It was over a year ago, right before COVID-19 took over headlines indefinitely, that the major news item was about reading comprehension—or lack thereof.
Let me jog your memory: in December 2019, people threw a fit when a 2018 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) report found that among 79 countries surveyed, the Philippines placed dead last in reading comprehension among 15-year-old students. “Over 80 percent of students in the Philippines did not reach a minimum level of proficiency in reading,” the report read.
For some, the results seemed conflicting with what we’ve often been told about our country’s literacy. The Philippines boasts a literacy rate of 97.95 percent, according to a 2019 UNESCO report, besting more developed countries like Singapore.
Others, however, argue that the PISA report was not ideal because it was in English instead of in the local languages. Yet, a few months back, the Philippines was found to still rank highly in the 2020 EF English Proficiency Index, placing second in Asia and 27th overall. While the country has been sliding down the global rankings in past years—it fell seven spots from 2019—its position nevertheless shows that the country remains competitive in English proficiency.
All this leads us to conclude that the problem is not necessarily in being able to read and write, but in understanding the text itself. Reading comprehension, after all, requires one to process information from written material, drawing one’s own conclusions or inferring unclear details from context.
This gap has a lot of broad repercussions, more so when you consider how avid social media users Filipinos are. In past years, international surveys by consultancy firms like We Are Social and Hootsuite have ranked the Philippines as the highest in terms of time spent online and on social media.
The current pandemic also compounds this dilemma: with limited physical interactions, social media is perhaps the only way that people can still reach out to friends and family, resulting in more time spent online. As people clock in more hours on sites like Facebook and Twitter, they are more exposed to its content, which in recent years has been rife with trolls and fake news. A person with limited reading comprehension would more likely take things at face value and believe the misinformation and disinformation in front of them, especially if what they are shown agrees with their pre-established beliefs and views.
But perhaps it’s not that surprising when you look at the social media activity of the people close to you. When was the last time your classmates excitedly forwarded a “suspension announcement” that did not come from a verifiable source? Or perhaps your friends regurgitating articles—that were apparently published years ago—thinking they were breaking news? Or even your relatives sending you a Facebook post with poorly edited images and comically large text that they boldly claim was an astute political take?
These aren’t isolated incidents, and while it may seem silly at first that some of our acquaintances don’t immediately realize that what they’re posting or sharing might be flat out untrue, the fact that it happens so often becomes concerning.
Misinformation on COVID-19, supposed local remedies, and fear mongering over alleged vaccine side effects have made frequent rounds on social media these past months, alarming even public health experts of the “infodemic” that has taken hold in different parts of the world.
Meanwhile, politics remains a very heated topic—intensified even further as the 2022 elections draw closer—with social media promoting echo chambers among supporters and critics of various government personalities. Within these circles, facts blur into opinion: it doesn’t matter if the claims are actually true, so long as it aligns with what they already believe is true.
Against this bleak digital landscape, however, there is still much we can do. Individually, we can be more prudent with our own online activity. Fact-checking and verifying information as they arrive to us is one way. Another is, of course, reading everything first before sharing, especially for news articles with strong headlines. Spreading fake news makes it thrive, and by not allowing it to go further, we prevent it from reaching others who might fall for it.
But the most difficult step is correcting others who do share and believe in fake news. While it may be awkward to call out your friends and family for being wrong, it is important to remain respectful when correcting each other so that they would be more open to alternate perspectives.
No matter what, we always have to read—and read carefully.
