Factors
Lumines blames the lack of time budget for writing in the new curriculum clarifying that writing activities nowadays is writing about lessons and not for purposes of mastering to write letters and words through repetitive training.
“We can’t decipher anymore what most students write because of their poor penmanship. That is a need not given attention because the focus objective in learning to write every letter in the standard form is not in the curriculum guide but is only integrated in other activities,” she said
She, however, said that teachers can make the teaching of writing a separate lesson on their own because, according to her, teachers are considered as curricularists but normally, they all hesitate to deviate from the curriculum guide.
“It is in Curriculum Development books that a teacher may add what he believes the children need. If her pupils need to learn to write letters the standard way, then he must teach it separately. Teaching what the learners need is an education principle,” Lumines said.
On the other hand, Javillonar attributes the weakness in writing for Grades 1 to 3 to the K-12 curriculum saying the program does not stress writing as it prioritizes listening and oral language instead “so the children could express themselves verbally.”
She alleged that there is no writing competency in Grade 1 which she finds ironic since it is the grade where the foundation should be laid thus the deficiency is carried on to the higher grades.
“The curriculum does not specify pupils should really write in Grade 1. It’s only incidental. Writing is not emphasized in Grade 1. It’s just the initiative of the teacher since it is not in the list of competencies prescribed,” she said.
She recalled that while she was teaching from 1993 to 2006, there used to be mastery of competency in writing in Grade 1 starting with straight lines “to practice psychomotor of the movement of the hand.”
She said that the writing training continued in Grade 2 where the learners were taught cursive writing.
She said that what compounds the lack of emphasis on writing in the Grades 1 and 2 curricula is the absence of writing in the learning competencies for higher grades and lack of opportunity for teachers in the higher grades to address the weakness due to their countless other activities /programs demanded of them by the DepEd.
Javillonar said that it’s not just the teachers who are overloaded but the pupils themselves explaining that while before, Grade 1 pupils only had four subjects, under the K-12, there are seven subjects.
Not a problem in private schools
Just like the reading crisis now gripping public schools, the writing and spelling decline does not affect private elementary schools.
An official of a private school in Tabuk City said that just like other private schools, they ensure that their pupils learn to write properly and read in Grade 1 explaining that the learning of these skills are simultaneous and in concert.
“As you teach the right way of writing each letter, you also teach the correct letter combinations until they could read the entire word. If you are a non-reader, you could hardly spell the word, so it follows you could not write properly the letters. That’s the reason we have to impose the learning of the proper writing of the letters because it follows that if they could write properly, they understand the correct way of writing, the correct pronouncement of the letters and then they could spell which is an indication they know the sound of each letter and they could read eventually,” the school official said.
She said that before a child could write the letters properly he should be able to recognize the letters and know the sound of each because it would be hard for him to write the letters if he does not know the symbols.
The deterioration in the writing and spelling skills of public school children is just part of the alarming slide in the quality of local basic education which critics say took a turn for the worse with the introduction of the K-12 program and its Mother Tongue feature in 2012.
This correspondent solicited the comments DepEd-Cordillera on the issue of deteriorating handwriting and spelling skills of school children through an email on June 13 but has not received any reply as of this writing despite follow up. **Estanislao Albano, Jr.
