The situation is worrying. Because these functional illiterates will be working and even voting in a good 10 years.
"Educated Romania is the project of future generations, the foundation on which we can build the next 100 years."The quoted sentence came out of the mouth of the pseudo-minority state president Klaus Ionopotchivanoc Iohannis sometime in 2016. Nice sentence, isn't it? A centuries-old vision floats in it. Anyone can imagine how the educated generations pour in one after the other, building the wall of the future Romania, from morning to noon, from noon to night, and no, it does not collapse like Deva's castle, because that is why the members of the building generations are trained.
And then let's jump to 2023. A national survey on the reading skills of children aged 6–14 (elementary, high school). And the results were such that the hero Ajax would have fallen on his sword if he hadn't done it during Troy, a little earlier (Good, knowledge of Homer's epics doesn't hurt to interpret this part of the sentence either).
42 percent of their reading skills are "non-functional", 47 percent are "minimally functional",
and the remaining 11 percent of children are "functional", hooray! In English: the "non-functional" are unable to interpret a text (for example, a short story, user manual, etc.). The "minimally functional ones", well, manage somehow, but it is conceivable that the suffering of the hero of the short story is really attributed to the Martians, say, instead of the hostile earthly forces they represent, or they see the off button as an on button. For my part, I would call the "functional" ones normal, although I'm afraid that if I did, a long line of "humiliating" curses would rain down on me.
So I would rather say: they are like me, for example, or the boy next door, when we were between 6 and 14 years old.The results described above are truly frightening. Because just imagine: if the situation doesn't change, in 4-12 years these... let's just say it...
functional illiterates will leave, for example, the labor market,
moreover, they will vote on who should be the president and which party(ies) should come to power. And it doesn't comfort anyone that some of them go to the Wild West, because they will work there, vote, and, isn't it, Europe is one big family. If someone somewhere is functionally illiterate, sooner or later the whole of Europe will suffer.
Even the most competent public education ministry could not sweep the disaster under the carpet. The reigning minister, Ligia Deca, said :
"A systemic intervention is needed to improve the literacy of Romanian students."
And even the sparrow piping in the eaves has a fit of laughter because of this: well, sentences like this have been uttered by every school administrator in recent years. And of course the most elegant of our state, President Ionopot. And what happened? Well, the fact that there were even more functional illiterates.
Well, before we throw a whole barnful of manure on the state educational machinery: let's see what could be the reason why there are so many functional illiterates running around the country. I fully understand that the dog does not trust President Ionopot's fever dream called Educated Romania, sorry, his vision,
nor in the Ministry of Public Education, which resembles a railway junction,
where ministers, secretaries of state, and other files go in and out like passengers transferring from one train to another. And yes, they talk in vain that the Finnish example is an example...whatever example this unfortunate country with a functionally illiterate future can take, if it is unable to apply it here, locally. How could the leading brains be functionally illiterate?
Maybe, but no one measures their level of education.
Let's go further: there is the social "text environment" in the broader sense. I don't want to waste too many words on this, we talk about it a lot. It is a general phenomenon that people read shorter and shorter texts in shorter and shorter periods of time. And not necessarily because they wouldn't be able to. Because I ran out of patience and attention. You have to keep going: click, flip, swipe, scroll. And if the children see this and grow into it, what should we expect from them? What a cringe, even lame (for those who are curious about the meaning of the words, read it) thing, if someone, say, reads a six-minute text and then comments on Facebook, say instead of complaining about the bad weather under an article about a Native American novel because the title of the text contains the word thunder.
Let's look at another potential reason: I read that on the holy day of Wednesday Romanian teachers stopped work in schools for two hours as a warning strike, and also announced a general strike for May 22 due to low wages. They do it right! Under such circumstances
it is difficult to do a good job, let alone treat teaching and education as some kind of profession.
It is also true, however, that a good teacher (especially if he is fairly paid and is not wondering between two lessons what he is paying the monthly installment for) always has the opportunity to "game" the curriculum. If you see that reading and interpretation are not going well, then leave the mandatory to hell and deal more with eradicating functional illiteracy. Or if that doesn't work for him (because it's more convenient to move on, maybe to terrorize or make children stupid), there's the door, the world is big, there are very well-paid professions, feel free to change.
Obviously, I cannot be too strict, because it is clear that the whole system is sick, one element makes the other worse, according to the domino principle.And let's not forget the lovely parents. Who obviously do everything for their seedlings. But if (I repeat, if) they don't read either, they don't tell the family who the hell László Tőkés is... the other day, a very smart, sensible, talented young man asked who László Tőkés was. Well, there's nothing to answer for that. No one. At least for him. And the sad thing about this is that the young man is not at fault. Probably no one told him in the family, at school, or at the university, for example, about the fact that there was a revolution in the winter of 1989, which happened to start in Timisoara and happened to be connected to László Tőkés. How on earth wouldn't functional illiterates be the working, voting citizens of the future? If practically
the superstructure that guaranteed the sure knowledge of successive generations is falling to pieces before our eyes.
And in this situation, unfortunately, the very progressive attitude that everyone should be considered normal, even if they happen to be not, does not help either. Just as it doesn't help that everyone should be praised, even if they say or do stupid things. As a result, we hit the wall of responsibility everywhere. This is something that neither the (specialist) politician, nor the teacher, nor the parent, nor the counselor, in fact, not a single actor of the above sick system undertakes. We should not be surprised if the future builders of the Educated Romania will not take any responsibility for the (card) castle of the Mioritic homeland of the next hundred years.
Featured image: Shutterstock / PuzzlePix
