It also amazes me that like the reinstitution of capital punishment, the Philippine Congress (and the rest of elite Pinoy society) can’t settle the language issue. The Philippine Daily Inquirer takes essentially the same position as leading our own language and academics do. The language gurus in the UN and our colleges of education have long known that acquisition of literacy, numeracy and basic science skills in schoolkids are best through the mother tongue.
House bill 5619, the proposed Act Strengthening and Enhancing the Use of English as the Medium of Instruction authored by Cebu Rep. Eduardo Gullas seeks to junk the bilingual policy adopted by the old education department in 1974. While it is patently obvious that English competency has declined precipituously since the Americans left us to run our own education system, the bill may be the wrong band aid for the right problem.
The Marcos regime instituted a bilingual policy that split the teaching of certain subjects in basic education in two languages. The “soft” subjects like social science, humanities, civics, arts, music were to be taught in Tagalog-based Filipino, while the “hard” subjects like science and math were to be taught in English. While the idea seemed to be attractive at the time, it defeats the whole idea of bilingual education where all subjects can be taught in the two languages. Since English then as now is considered as a “prestige language” it was to expected that we end up with a case of semilingualism, in which the acquiring literacy in first language is interrupted and results in essentially the same thing in the second (more usually, prestige language) language. The majority of Pinoys may be considered semilinguals as far as the National and English languages are concerned. They can’t achieve the expected monolingual standard.
This is the true irony. Pinoys are inherently multilingual. Pinoys could be functionally multilingual in their regional and national languages. In addition they can be receptively multiulingual in another regional or foreign language. As with the use of English, Pinoys have a spectrum of language abilities from true functional multilingualism to receptive multilingualism.
Since I am a Diliman brat, a completely University of the Philippines education has made me a true functionally multilingual in at least three languages (Tagalog-based Filipino, English, Spanish), receptively multilingual (in different degrees) in German, Japanese and Latin and rather unfortunately just basically receptively multilingual in Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Ilocano and now trying to get a bit of Itawes and Ibanag!
Since I am part of the Pinoy elite as a result UP education, the only difference between me and rest of the masa is that I learned the foreign languages formally. In the rest of the Pinoy society many kabayan learn it by immersion usually on the job. I am learning the regional languages this way since I know not of a formal course in Itawes! So allow me to comment why the Gullas bill is a wrong solution.
I have been travelling all over the planet and the island world we call ‘Pinas. Travellers inevitably will have to use the toilet or in Pinoy English “CR”. The challenge is to find a clean one especially in regional Philippines. Now one of the triumphs of the Department of Health under Dr Johnny Flavier is fostering a greater consciousness among Pinoys to keep toilets clean. Please flush the toilet after use!
Thus the toilets have signs in English, the regional languages and if you are nearer to Metro Manila, Tagalog-based Filipino. If you are in the toilet of the Piat Basilica in Cagayan you would find the signs in English and Itawes. If you are in the Guimaras Provincial Capitol, you would find the signs in English and Hiligaynon. In Cebu, the signs are in English and Cebuano. In the University of the Philippines Visayas, in English, Hiligaynon and Filipino. In Looc Municipal Hall, Romblon it was in English, Rombloanon and Filipino, In Zamboanga City it was in formal chavacano (not much difference to Castellano) and English.
Popularity: 2% [?]
DJB at al
Timor Leste probably learned from our mistakes. It has Portuguese and Tetum as national languages, despite that years of Indonesian occupation had made Bahasa widely spoken.
The East Timorese has taken great steps to teach Portuguese by getting language teachers from Portugal and Brazil.
Portuguese isn’t viewed as a language of colonialism but a language of resistance against Indonesian occupation.
@ Jon
really? any links of how they do it in israel?
logically, for young kids, you need to teach them math and science in 1 language, backed by instructional materials in the same language.
but if it can be done with english instructional materials, then cool!
also, if i understand the bill, if the place (region?) decides not to teach using english, english should still be taught.
@DJB
i admit that implementation is a challenge. all worthwhile things are hard, diba? i too voiced my apprehensions on implementation in my first comment.
you raised alot of good questions
1) how many languagues in practice? too many is too expensive. too few and we won’t get the result we want.
i addition, i ask: who gets to decide what the language will be? what criteria?
