EDITORIAL — What went wrong?

A study by the Second Congressional Commission on Education has found that as much as 87% of Filipino Grade 11 students cannot read on their own.

Department of Education Undersecretary for Learning Systems Carmela Oracion said the agency realizes how serious this problem is.

How did reading skills degrade over the years? Oracion said it wasn’t the direct result of adapting senior high but something that began in the early grades and worsened over time due to a combination of social and educational factors.

When one can barely read, one can barely comprehend. And this might impact what kind of skills one already has when he or she leaves school to enter society as a productive citizen.

While manual skills can be taught by direct or actual demonstration, other skills need to be studied, and that requires reading. It may not be entirely accurate to say that those who can read better will always do better than those who can’t, but those who have better reading comprehension have more opportunities to improve themselves and their lot.

This is also sad on a personal level. For those who belong to earlier generations that didn’t have problems with reading and comprehension, reading books is one of the more rewarding pastimes.

Of course, we understand how things have changed. Electronic gadgets have taken the place of books when it comes to information and entertainment. Reading has taken a backset to watching; why slog through words when you can just look at how something happened or how something is done after all?

But like we said earlier, those who can read can have more doors of opportunity open for them.

So what went wrong? Did reading stop being fun for kids and start being a chore? Did we run out of interesting reading materials for the students? Was reading sidelined for other skills? Did some teachers just decide teaching kids to read well was no longer a priority?

Aside from taking steps to improve our learners’ reading skills, addressing the problem also has to include finding out what went wrong, so that this will never happen again.