Visual learning is defined as the assimilation of information from visual formats. Students understand information better in the classroom when they see it in visuals such as pictures, flowcharts, diagrams, videos, simulations, graphs, cartoons, coloring books, slide shows/Power point decks, posters, movies, games, and flash cards (Rodger et.al. 2009). Despite the visual learning’s mantra, “to see is to learn”, Dep Ed ordered 1 Million public school teachers to remove all visuals from the classroom. We cannot imagine how this latest move of Dep Ed will help reduce the learning poverty of Filipinos.

Various studies have reported that 75% of all information processed by the brain comes from visual formats. Furthermore, visual information resides more in students’ minds (Williams, 2009).

Most of the students in this generation of changing and modern technology are used to visual learning. When studying the Chemistry of the fermentation or distillation process, they understand the concept better with a picture or video than with a textual explanation of the process.

Screen adaptations of Dr. Jose Rizal’s two novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, and Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton present vivid images of the characters, plot, the crisis, climax, and epilogue of these literary masterpieces that students learn and recollect more from over just reading the text of the original novels.

According to Dr. Lynell Burmark, “…unless our words, concepts, ideas are attached to an image, they go in one ear, sail through the brain, and out the other. Words are processed by our short-term memory where we can only retain about seven pieces of information (plus or minus 2) […]. Images, on the other hand, go directly into long-term memory where they are indelible.” Therefore, visuals last longer in a child’s memory than words that have just been read.

According to the Visual Teaching Alliance, 90 percent of the information sent to the brain is visual. In addition, the brain can process visuals more than 60,000 times faster than text. Visual learning helps develop skills such as critical thinking, better decision making, problem solving, and better understanding and eliminates boredom from the lesson.

Emotional response and visual stimuli have a simple connection—humans process visual information and emotions in the same part of the brain. They help build memories. Robert E. Horn of Stanford University explains this relationship clearly “When words and visual elements are closely combined, we create something new and we increase our communal intelligence … visual language has the potential to with increasing ‘human bandwidth’—the capacity to take in, understand, and better synthesize large amounts of new information.”

Anna Fisher’s Bare Wall Theory does not suggest removing all visuals from the classroom wall but leaves it up to the teacher to decide what to keep in the room that will help the student. Fisher insists that leaving the walls of a classroom bare of all visuals is not the answer.

We are now in the age of visual learning where the visual format is prevalent in every part of human life. Visual learning is an important strategy to combat ignorance. Dep Ed’s order to teachers to remove all visuals in the classroom appears to be incongruent with what research and reality dictate to defeat the learning poverty plaguing Philippine education. I can just imagine Anna Fisher cringing in her seat.

Atty. Magi Gunigundo is a former lawmaker, civil law instructor, and author of law books. He is also an education reformer and an advocate of anticipatory governance.