Disgrace and Disaster

Among all the sad news on media that day, one particularly distressed (and embarrassed) me deeply. The Philippines, one of the 76 countries surveyed in the 2018 Program for International Student Assessment  (PISA), had hit rock bottom in reading comprehension.

Digesting the news further, I found that Filipino children, in general, do not read.
 

As a children’s book author since the year 2000, I poured my pain on paper, but restrained myself from uploading it because it reeked of disgrace.

Today, while reading the column of Federico D. Pascual (Philippine Star) titled “Pitfalls of our being superficial readers” I found his pain similar to mine:

“Our lack of appetite for the written word and digesting its substance can help explain why few Filipino authors venture into writing books (e.g. novels, short stories, socio-political commentaries). Not enough Filipinos are expected to read them, so why bother?”

Decision point: Why do I bother?

He said further, “Our failure to develop the reading habit among our youth [just like their elders] is a national disgrace and disaster . . . We should be embarrassed enough to do something . . . For a people who boast of being the most literate in the region, the PISA report . . . should jolt everybody, including private and public educators.”

Analysts point to poverty as the root cause of non-reading among children. Instead of spending P100 on books, for instance, their parents could buy their family’s semblance of a meal for the day.

I weep some more. Is this news about children not reading any worse than poor families not eating? This question is both a disgrace and a disaster to us as a people.   

I turn to what Scripture says about poverty in James 2:5 (NIV), “. . . Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?” 

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