As DepEd official concedes the problem
TABUK CITY, Kalinga – Burdened by the growing incidence of non-readers and frustration level readers in the public schools, some residents here are gathering signatures on a letter pleading with Senator Sherwin Gatchalian for the Senate Basic Education Committee which he chairs to confront the problem.
They mentioned to Gatchalian that in a letter to them, Undersecretary for Curriculum and Instruction Diosdado San Antonio had acknowledged that the Department of Education (DepEd) is aware of the presence of non-readers in high school. (Please see the column of this writer in this issue.)
The group said that the foremost reason the problem should be dealt with immediately is that the presence of non-readers and frustration level readers in high school means that DepEd programs for reading and the K-12 Curriculumn itself are failing.
They said that if the Every Child a Reader Program (ECARP) and the Philippine Informal Reading Inventory (Phil-IRI) are properly implemented, there would be no non-reader beyond Grade 3.
They explained that the intent of the ECARP is to make every child an independent reader by Grade 3 and the Phil-IRI, a nationally validated reading proficiency assessment tool, is intended to strengthen the implementation of the ECARP.
“Under DepEd Order No. 021, series of 2019, setting forth the policy guidelines for the K-12, reading in English is included among the competencies to be attained in Grade 2,”the letter said.
Taking note that most school children could read in Grade 3, the group asked why the DepEd cannot successfully teach “all mentally normal children how to read at the grade prescribed by the curriculum when it was able to make them all read in Grade 1 in the past?”
“As a group, we believe the breakdown in the effectiveness of the DepEd to teach children to read started with the decision to scrap the ‘No Read, No Move’ policy for Grade 1 back in 2001,” they told Gatchalian.
“Sir, our generation learned to read in Grade 1 and there is no justification whatsoever for young Filipinos to learn the skill at a much later stage in their educational journey specially so that under the current curriculum, they are supposed be able to read in Grade 2,” they added.
Retired Provincial Cooperative Officer Robert Salabao, Sr., who was a classroom teacher in late 70s to the early 80s, said that there are non-readers among the first and second year students in the high school in the locality.
He suspects that because one of the bases for performance rating of teachers is the failure rate, the teachers pass even the undeserving because nobody is to be retained.
Salabao suggested as one solution the utilization of the period intended for the Mother Tongue subject for practical reading for the reading laggards commenting that anyway the Mother Tongue is not really essential as part of the curriculum.
He could not understand why children still have to be taught the Mother Tongue in school when it’s the language at home adding that priority language is actually English and which therefore should be learned in the grades.
Lutheran minister Luis Aoas who also signed the letter blamed the DepEd for the overall erosion of the quality of education which he attributed to the frequent changes in the curriculum and the system which he said befuddles people.
He recalled that during the time when the curriculum only revolved around reading, writing and arithmetic or 3Rs, children were proficient.
“We need change but when you keep on changing, the system is weakened as people no longer know which is which and things begin to look like experiments. We change for the better but frequent change could be disastrous,”Aoas said in Ilocano.
Luis’ wife, Victoria, who used to work for the DepEd, observed that each time there is a new Education Secretary, there are changes in the curriculum.**Estanislao Albano, Jr.
