National Reading Month: Put a book in a child's hand

Reading is not just a classroom requirement. It is the bedrock of learning, the gateway to knowledge, and the spark that ignites imagination and critical thinking. Every child who learns to read gains the power to understand the worldand the confidence to shape it. Without this skill, everything else in education collapses.

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Yet in the Philippines, reading has quietly slipped into the background of daily life. In buses, parks, terminals, or even in the comfort of our homes, it is rare to see someone absorbed in a book or magazine. We scroll endlessly, but seldom read deeply. We absorb fragments of information, but rarely seek understanding. Ask a friend what book they last finished, and the silence that follows is not just awkward-it's alarming.

Because while we look away, a crisis is unfolding.

According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, 18.9 million Filipinos aged 10 to 64 are classified as functionally illiterate-they can read, write, and compute but struggle with comprehension, regardless of their educational attainment. That is not a statistic-it is a national emergency. Add to that the sobering findings of PISA 2022 and a World Bank study: over 75 percent of Filipino students are low performers in reading, math, science, and creative thinking. And that 91 percent of our 10-year-olds cannot understand age-appropriate text.