Let's Read by Claudio V. Tabotabo, MA (June, 2005)

This is a non-reading generation. Young people opt to stay the whole day in the computer centers playing Ragnarok rather than reading a single paragraph a day of any book journals or newspaper. At home children do not mind picking up a colored booklets which decades ago the most lovable item at home. Children now love to watch T.V. disregarding the teacher-assigned home readings.

Similar situation is the lament of the creative writing fellow. Dr. Niel Garcia of the University of the Philippines Creative Writing Center ponders on the writing selection of the students. The students passionately write about computer games, animation and other items related to technology. It is a kind of taste that demonstrates the person's poor reading sense. But these are the creative-writing students who ought to read voraciously. What more are those outside of literature and writing courses?

We in the academe have found the same dilemma. Students prepare to read the materials that speak about facts. They like exact things like Mathematics. Students do not find literature related to mathematical analysis. The result is students have a poor imagination that is also viewed in their incapacity to create situation. The late historian and National Artist for Literature Nick Joaquin had also voiced out the same wail before he died. He called this fact as "Disassociation of Sensibilities". Formerly it is called "Association of Sensibilities". The place of literature is overpowered by facts. This is reference to the arrangement of books in the library of the medieval period. During the period, there is no classification as Science Section, Math Section or history Section. There is only one set of books that is literature. All materials are labeled literature.

At first most magazines in the Philippines came out because of fictions. They were published as avenue of people's literary creation. One issue for instance has only two to four news items and rest of the issue is fiction. This time, magazine features only one fiction, a short story and the rest are commercials or a report about corruption of the country with pictures of government officials, smiling despite of their crime and jueting involvement - kapal mukha.

In my separate article I called up to go back to the classic if we really want change by way of the academe. Let us read and let the students read if we want them to change. Subjects in the General Education should consider reading a vehicle of change. Teachers should assign and monitor readings of the students. First day of class assign them a novel to be reported within the term to make sure they are reading. Grammar and fluency of the language will come all the way if students are equipped with understanding of themselves and of the world. But this understanding comes only from reading the classic.