In the late 1980s, two American researchers conducted what would become one of the most cited experiments in education. A group of Grade 7 and 8 students was told to read a passage about baseball and answer a set of comprehension questions. As expected, strong readers who knew a lot about the sport obtained the highest scores. Surprisingly, however, students with lower reading ability but with extensive knowledge of baseball outperformed those with stronger reading skills but limited knowledge of the sport.

The now-famous baseball study challenged the long-held belief that reading is a skill that must be taught in isolation. It revealed how our prior knowledge of a topic acts like a scaffold that helps us make sense of new concepts by connecting them to what we already understand. A 2019 study published in Psychological Science reinforced this idea. Researchers found that when students are unfamiliar with 59 percent or more of the terms in what they’re reading, their ability to comprehend the text significantly suffers. To develop a child’s comprehension skills, it’s not enough to teach them how to read. We must assess what they know, build on that knowledge, and guide them to find the connections between ideas.

Understanding the science behind teaching comprehension skills matters now more than ever. In 2022, the Philippines ranked among the bottom 10 countries in reading comprehension in the 2022 Program for International Student Assessment. According to the World Bank, the Philippines has a 90 percent learning poverty rate, which means nine out of 10 Filipino 10-year-olds are unable to read or understand a simple paragraph. Since assuming office, Department of Education (DepED) Secretary Sonny Angara has prioritized addressing the learning crisis by launching various targeted interventions. Last week, DepEd announced a major improvement: the number of Grade 3 students who were unable to recognize letters dropped from 65,000 last year to just 2,000. This progress is certainly no small feat, and serves as a promising sign that urgent, focused efforts can move the needle.

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