Juan and Johnny cannot read

We like to bash ourselves by saying that our educational system is terrible. Of course, it is terrible, but we are not alone in having such a terrible system.

Here is how Gerald Graff, president of the Modern Languages Association (MLA), summarized last year the way Americans viewed the American system of education:

“There is no sign of a letup in books and articles deploring the declining literacy of Americans, particularly of American youth. The latest just this year [2008] is The Dumbest Generation, by Emory University English professor Mark Bauerlein, whose subtitle asserts that ‘the digital age stupefies young Americans and jeopardizes our future” and warns, ‘Don’t trust anyone under thirty.’ A Chicago Tribune article, inspired by Bauerlein’s book, reports that 63% of Americans between 18 and 24 can’t find Iraq on a map. And last year [2007], in a National Endowment for the Arts report entitled To Read or Not to Read, NEA Director Dana Gioia found a steep falling off in reading by schoolchildren.”

Graff did not deny that today is bad, but he pointed out that we were not any better before. “I’ve always been sceptical of this decline scenario,” he wrote, “It’s not that I fail to see a problem (I did title a book ‘Clueless in Academe’), but in comparing our time unfavorably with a better past we ignore the fact that many of the same complaints were made in that supposedly better past.

“Here is the MLA president Charles Hall Grandgent decrying rampant student ignorance in his convention address of 1912: ‘You are all aware of how dangerous it is to assume, on the part of our college classes, any definite knowledge of any subject. Last year [1911] I had occasion to question a good many students about Charlemagne; and one after another unblushingly assigned him to the 18th century. A colleague in a freshwater college could find no one in his class who knew what event is celebrated on the fourth of July.’”

Don’t laugh at the Americans of 1911 or 2008. We Filipinos are not exactly the most educated people on earth. After all, we have the shortest educational cycle in the world. We spend only 10 years in basic education (everybody else spends 11 or 12 or even longer). We spend, in effect, only two years in college, since general education takes up two years of a typical four-year course (everybody else spends at least three years doing major subjects). Even our so-called five-year courses are really only five years in name, because we spend most of the first two years repeating high school subjects.

In fairness (as we say in our peculiar kind of English), however, even with our few years of basic and university education, we would not make the mistake of thinking that the emperor named Charlemagne lived in the 18th century! (Or did I speak too soon?) And before our own Empress changed our Independence Day so we could have a long weekend, all Filipinos knew what happened on June 12. (This time, I really spoke too soon, because the Empress herself does not know how important it is to celebrate independence on the day it was proclaimed!)

Because I am a digital immigrant pretending to be a digital native, however, I have to disagree with my president (Graff, since I am a member of the MLA) that it is the digital age that has made idiots of us all, or at least of everybody below thirty. There is no reason anyway to remember that Charlemagne lived in the 8th and 9th centuries, because I can always Google him. There is no reason for us to know that July 4 used to mean independence (but now only a great day for shopping) to Americans. I lament the sad reality, nevertheless, that most Filipinos under 30 have forgotten that July 4 used to be our own Independence Day until then Education Secretary Alejandro Roces moved it to the correct date.

Oh, if you still can’t tell the difference between a digital immigrant and a digital native, we are in deep caca!

“WORDS OF THE DAY” (English/Filipino) for next week’s elementary school classes: Sept. 21 Monday: 1. food/langaw, 2. ring/langoy, 3. straight/laon (old), 4. about/lapad, 5. muscle/lagda, 6. conscious/laplap; Sept. 22 Tuesday: 1. hear/mani, 2. roll/matsing, 3. strange/masdan, 4. money/manunggal, 5. present/mangkok, 6. canvas/mangmang; Sept. 23 Wednesday: 1. help/manok, 2. roof/mura (unripe), 3. street/munggo, 4. little/manibalang, 5. needle/mutya (pearl), 6. poison/moras; Sept. 24 Thursday: 1. hard/mangga, 2. room/mura (cheap), 3. stretch/mumog, 4. transport/mana, 5. order/manatili, 6. driving/musang; Sept. 25 Friday: 1. high/mata, 2. root/mual, 3. strong/malat, 4. trouble/mistula, 5. owner/maong, 6. yesterday/mamalis. The numbers after the dates indicate grade level. The dates refer to the official calendar for public elementary schools. For definitions of the words in Filipino, consult UP Diksiyonaryong Filipino.