Upon hearing the news about the Department of Education's plan to keep Fridays for reading activities, I couldn't help but ruminate on memories of when I was still in grade school.

Could they also rekindle the quite underrated home reading reports? Apart from our first encounter with agronomy, where we grew veggies and rummaged distant lots for organic fertilizers, reading stories formed a large part of our elementary days. We had to read because a home reading report was compulsory.

Unlike today, most pupils then had no internet access. We relied on physical books. But books were scarce, except for what was available in the teacher's mini library. Familiar sights in the mini library were Bato Balani magazines, and I couldn't forget that thick Collins and Webster's dictionaries and encyclopedia sets were nothing short of a prized collection in those times.

Since it was the pupils' volition to select a story, short fiction from the ever-familiar English For All Times reading textbook became our staple. Some chose fairytales and legends from slim, cheap books they bought from "mysterious" peddlers, and some picked moral tales from Aesop's fables.

Unknowingly, the home reading activity made some pupils voracious readers. In terms of their comprehension, they had to read seriously for them to take in the needed details for their reports, such as characters' traits and the moral or lesson of the story, and for them to come up with the story's summary.

On my part, this reading activity played a role in building my affinity and love for words and language in general.

Home reading, once a perennial activity, has lost its spark over the years. In 2010, the DepEd advised public elementary teachers not to give homework on weekends for "pupils to enjoy their childhood and spend quality time with their parents without being burdened by the thought of doing lots of homework."

Because of the very nature of home reading, this, too, was affected.

Nowadays, however, some teachers still ask their pupils to make home reading reports. They conducted the activity every quarter, and yes, they followed the old format.

If making home reading reports affords the pupils opportunities to obtain vocabulary, make sense of the basic syntactic rules, and develop their reading habits, then this activity is not asinine.

And how about bringing the idea of home reading to high school and assigning two readings each quarter? This might be a good move but not promising because many students are already AI-reliant. They let ChatGPT create their reports.

The line from one of the late National Artist for Literature F. Sionil Jose's think pieces still reverberates: "Truly, development starts at the grade school level, with our very young."                   

(To be continued)

(Jeric Olay is a 27-year-old educator and poet. He teaches language and literature at Ichon National High School in Macrohon, Southern Leyte.)