Functional Illiteracy: What It Means And What We Can Do About It

When Filipinos are called “functionally illiterate,” this is what it means

Although Filipinos have risen to the global stage, many still fall short in global academic standards. In a recent report by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), over 18 million Filipinos suffer from functional illiteracy. But what does that even mean? How can that be when Philippine society hasn’t fallen apart yet? What can we even do about it? Do we go back to school?

Before we can answer any of these questions, we’d have to look back at how our education in the Philippines has developed.

What Does It Mean To Be Functionally Illiterate?

Functional illiteracy recognizes two kinds of intelligence: executive and comprehensive.

Executive intelligence is based on the stuff we can do. Reading, writing, adding, subtracting, and other competencies when given a question.

Comprehensive intelligence is when we’re capable of applying those simple concepts to something more complex, like a chain of topics. It’s why a lot of kids struggle with math problems—it’s interdisciplinary with English and Math. Basic technical literacy—that’s logic, reading comprehension, and the patience to read.

That being said, it’s why the Philippines can survive. We can do things; we just don’t understand why or how we did it.

How Did The Philippines End Up Functionally Illiterate?

Let’s be honest: with the way kids are learning today, education has no choice but to adapt with them. We don’t mean just in the media they use to teach. Topics and competencies (or skills) also have to change. The only issue now is time management: how does anyone squeeze everything into ten months?

Start at the K-12 System

Much of this started when we adopted the K-12 education system. Adopted during the term of the late President Noynoy Aquino, the Philippines transitioned to K-12 because the 10-year education seemed too short. Reports of Filipinos losing out in Math and English became so rampant that something had to be done. The K-12 was supposed to give kids ample time to learn the basics before heading off to college.

What made it complicated, however, was the number of “competencies” or “skills” kids needed to master within 12 years. With over 14,171 things to learn, teachers who were also trained in the traditional ways were overwhelmed. Tutorial houses also had to adjust. Alongside the change in system, new approaches were introduced, like Singapore Math.

No surprise since Singapore had been declared the top-performing country in Math way back when.

Moving to the MATATAG Curriculum

Because of the overwhelming amount of competencies, the DepEd tried to cut them down. Thus, the MATATAG Curriculum was born. From over 11,000, it was dropped to approximately 3,600. The remaining would be core concepts, which would serve as foundations to more complex topics. For example, so long as kids mastered addition, subtraction, multiplication, and the like, the more complex math subjects would be simpler. Or, so it should have been.

With another change, teachers had to be retrained. Schools would have to adjust. All of this was happening while the world was evolving. While schools abroad had been making changes every year, the Philippines incurred what we’d like to call a developmental debt—one wherein the system had been left so outdated that the number of changes needed was almost too staggering to execute.

COVID-19: When Philippine Tech Was Put To The Test

We may be tired of hearing about the pandemic, but let’s be honest: its effects linger. Schools had to close down. Teachers were let go. Worse, not all of the Philippines had consistent connections. Families in the far-flung, underdeveloped provinces found themselves cut off from their education.

It didn’t help that Filipinos didn’t have many teachers who were tech-literate enough to handle the sudden change. Older and more experienced teachers struggled, frustrated with trying to figure out the new technology. Younger ones thrived. While it paved the way for freelance tutoring, standards became a problem. Anyone could be an online teacher—the criteria for checking were often based on either their course or what school they came from.

While some claim that many of the better teachers are those who don’t have a professional license to teach, a license does ensure that parents get what they’re asking for: an educated professional to teach their children. Unfortunately, this didn’t protect families from another online enemy: scammers.

In the end, it may have been all the changes plus existing problems such as poverty and the like, that left most Filipino families functionally illiterate.

Is There Any Way We Can Become Functionally Literate?

There is one way, and that’s going back to the basics.

Yes, that means re-reading school books, learning the basic functions of the computer, and many other things. It’s seen in the millennial generation; as the ones who experienced technology evolve exponentially, they’ve also seen the older forms. They’ve used the “dumb” phones like the old Nokia 3210, learning about character counts, notes (when making their own ringtones), and even taking notes with it. YouTube or social media didn’t even exist at the time; they just fiddled with it.

Of course, that may have annoyed the older generation of parents who now had to figure out how their growing millennial had changed the phone’s language from English to a foreign language.

But kids of today have a bit more assistance in doing the basics: AI.

Using AI: Is It Preventing Functional Literacy?

While AI may gather and process information at superhuman speeds, it doesn’t prevent functional literacy. Unless we rely on it for everything, including verifying sources.

That’s the challenge parents and kids of today face. AI removes much of the mental load, and it can be a godsend, especially when we’re just too tired to think. However, we have to remember a few things about AI:

• AI simply gathers the information and presents it in a readable manner.
• AI can only use information that’s found on the internet. Unless books have been uploaded, it won’t cite them as sources.
• AI doesn’t fact-check.

AI, if anything, insists on functional literacy. We have to ensure that everything is correct.

Functional Illiteracy Can Be Solved

As parents, we can fight against functional illiteracy by indulging in the manual way of doing things. Instead of telling our kids to just “Google it,” show them how we would do it. Some things are better learned with hands-on experience, rather than just watching a YouTube tutorial.

It may be a long fight against functional illiteracy. But by training our brains with the basics, we’ll be more prepared for the more complex things to come.

More about education and literacy?

The National Library Reopens A New Children’s Section in Honor of National Children’s Month
Training Our Kids’ Brains: How It Makes Them Resilient
How the K-12 Curriculum Worked But Made Teachers and Families Struggle