This is a short term paper on the topic of poverty and its effects in the quality of education and literacy in the Philippines as part of my requirements in Reading Course subject for my Masters in English, Major in Applied Linguistics degree.
I. Introduction
The
question of literacy always comes to mind when talking about social and
economic standing, both on a personal and national level. Stereotyping leads to an erroneous notion
that developing countries (also called third-world countries) have illiterate
citizens and poor families have illiterate family members. Although poverty
does affect literacy on all aspects, it does not solely decide the outcome and quality
of education people get as seen in the statistics of developing countries, such
as the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia in comparison to the
standing of developed countries (also called first-world countries). When it
comes to the reading ability of adult citizens, the country is even considerably
at par with other first-world nations, such as Australia, Singapore, and Hong
Kong.
