InqSkwela – Is PH Inquirer Current In Thinking About Students’ Love Of Reading And Knowledge? Asking As A Teacher!

Once a teacher, always a teacher. An alumnus of UP Los Baños, right now, I am reading about “InqSkwela,” the Inquirer Foundation’s social responsibility program launched in 2019, which distributes printed Inquirer copies to select highly populated public schools in Metro Manila, for free. “With an easier access to a newspaper, the hope is that students would discover or further develop their love of reading and knowledge in current events” (undated, Inquirer, inquirer.com.ph).

The latest news on InqSkwela is this (Jane Bautista, 05 March 2023, “Manila, Schools Latest InqSkwela Partners,” Inquirer.net, newsinfo.inquirer.net):

Twenty public schools in the City of Manila will now have access to Inquirer Plus, the digital edition of the Philippine Daily Inquirer…, under a partnership that offers the paper… as an educational material that can help hone learning skills and enrich classroom discourse.

The 20 schools are unidentified; nonetheless, it is worth pointing out why InqSkwela has come out in the first place. Ms Jane says:

According to Inquirer Foundation [Executive Director] Connie Kalagayan, InqSkwela was conceived in response to the 2018 findings of the Programme for International Student Assessment [PISA] where the Philippines scored the lowest in reading comprehension out of the 79 countries evaluated.

The PISA is “a worldwide study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)… to evaluate educational systems by measuring 15-year-old school pupils’ scholastic performance [in] mathematics, science and reading” (Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org). The OECD is 60 years old (“Who We Are,” OECD, oecd.org).

As a public school teacher, Civil Service Professional (1964), I find the international OECD’s (and thereby the Philippine Inquirer’s) educational motive applaud-able – but the method antiquated.

Why was/is the PISA centered only on only 3 areas: math, science & reading? The OECD has to learn more!

There are, as far as I know, as I believe Harvard professor Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences (MI), that everyone of us has these potential thinking & acting smarts: athleticism, thinking about life & people & self, language, math, music, nature and space (art).

If InqSkwela wants to be smart in helping Filipino students, I suggest it creates a new Inquirer digital medium dedicated to multiple intelligences. That easy, that difficult – that smart!

And no, not necessarily funds-depleting: InqSkwela could ask volunteer writers to submit their works for free.

Contents & contentions will have to be all positive. How? Follow the “Rotary 4-Way Test” –
(“4-Way Test” from eastlansingrotaryclub.com)

Is it the TRUTH?
Is it FAIR to all concerned?
Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?

Now then, I propose that InqSkwela morph into this:

InQKuwela

Where “Kuwela” means “a happy tune, lighthearted show” (Tagalog.com, tagalog.com). InQKuwela will need at least PH 1M to start the balls rolling and the bells ringing.

I’m volunteering as Digital Editor In Chief right now, “digital” also meaning “work from home” (WFH). This WFH will help write the proposal for funding by either the ADB, USAID, or World Bank.

InQKuwela will change public education the world over!@517