The unseen and left behind

There is a sound every Filipino classroom knows. It isn’t the chatter before class starts or the scraping of chairs—it is the uneasy silence when someone is told to read out loud, and a child suddenly goes quiet. You can see it in their eyes: the panic, the hesitation, the hope that maybe the teacher will move on. Sometimes the class laughs. Sometimes the class grows painfully still. Either way, another student learns to pray that they are never called again.

We proudly talk about education. We argue about curriculum changes, tablets, Wi-Fi, modernization. But in many public schools, children still reach high school unable to read confidently. They copy answers not because they are lazy, but because they cannot understand the questions. They pretend to be distracted when the truth is simpler and much sadder: they were left behind long before they even reached that room.

We do not talk about them enough—the child who memorizes paragraphs to survive class, the student who refuses to raise their hand because silence feels safer than shame, the learner who stares at a page that refuses to make sense. These are not careless students. They are unseen students.

And yet, something changes when they are finally given real help. I have seen a group of struggling readers given patient, focused support. No fancy systems. No dramatic speeches. Just teachers slowing down, meeting students where they truly are, refusing to give up on them. Slowly, words stop looking like puzzles. Sentences begin to sound like something they own. A boy who once stuttered through a paragraph finishes a passage. A girl who used to whisper finally reads with a voice steady enough to be heard.

Reading problems are not the fault of the child. They are failures of a system that chooses speed over care, promotion over comprehension. We love saying “no child left behind,” yet too many are not just left behind—they are left unseen.

Reading is not simply another school requirement. It is dignity. It is confidence. It is the ability to understand the world, to imagine a future, to believe you matter. A child who cannot read is a child slowly disappearing in plain sight.

If we truly care about reform, it must begin with this promise: every Filipino child should read, and read with understanding—not someday, not only when convenient, but now. There is a real student in a real classroom shrinking a little smaller every day. And somewhere, there is also a student who, with the right help, will finally lift their head and read a sentence that tells them they are capable.

This is not a problem of intelligence. It is a problem of access, of inequality, of a learning system that rewards those who keep up and quietly abandons those who cannot. Some of these students come to school hungry. Some share one textbook among siblings. Some grew up believing they were “slow,” when the truth is they were simply unsupported. Their dreams shrink because their world is limited to the few words they can understand. And when a child stops believing they can learn, the country loses more than a student—it loses a future nurse, teacher, builder, artist, leader.

Young people today are expected to be resilient, but resilience should not be an excuse for neglect. We should not ask children to be strong enough to survive a system that refuses to see them. We should build a system gentle and intentional enough to help them stand.

I write this not just as a student, but as someone who has seen what happens when children are finally taught to read with patience and respect. Their shoulders loosen. Their eyes brighten. They laugh more. They raise their hands again. It is not magic. It is simply what happens when we choose to care.

If there is one promise we should fight for, it is this: no Filipino child should move through school without truly learning to read. Because when a child learns to read, they do not just pass subjects. They reclaim their confidence. They reclaim their place in the classroom. They reclaim their future.

We owe them that. We owe them classrooms where reading is nurtured, not feared. We owe them teachers who are supported, not blamed. We owe them a country that refuses to accept silent suffering as normal. One day, when these students stand in front of a page and understand every word, I hope they remember how it felt to once be unseen—and know they are unseen no longer. Until then, we speak for them. We fight for them. And we refuse to let silence win.

Because literacy is not merely about school. It is about power. It is about voice. It is about being able to tell your own story instead of having the world write it for you. Every child deserves that chance. Every student deserves to be seen. And if we truly believe in the future of this nation, we must begin by teaching our children to read. Only then can we say we did not fail them.

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Mhel Cedric D. Bendo, 20, is a student researcher and writer from the Polytechnic University of the Philippines.