High literacy vis-a-vis economic advancement.

We usually tend to equate a high literacy rate with economic development. Not quite in the Philippines. We have a very high basic literacy rate (94.6%) and yet a great many of Filipinos remain poor. The June 2007 self-rated survey of the Social Weather Station (SWS) reveals that 47% (estimated at 8 million) Filipinos think they are poor.

I came across a research paper by Canieso-Doronila of UP which points to the negative correlation between our high literacy rate and economic advancement. Canieso-Doronila points out that this can be "explained by the fact that literacy skills taught in schools do not extend to abilities to perform the multiple social and cognitive tasks needed to survive in society today".

So what's the root of the problem? Canieso-Doronila emphasized that "such a reported high literacy rate does not assume abilities to think critically and abstractly because, in early formal education, local knowledge and cultural practices have historically been shut out by Western-influenced education, first through a medium (English) which has very limited use in most communities and, second, amidst unequal access to quality education". These twin problems of medium of instruction and educational inequality in early schooling intensify the disparity between the elite and the masses.