In a secondary school in Lembang, Bandung, Indonesia where I was assigned once, a student was asked to place in what correct half of the century the Borobodur Ruins were created. The student snappily said: “During the 20th century!”
While as guest speaker in Baguio City in my own country, I asked a group of young college journalists to name one or two Filipino writers who excelled in Asia, they gave me names that cannot measure to the criteria of history books.
This is not exactly what can be expected on International Literacy Day which was commemorated on September 8.
More and younger Asians do not know things we assume they should know. From historical facts, relevant events, geographical standouts, earth-shaking social upheavals, they are on the way to fading out.What they know is ephemeral and narrowly confined to their own generation. Many young Asians lack the information that Asian books and newspapers have traditionally taken for granted.
According to a literacy study by the Manila based Ateneo de Manila University; two thirds of 18 year old students in college tested could not place the First World War in its proper decade. Also one half do not recognize the name U Thant, Tunku Abdul Rahman or Carlos P. Romulo.
We have long accepted literacy as a paramount aim of schooling. But only recently have some begun to realize that literacy is far more than skill, and that it requires large amounts of information.
Wanted: Cultural Literacy
Where communications fail, so do undertakings. That is the moral story of the Tower of Babel. To grasp the words on a page, we have to know a lot of information that is not on the page.
According to Dr. E.D. Hirsch Jr. of the University of Virginia, and member of the Foundations of Literacy Project, “world knowledge” is essential to the development of reading and writing skills. He calls this “Need for Cultural Literacy” and defines it as “the network of information that all competent readers possess.
It is background information that enables people to read a book or an article with an adequate level of comprehension, getting the point, grasping the implications, he elaborated.
Benjamin J. Stein writing for the publication “Public Opinion” blames the academe for this. He said schools have failed to fulfill their fundamental responsibility to provide students with this world knowledge.
“In view of the immense importance of cultural literacy for speaking, listening, reading and writing, why has the need for a definite, shared body of information been so rarely mentioned in discussions of education”, he asked.
Dr. Brigit Santiago, president of the Easter College in the Philippines thinks cultural literacy has been taken for granted.
“Only when we ran into cultural illiteracy are we shocked into recognizing the importance of the information that we had unconsciously assumed”, she said
Young People Can’t Make the Grade
Some educators blame television for the failure. Watching television reduces reading, and often encroaches on homework. Yet schools have our children for six to seven hours a day, five days a week or seven months a year for 13 to 15 years.
I once asked ten selected bright pupils of an elementary school in La Trinidad where I volunteer setting up elementary classrooms, how many continents are there in the world. They have no idea. I asked if they have read or heard about the Taj Mahal, the ancient Pyramids of Giza, the Angkor Wat, and what the world’s longest river is. I was met with blank stares.
I then asked them what Iran was called before as well as Iraq? Again I met blank stares.
Then I asked them who are their favorite stars, and then they proceeded to supply me with a litany of names.
In the Philippines, soap operas, singing and dancing dominates the time slots not to mention cartoons - some of which are gory and need adult companionship. Even Korean and Mexican soap operas get significant time. The cable is dominated by 21 Chinese language channels with only three or four Filipino channels. The Chinese channels portray rich historical, scientific and cultural information. So there!
However, Carmela Meris, a principal said the public school system has more to do with the problem. The cafeteria-style curriculum, combined with educators’ unwillingness to place demands on the students, has resulted in a steady diminishment of commonly shared information between generations, and young people themselves.
But undoing what already exists is difficult!
Dr. Remedios Taguba, former director of the Department of Education of the Philippines said many students who have graduated from high school in the recent past have been deprived of the cultural vocabulary that was commonly possessed by educated persons in past generations.
“They must be reintroduced to the cultural vocabulary that continues to be the foundation for literate national communication,” she added.
Are you culturally literate?Who were U Thant, Tunku Abdul Rahman, and Carlos P. Romulo?
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