Thinking is a loop between reading and writing. With the Revised basic Education Curriculum, educational initiatives to promote student’s development has been a factor to a more literate society. The Public School should do the responsibility of bringing about world class levels of literacy in our country.
Educators observe that reading and writing abilities of students have largely declined and tremendous efforts have been exerted to reverse the situation yet the thinking reading writing skill of students fall about of what is needed in the avenue of academics, could this be due to the conditions existing in schools where thinking reading writing connections is not given emphasis?
According to analysts, reading has declined as a result of stiff competitions from other forms of media. The use of cellphone communication has destroyed correct language structures in English and Filipino. A text message has created a new reading measure; a combination of letters and numbers in a sentence. Examples to these are “Unforgetable dats wat u r.” or “ f I giv my heart 2 u” Findings reveal that Filipinos in general are the most literate among Asian Countries in reading newspapers. Other Asian countries whose medium is English have more circulation. In our country, the circulation of broadsheets do not come up to a million. The reason is Language.
Filipinos have broadsheets in English rather than Filipinos. This is one cause of decline in reading while most of us speak Filipino Language and can understand it, the educated class read and speak in English. That accounts for the phenomenon of Television programs, particularly news and talk shows converted exclusively into Filipino and newspapers or broadsheets using mainly English. Only the late TV News is in English and the prime time shows are in the Filipino Language and sometimes “Taglish”.
There have been attempts in the past to broadsheets in Filipino, but none of them succeeded, for more Filipino’s prefer to read news in English. The problem is not that most students do not read in Filipino, but that most students do not read “Serious Skill’ in Filipino. Often, the Filipino Language is associated with tabloids and entertainment. Serious stuff like Science, Mathematics and History are not interesting to majority of students.
Does it really take brains to learn how to read and understand to overcome illiteracy? Those in the rural areas have meager exposures to TV, computers or perhaps radio or no reading material at all. Can we say that excellent and average reading skills could be attributed to intellectual traits which others do not have inspite of instructional strategies?
What instructional strategies should be integrated to the Curricula to fight against the decline of thinking reading writing skills? The 1st President of the Commonwealth Government, Manuel L. Quezon’s Code of Ethics #1 says:
“Have faith in the Divine Providence that guides the destiny of men and nation.”
The values of faith in God, settles all forms of deterioration and that make instructional strategies holistic. From the cradle to the grave, values formation is a partnership between parents and teachers in the development of a child’s skills.
The challenge at hand is to implement initiated programs to enhance student’s creative skills in reading writing connections.
By: Julia R. Llenarez | Teacher III | Morong, National High School | Morong, Bataan
