Literacy is the modern man's fire: it enlightens, and it burns. A majority of the country’s adult population stands within enlightenment of literacy, while the succeeding generations are yet to recover from a 90.9% learning poverty rate wherein children ages 10 and below struggle to understand simple age-appropriate texts; alongside serving as a key towards a so-called better future, literacy doubles as a wall of fire for the disadvantaged and underprivileged. Addressing the latter via active pursuance of confidential funding backed with meager justification screams an unwritten rule to read between the lines: to not delve too much into the gaping, screaming blank space where a well-deserved justification fits right in.
International Literacy Day, celebrated every September 8 as declared by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), reminds every one of the importance of literacy both as a matter of dignity and human rights.
Latest relevant data on literacy within the Philippines reveal the following: according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) in a 2020 report, the literacy rate within the country rose to 97 percent, with the highest region being the National Capital Region (NCR). Looming over the horizon, however, are the storm clouds of a disaster already devastating those it leaves in its wake: according to 2021 World Bank data, nine of 10 children aged 10 years old and below are unable to understand simple age-appropriate texts warrants reasonable belief that the forecast of the country's future bodes bleak.
Moreover, imminent counteraction to be supposedly initiated by Vice President and Department of Education (DepEd) Sara Duterte calls for confidential funds amounting to a whopping P 150 million and P 500 million for DepEd and the Office of the Vice President (OVP) respectively, solely justified by how basic education is intertwined with national security.
If great power comes with great responsibility, then it is with great funding that comes great expectations for better performance and efforts in the pursuit of raising the quality of education within the country- not. Pouring more water into a leaking jar only wastes water, just as allocating more funding but concentrating it into the seeping cracks of confidential funds is a counterintuitive way of making sure that all available resources are being properly distributed for maximum results. Funding for the educational sector during the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic has proven itself to be in vain: a P 500-billion budget in support of the basic education-learning continuity plan (BE-LECP) was not enough to circumvent a downward trend in the country's number of enrollees and overall experience of learning losses. If funding doesn't solve the problem, then neither could a further increase in funding with undisclosed usage details make a dent on the predicament at hand. In commemoration of the International Literacy day, scrutinizing the silent yet persistent festering flaws of the country's worsening education sector has almost become a tradition. Calls for action and accountability shall remain fruitless so long as all that they shall fall onto are deafened ears: what the people of this country get in return from their tax pesos are programs jacked in funding but lacking in concrete results that raises the country’s performance in key educational assessments such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which placed the Philippines dead last out of 79 other countries in its first participation in 2018 in terms of reading, and second to the last in science and mathematics. Even worse, the World Literacy Foundation recently reported that illiteracy costs an estimated global economic loss of $ 4.72 billion annually; regardless of their nation being developed or underdeveloped, illiterate individuals earn 30 to 42 percent less than that of their literate peers due to their lack of basic literacy skills essential for vocational training or education. Not only is illiteracy the very foundation on which the rest of a country depends on for development, learning is directly tied with learners’ comprehension and further intake of knowledge. On the other hand, latest evaluations such as London-based nonprofit Knowledge 4 All Foundation’s (K4A) 2022 Global Knowledge Index placed Philippines as 77th of 132 countries in areas of education, innovation, knowledge, economy, technology, and research development. What would be an otherwise mildly-positive outcome is actually a downgrade: the latter ranking is a result of the country’s drop from its 2021 ranking of 56th of 123 countries; for this year, the Philippines scored 44.1 out of 100 in K4A’s ranking, way below the world average of 46.47. Furthermore, one of the few saving graces of the Philippine’s ranking includes government expenditure on education from the past three years: a case of high input of resources met with resulting dismally low output as evidenced by learners’ performance. As for the mending of the gap, the key factor and turning point lies dormant and largely uncompensated for their past rigorous efforts of serving as a lifeline for the past few years of serious threat to the country’s education: the primary educators. Despite the increase of funding for the educational sector for the fiscal year 2023 and even its proposal for a heftier funding for the year 2024, only one share is inflated while attention for the rest grows stagnant. Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), in a statement at the beginning of the year, named the Salary Standardization Law a failure after stating that 92 percent of public school teachers remain receiving unlivable salaries lying below the current daily level of living wage that is P1,146 or P 34,380 per month. Underprivilege and deprivation of basic living necessities impacts educators and learners alike, leading to a double-jeopardy that rusts the gears essential to turning for the better. How can a country prioritized in educational funding yet somehow measly in distribution of the said funding hope to raise its learners to the global standard?
International Literacy Day is a celebration for literacy that has been achieved thus far, while also serving as an alarming reminder that the Philippines, yet again, is being left behind in the race towards overall improvement of its internal status quo. To let a low state of literacy for the upcoming generations persist is akin to letting a bridge burn before crossing it.
See no evil, speak no evil; for the Filipino people, literacy, reading and learning with utter clarity is the ideal, but the unwritten rule is to read between the lines delivered by those at the helm of the country’s sinking ship, where education is tied with national security, ‘no questions asked’. Literacy, a 21st-century basic necessity and the modern man’s fire: enlightening for those that possess it, searing the deprived and underprivileged with pain; its growth and progress, burnt to the ground and reduced to ashes by letting the dying torch fall into the wrong hands.
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