2) where’s the proof?
there’s the video. from the centennial lectures. download them, they’re very informative, and funny!
in the US, there is a huge literature on how to deal with immigrants who don’t know how english.
here is one interesting citation:
Learning Mathematics in a Second Language: A Problem with More and Less
Peter L. Jones
Educational Studies in Mathematics, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Aug., 1982), pp. 269-287
they looked at students in new guinea, at 2 types of kids, those whose language is primarily english, and those that are not.
they taught the concept of ‘more’ and ‘less’, and found that there were some differences favoring the primary english speakers.
this is evidence saying that if u want to teach elementary relational concepts, the language matters.
there’s probably more out there…
3) the content changes
this is true, BUT its true REGARDLESS of the language issue. we should be upgrading the curriculum anyway.
also, i’m curious, not being an expert at math — how do the laws of math change?
science definitely changes, but i submit that the changes happening are at the forefront of science, and won’t affect elementary education at the 3RD GRADE down, too much… unless its a revolutionary change…
I have other quesitons about implementation:
4) how will the transition be managed? There has to be a transition period. kids who are currently grade 3 shouldn’t have a sharp shift in the language of instruction…
Gabby,
You were asking about Israel?
here is a link.
http://www.biu.ac.il/hu/lprc/home/fog0000000007.html
Now speaking about proposals I found this link where the proponent wants to revive Sanskrit, (which was unspoken for 800 years ) as a medium of instruction,one of the reasons or case studies they use to defend the thesis,is Israel’s use of Hebrew as a medium of instruction.
http://www.aurovillelanguagelab.org/Research/The%20Greatness%20and%20Glory%20of%20Sanskrit.htm
Gabby,
How do the laws of math change? A good example is the theorem we all learned in high school geometry classes that parallel lines never meet. This was of course “law” for thousands of years until perfectly self-consistent non-Euclidean geometries were discovered in which parallel lines do meet, such as spherical geometries. This huge revolution in math gave Einsteinian relativistic physics the very mathematical machinery necessary to supplant Newtonian physics as the more accurate theory of physical reality!
There are other important changes in academic subject teaching that don’t involve laws but changing societal needs.
For example I believe that just as important as the multiplication table for grade school education today is the need to teach binary logic topics such as simple truth tables (OR, AND, XOR, NOR, etc) and addition, subtraction, multiplication, division in binary base 2.
How in the world to do you do this with mother tongues that have no concepts appropriate to this material??
Gabby,
The videos are pure entertainment. I want the so called “scientific studies” that establish the tendentiously repeated claims of the Mother Tongue Hypothesis. It all looks like references to references that end up referring to one another in a suspiciously circular manner. And even if there is a kernel of truth to the notion, which I admit, there is still a vast space to be logically leapt across before we get to the real issues surrounding curriculum and the Medium of Instruction.
As I said, the rhetorical power of the PDI editorial rests more on an emotional appeal to the idea that somehow it would be better in the Tower of Babel. They seem to think that medium of instruction is the same thing as the language used to communicate between teacher and pupil. Of course it is that, to some extent, but it is also much more as I have been stressing. This is not a “minor” consideration, this issue of practicality.
It goes to the very heart of what we mean, precisely by “Medium of Instruction.”
It is obvious from purely practical grounds that this is sheer and utter folly instigated by ideological agendas having little to do with education.
After all these exchanges, now all of you should realize that Dr Zamenhof wasn’t looney after all!
cvj,
let’s stick to the topic, shall we? It’s Medium of Instruction. And no I mean nothing mystical about the term, “the Anglosphere,” no need to get your Asiatic roots in a dander, hehe. English so last century, huh? But Mandarin, Korean and Japanese as Media of Instruction. C’mon, be serious!
Btw, did you know that native Cebuano speakers actually outweight native Tagalog speakers?
Here is a very interesting pair of essays at UNESCO: The Mother Tongue DILEMMA which present a more balanced view of this controversy than PDI does. Notice how it seems the aboriginalists are quoting just HALF of the points raised by this UNESCO essay without mentioning the other half.
Huli!
@Karl
thanks 4 d links.
@Blackshama
i luv it when u throw down weird names i then have to look up online! damn!
@DJB on January 12th, 2009 11:12 am
so math changes? i’d characterize that as adding to knowledge. non-euclidian geo doesn’t obliterate euclidean geometry, no?
also, we are talking about 3rd grade education. i don’t think they should be learning non-euclidean math. (Maybe you did, coz ur some kind of super genius! )
@DJB on January 12th, 2009 11:24 am
pure entertainment? yeah, thats why i cried at the end :) and laughed my socks off from that guy from UST who didn’t know what ‘brief questions’ means.
also, i too began by saying i didn’t get the PDI editorials point.
