Illiterate

Pinoy Kasi : Illiterate

First posted 01:01am (Mla time) June 07, 2006
By Michael L. Tan
Inquirer

Editor's Note: Published on Page A15 of the June 7, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

IT LOOKS like we have an extended Lenten penance period in the Philippines. Every start of a new school year, the broadcast and print media lead the nation in self-flagellation over the dismal state of our educational system.

I think that’s needed, but I also hope that after this first week of classes, we can continue to face up to the problems in our schools, going beyond the usual lamentations.

The last few days we’ve been treated to the Inquirer Investigative Team report on the state of education in the Philippines. Tuesday’s installment focused on the Philippines’ low scores in the international Trends in Math and Science Study (TIMSS) conducted in 2003. The Inquirer featured our scores in comparison with those of the United States and several neighboring Asian countries where we were at the bottom of the league.

Peer review

Curious, I went into the Internet and was able to download the highlights from the TIMSS report. Mind you, “highlights” here still meant more than a hundred pages but the data had been “crunched” to the most essential points, allowing more people to review and analyze the numbers.

Let me bring out the major points I uncovered in a fairly quick browse-and-analyze session:

First, we should know who conducts the study and what their methodology is. TIMSS is administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) under the US Department of Education. The center is described as “the primary federal entity for collecting, analyzing and reporting data related to education in the United States and other nations.”

Now, why would the US government be interested in looking at other nations’ educational performance? Mainly it’s for comparison purposes, a kind of review among peers. For years now, educators in the US have warned that American students are lagging behind their peers in other developed countries, especially in the fields of science and math. The educators rightly realize that their status as the world’s most powerful nation could be threatened if they don’t improve on their educational system. TIMSS is there to help the US keep track of its educational system’s performance.

There have been three rounds of TIMSS conducted so far, the first in 1995, then 1999 and the latest in 2003. The last survey’s results were released in December 2004. It’s an impressive study, involving students at the fourth and eighth-grade levels in 46 countries. (I presume that eighth-grade level in the Philippines means 2nd year high school, given that we have six elementary school years.) The samples are quite large in each country; for the Philippines, it was 6,917 students from 137 schools.

The tests are designed to probe into “PSI,” or problem solving and inquiry tasks, looking at how students are able to integrate information in various math and science fields, some of which I’ll name later. The tests were similar throughout the world, with efforts made to adjust for cultural differences.

It’s interesting that fourth graders were not allowed to use calculators but for the eight graders, countries were left to decide on their own whether they’d allow it or not. American students were allowed calculators “to reflect conditions in the real world.”

Problem areas

The test results were broken down by countries, test areas and even sex. For the US, the results were also broken down according to poverty measures, ethnicities, public/private schools.

To show the wealth of information that’s in these statistics, let me share some insights I got from a very quick one-hour browsing of the data for the Philippines. The percentages here refer to correct scores.

In the math tests, our 8th graders seemed to struggle with measurements (e.g., temperature differences), scoring 35 percent, compared with the international average of 44 percent. But they did badly in algebra (23 percent, compared with the international average of 45 percent) and geometry (11 percent for Filipinos, 28 percent internationally). The fourth graders were again not too bad with measurements, but did miserably with basic numbers (e.g., proportions). I suspect all this has something to do with the difficulties students have with abstractions. It doesn’t help that these concepts have to be taught in English to students who can barely speak the language.

In the sciences, our fourth graders fared very badly with the life sciences (5 percent, compared with the international average of 29 percent), but did better with the earth sciences (33 percent compared to 37 percent internationally).

That situation is reversed with 8th graders: they did better in the life sciences (45 percent versus an international average of 58 percent) but fared poorly in the earth sciences (38 percent versus 62 percent internationally). Their worst scores were in chemistry, with only 5 percent, compared with an international average of 46 percent.

Are the learning problems rooted in teaching methods? In textbooks? In the teachers’ own grasp of the subjects? That’s what we should be probing into, and finding remedial measures for.

Functional literacy

There’s more waiting to be analyzed in these statistics. If it’s any consolation, the Philippines did show improvement in both math and science scores between 1999 and 2003.

I’m also intrigued by the gender aspect. In the US, girls have lower scores than boys in math and science. In the Philippines, it’s the reverse.

TIMSS is important to help us assess how functional our literacy is. For years now, we’ve boasted about having one of the world’s highest literacy rates and how that literacy, together with some command of English, allows us to export workers to the world. The TIMSS results warn us that we could lose our edge for the overseas labor market, even as we stagnate with domestic development because the next generation won’t be able to tackle simple problems that require literacy in math and science.

We need to maximize the use of these tests. Some years back, I was asked by the University of the Philippines School of Economics to analyze results from the National Elementary Achievement Test (NEAT) and the National Secondary Achievement Test (NSAT) and I was amazed at how much information was waiting to be mined from the data. Unfortunately, the two exams degenerated into a contest among schools, with teachers giving review classes and test results leaking out so the tests were no longer required for all schools. If it were properly administered, NSAT could be an important monitoring tool.

Alas, we maltreat our statistics. Politicians and government officials mangle the figures to suit their own interests, or, neglect the figures, failing to use them for policy reforms. Our leaders’ attitudes toward statistics are themselves telling, showing how we’ve failed to educate Filipinos, even those from an earlier generation, about the value of science and math. Governed by dishonest illiterates, can we dare hope for a better educational system?