A, B, C, D or A Ba Ka Da?

PINOY KASI

A, B, C, D or A Ba Ka Da?
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 02:03am (Mla time) 05/30/2007

With the new school year upon us, I’m wondering what our schools are going to do, given the President’s Executive Order 210, which for the nth time revises our medium of instruction in schools.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed the EO in May 2004. There was a delay with the Department of Education’s implementing rules and guidelines, which were released only in July 2006. In a nutshell, the EO and the implementing rules provide for the following:

English will be taught as a second language starting with Grade 1. Starting with Grade 3, English will be used as a medium of instruction for English, Mathematics and Science. (This is actually an old requirement dating back to 2002.) Finally, the President and the Department of Education require that English be the “primary medium of instruction” in all public and private high schools, “primary” defined as English being used in “not less than 70 percent of the total time allotment for all learning areas.”

A group of educators has gone to the Supreme Court to challenge the executive and department orders on grounds that they are unconstitutional. The group includes National Artists Bienvenido Lumbera and Virgilio Almario, University of the Philippines professor (and Inquirer columnist) Randolf David; Isagani Cruz, president of Wika ng Kultura at Agham [Language of Culture and Science], and Efren Abueg, writer-in-residence at De La Salle University.

The educators argue that the 1987 Constitution declares Filipino as the national language and mandates the government to “initiate and sustain [its] use ... as a medium of official communication and as language of instruction in the educational system.”

The rationale for EO 210 is explained as “a need to develop the aptitude, competence and proficiency of our students in the English language to maintain and improve their competitive edge in emerging and fast-growing local and international industries, particularly in the area of Information and Communications Technology (ICT).”

It’s an appealing argument, given all the publicity around call center jobs and how so many applicants are turned down because of lack of English proficiency. But the educators point out that call centers don’t generate that many jobs in the first place so trying to get all schoolchildren to speak English does not make sense. On the other hand, if it’s the broader ICT industry that’s being targeted, then English becomes even more unrealistic, given that tasks such as software development are not tied to English proficiency.

Back to basics

Just for the sake of argument, let’s say there is indeed a bonanza out there -- in terms of outsourced and overseas jobs -- waiting to be reaped if we could produce better English speakers.

The President and her advisers presume that this is best done by making English the primary medium of instruction. But this runs counter to all the scientific evidence. The research into language and education shows clearly that learning is best done through a local language.

The mother tongue (which can be Ilokano or Kapampangan or Tausug, whatever is spoken locally) should be used in the first year of school to build a bridge for learning other languages. That would be Filipino in non-Tagalog areas, and could, later, include English, Spanish, Chinese or other global languages.

One study by the Summer Institute of Linguistics’ Diane Dekker and Catherine Young, “Bridging the Gap: The Development of Appropriate Educational Strategies for Minority Language Communities in the Philippines,” describes an innovative program in Kalinga where the community worked with educators to develop a curriculum and teaching materials for primary school in Lilibuagan, the local language. The article is so fascinating I’m going to save a more detailed description for another column, but the authors show that this approach can produce good literacy and numeracy levels.

The conclusions of local and international studies are simple: pupils learn faster when taught in their mother tongue. By imposing English as the medium of instruction as early as Grade 1, we actually further slow down the learning processes in our schools, including those for English.

In fact, I’d argue that the continuing predominance of English for teaching has produced a labor force that is barely literate in English or Filipino, and that this translates into mediocrity in the work place. It’s not surprising that overseas investors set up production facilities in other countries that may have poorer English proficiency than we do, but far surpass us with technological development and labor productivity.

Catching up

From China down to Indonesia, English language schools are cropping up like sari-sari stores. Some Filipinos point to these schools as “proof” that we were correct in pursuing English proficiency and that our neighbors are now seeing the error of their “nationalism” in language policies.

Let’s be careful with our conclusions. These are countries that certainly saw the importance of having a national language, propagated through the schools. In the post-colonial era, this was especially important in building a sense of national identity.

But having a national language did not mean excluding access to the world. Many of our neighbors translate books, not just from English but from French, Spanish, Japanese, German. Students learn English quite late, and only optionally. In the 1960s and 1970s, Thai graduate students came to the Philippines to take up agriculture, dentistry, public health, engineering. Filipinos poked fun at their fractured English. The Thais worked hard, went home to apply what they had learned -- yes, with the “poor” English -- and today, we import food and household wares from them. Today, Filipinos join the millions of tourists visiting Thailand, and then wonder how they get to bring in so many visitors, despite the still poor English proficiency.

I know, some of you are thinking, “Look who’s talking. Mike Tan has benefited from being able to write in English.” Yes, I am a product of an era when we were punished for speaking in Filipino. But I can tell you, too, that I know I could have been a better teacher, a better writer, if I had been encouraged to use Filipino in school.

I see this with my colleagues in other countries, who are not quite as good with English but are able to convey so much of their national experiences. It’s not surprising the world is waking up now to the literature, arts, cinema of our neighbors, all done in their local languages.

We need to be able to look forward to a time that Filipinos, speaking or writing in English or Spanish or Chinese, will dazzle their audiences who know that their eloquence and wisdom spring, not from the mastery of a foreign language, but from hearts that think and feel in Filipino.