Unreading, unthinking

LAST AND lowest is the Philippines of 79 countries covered in a study on reading comprehension of the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment.

PISA is reputed to be a worldwide study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development that examines students’ knowledge in reading, mathematics, and science. On the other two, the Philippines is at rock bottom too.

In the PISA report, reading was the main subject assessed among 15-year old students where the Philippines posted an average reading score of 340 – a whopping 215 below China’s top-ranking 555 – and more than 100 points less than the OECD average of 487.
“Reading proficiency is essential for a wide variety of human activities - from following instructions in a manual; to finding out the who, what, when, where, and why of an event; to communicating with others for a specific purpose or transaction.” So reads the summary of the PISA 2018 results.

So, we weep.

We have not become simply a nation of non-readers, as surely as we have become a nation of talk-and-texters. And, not necessarily consequential to it, intellectually-challenged.

As much to the convenience of the electronic pad do we damn this retardation, as to the incapacitation of our educational system, long-ago deconstructing the very foundation of literacy, aye, of intellectual capacitation – the three Rs of Reading, ‘Riting, and ‘Rithmetic.

The first two essentially peas in one pod. As LitWord founder Pam Allyn perfectly puts it: “Reading is like breathing in, and writing is like breathing out.”  

And, as naturally, after the words, the numbers.

Related to the issue at hand is this we dug up from our Zona archives:

FOR ONE inured in classical studies – thanks to my formative years in the seminary – it is not at all effete snobbery to feel some disdain, at the same time some remorse, over the opportunities – to learn, to know, to be enriched – lost to a mind deprived of reading.

Aye, to character formation itself, where reading is elemental. As Francis Bacon monumentalized in his Of Studies:  

"Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And, therefore, if a man writes little, he had needed have a great memory; if he confers little, he had need of a ready wit; and if he read little, he had need of much cunning to seem to know that he knoweth not"

For one in the writing profession, reading is a requirement: even a sine qua non, as a matter of course. Reading for a writer covers not only newspapers, magazines and periodicals, but moreso, books – of all kinds, in all subjects. If only to broaden his horizon, if only to expand his mind, if only to increase his vocabulary.

Again, Bacon: “Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”

Yes, light reading – novels, literary anthologies – for the senses; high-brow reading – philosophies, histories, sciences – for the intellect.

Aye, in this age of Kindle, Nook eReader, Cybook and Pepper Pad, I still go for the old hard- and soft-covers. There’s nothing more intellectually stimulating to me than the smell of pulp only a book has. It makes understanding of what I am reading deeper, retention in memory more permanent, the imagination more expansive.  

E-books or good old books-in-ink-and-paper though, reading is on sheer joy. There is life in books. There is life to books. Inhering in human life itself.  

Read John Milton in Areopagitica: “Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.

Unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye.

A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.”

Read. It is food for the intellect, nutrient for the soul. 

AYE, the ‘tards so predominant in this generation are an indubitable affirmation of the PISA Report, and undeniable manifestation of the malnutrition of the Filipino intellect, if not the undernourishment of his very soul.