Local slang is another culprit. Filipinos who are used to slang will find it difficult to correct the bad habit. If they can’t even speak proper Tagalog, chances are they will find it far more difficult to read in English.

It is depressing to learn that Filipino high school students ended in last place among 79 other countries in reading comprehension.

Last 3 December, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reported that according to its 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the Philippines landed in 79th place in reading, scoring a miserable average of 340 points against the OECD average of 487 points. Filipino students also ranked low in Mathematics and Science, earning 353 and 357 points, respectively, against the OECD average of 489 points for the two categories.

The PISA is an assessment made by the OECD on 15-year old students from 70 countries. 2018 marks the first year the Philippines joined the assessment.

Undoubtedly, the PISA scores are saddening considering that in the 1950s and 1960s, the Philippines had one of the highest literacy rates in Asia.

Leonor Briones, who was the Secretary of the Department Education (DepEd) from June 2016 to the present, and Armin Luistro, who held the same post from June 2010 to June 2016, are silent on the matter. If they issued statements, they were not conspicuously reported by the media.

Most certainly, the DepEd will now be defending itself for this debacle. Meanwhile, a realistic assessment of the situation is needed for the public’s information.

Many Filipino students from elementary level to college have a difficult time completing sentences in English, much less speaking the language fluently. More often than not, a mixture of English and Tagalog phrases get passed off as acceptable language. This is confirmed by the way they speak, whether in casual conversation, classroom recitation, or interviews.

Even the spokesmen of many government and private corporations share the same difficulty with language. Vice President Leni Robredo has that same difficulty during TV interviews.

The culprit — irresponsible teachers who allow students to speak in a mixture of both languages, and celebrities who speak that way on television and cinema.

Teachers who tolerate too much liberality in classroom language use encourage complacency in their students, which later makes it difficult for the students to communicate properly.

Celebrities who have zero speech discipline send their admirers the wrong message that it is alright to speak in mongrel language, as long as the speaker is understood. Many television program hosts and hostesses promote this bad practice.

Speaking in broken English may be tolerable in conversations between Filipinos, but it can be disastrous for Filipinos who, by reason of the situation, must speak complete English to others who do not understand a mixture of English and Tagalog.

Difficulty in speech is related to difficulty in reading comprehension.

Textbooks in Mathematics and Science are in English, and students who are not used to straight English will experience great difficulty in comprehending such texts. The same observation applies to textbooks in other subjects like History, Literature, Reading, Social Science and, of course, English itself.

Local slang is another culprit. Filipinos who are used to slang will find it difficult to correct the bad habit. If they can’t even speak proper Tagalog, chances are they will find it far more difficult to read in English. Thus, Manila Mayor Francisco Domagoso should stop using the title yorme if he wants to solve the reading comprehension problem.

Then there is technology. Filipino students waste valuable time on social media exchanging views on superficial subjects in a mixture of English and Tagalog, instead of reading their school assignments. As a result, their minds are not accustomed to reading books, which makes reading comprehension very difficult.

Last in the blame list are the many textbooks produced by the DepEd which are filled with factual and language errors. Antonio Calipjo Go, the Marikina private school supervisor who made it his crusade to expose the DepEd’s defective textbooks, has been at it since the 1990s, but DepEd officials like Luistro and Briones refuse to listen.

Now that the PISA report is out, Calipjo is vindicated. Luistro and Briones have some explaining to do.

It’s time the “sick books” of the DepEd are destroyed and replaced with accurate ones. If that doesn’t happen, expect the Philippines to flunk the PISA every year.