The Digest itself sells about 150,000 copies a month in the Philippines; for the curious, the top-selling specialty magazine in the country is FHM, at 75,000 copies, or so I’m told.)
The very first scribbled note should have given me an idea of what to expect. Commenting on the title itself, the evaluator said: "[‘Filipino’ should be] spelled with a P when referring to people and with an F when referring to the language. However, if there’s a new DECS order regarding the use of F & P, please disregard this." Pilipino people? I wasn’t even aware that there was a DECS order to this effect–and if there was, I’m glad I never heard of it! (And so, I presume, are the writers of Filipino Heritage and Reinventing the Filipino, among others.)
A short essay contributed by the late National Artist NVM Gonzalez on Philippine islands had this to say at one point: "Hence we might ask: which one of the over 7,000 islands that make up our archipelago can today still claim a virgin strip of beach?" The evaluator said "Omit ‘over’" and helpfully penned in "7,107" to remind NVM of the 107 islets he missed. But the DECS wasn’t done with Gonzalez just yet. NVM wrote: "We need to keep the illusion that islands and island living bespeak beauty, if nothing else. How measure civilization and progress otherwise?" The evaluator took polite exception to the latter sentence: "Please rephrase this sentence–has no meaning." No, I agree, it doesn’t–unless you take it in context, and remember how experienced writers can and do use elliptical constructions for occasional flourish and emphasis. ("What price freedom?" countless editorialists have asked. Don’t ask DECS–they can’t answer you!)
The evaluator was also unhappy with our paragraphing style, which employs (like this paper does) what’s called a "drop cap" or an enlarged letter at the start of new chapters and no indention at the beginning of new, major sections of the text. "Observe correct paragraphing!" came the ubiquitous comment–which forgets that we were producing a book, and not a freshman essay.
A picture of a Chinese broker, illustrating a chapter on the transformation of the Philippine economy in the 19th century, provoked this suggestion: "Please use photo of a Pilipino broker. If not available, please delete this one. The text can go a long way without this. However, if a Pilipino is replaced here as a broker [meaning, I suppose, if we used an Indio’s picture instead, which begs the question of what "Filipino" meant at that time–BD], every Pilipino reader can be proud of this book and their spirit/patriotism is boosted. T. Y." Indeed–notwithstanding the fact that the chapter has much to do precisely with the role of Chinese mestizos in Philippine trade and agriculture!
Our writer said: "It is difficult to divine why Quezon ‘zigzagged’ on the issue of independence…." Wrong, said the evaluator, who insisted that "divine" should have been "define." Ah, define madness!
A quotation from Renato Constantino brought this rejoinder: "Opinionated and degrades our heroes–please rephrase." The quotation? "Unfortunately for us, the success of education as a colonial weapon was complete and permanent. In exchange for a smattering of English, we yielded our souls. The stories of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln made us forget our own nationalism." Opinionated? Thankfully so. Rephrase? I think not.
I could go on and on–there’s ten of these volumes, folks–but you get the idea. To be fair to the evaluator (whose name I am not privy to, and who must take these comments as professionally as I take his or hers), he or she spotted some typos that I missed, even after at least five readings, and proposed some turns of phrase that actually improved the readability of certain passages.
But let me suggest, to make the best use of our time and talents, that the hawk-eyed drones at DECS (or DepEd, or whatever) train their attentions instead on the textbooks they’ve been foisting on our kids. And I’m not talking about just the atrocious grammar and the distorted "facts." I was leafing recently through one of these–a CHED-approved college literature textbook, mind you–and found myself stumped by one of the "guide" questions: "What does an Ivatan look like?" What, indeed?
Secretary Roco, are you there? Do you know the answers?
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