I thought the bill SEEMS to be a good synthesis of the two conflicting goals a) kids learn best using languages they are comfortable with, and b) we need to make sure our kids are very good in at least 1 language and it is most useful if its english.
again, implementation is key.
again, the UNESCO article says mother tongue instruction is a good idea, but hard to implement.
alot of the complaints there, we (you) have already mentioned:
1) too many languages
2) most minor languages aren’t fit for use as instruction language
alot of these complaints are met by the fact that this local languages are used only till grade 3. By grade 4, we expect that most of the subjects will use english. This solves the problem that many dialects can’t handle technical words in english.
You might say, we can ‘borrow’ these technical terms. But i ask, why borrow/translate? Isn’t it easier to just keep the english terms instead of shoehorning a filipino version?
@cvj on January 12th, 2009 8:01 am
yeah, learning these other languages would be great… living in singapore especially… maybe after they learn some english, huh? :)
Gabby,
What language were the Centennial Lectures and videos done in, pray tell??
Don’t these people have any respect for the virtue called “consistency”?
What do they take the people for? Stupid children who should do as they say and not as they do??
it’s really time to pull the whiskers off these pseudo nationalistic poseurs and expose them for what they are: hypocritical, sanctimonious, deluded.
Hey folks! Let’s play a word game. Translate the term MOTHER TONGUE into whichever ones you know:
(Tagalog)–Ang dila ng ina mo!
DJB,
Inang Wika ang tamang pagsasalin ng “mother tongue”.
That was juvenile.
Hehe. You got me Jon. But you have 139 more to go. In Ilokano? Pampango? Aeta-Zambales and Aeta-Quezon? Tausug? and I bet you some of these mother tongues won’t have a viable translation for just this one simple phrase. So imagine trying to write 140 forewords times five subjects times ten years of public school levels. Just the forewords and tables of contents…imagine all the leaves on all the trees in the world … and the grains of sand on the beaches of the sea…Honestly I can’t wait to review the grade one arithmetic textbook in Hiligaynon or Itawes or Babuyan and to meet the polymathic genius linguist-mathematician-author that produces such marvels.
There would be extortionists like Calipje Go in every dialect!
“PANG ILAN KA SA MAGKAKAPATID”
can you translate this in english…
Allan,
“What number in the sequence of siblings are you”, sounds too formal, but is used for other more formal questions e.g., “What number in the sequence of presidents is PGMA”.
In fact that particular question has a cultural twist because:
a) in Asian cultures the order by which a child came bore importance. Ex., in Jewish tradition the firstborn is always considered to be the eldest son, in Chinese the ordinal sequence is denoted by the way the child is address, e.g., ahya, dihya, shoti etc for boys, achi, dichi, shobe for girls, etc (someone correct me if I’m wrong)
c) in Western cultures, ordinal sequence among siblings is non-issue, or at least is only denoted with regards to the first born.
(Native American English):
“Which totem r u on the sibling pole, Kimo Sabe?”
“Pangilan ka sa magkakapatid?”
Translate into English (shortest entry wins!)
“SAYANG!”
@Jon Limjap on January 12th, 2009 5:00 pm
actually, the translation problem extends further. what about the rank in the sequence of anything. the white civic is the second car. What is the associated question? i don’t know. its possible that that explanation flies for families, but it also applies for all types of sequences/lists… weird no?
Jon,
The fact remains that the provisioning of 25 million kids to study five academic subjects spread out over ten years would be an insuperable problem, even without corruption, inefficiency, etc at Deped, if we were to take seriously the Mother Tongue Hypothesis that these various languages and dialects ought to become the medium of instruction.
I think this all has to do with the strange belief that English is not in fact part and parcel to the Filipino’s intellectual and cultural heritage.
If we saw it that way, there would be no question what the BEST medium of instruction would be for the messages of instruction that are laid out in the curriculum: our grandmother tongue!
DJB,
What I am actually voicing out can be summarized in two points:
a.) That children not being raised in homes wherein English is a major language have to be addressed vis-a-vis medium of instruction, both spoken and written,
and
b.) Extremism in any way, e.g., forcing English on non-English speakers, or forcing Tagalog on people from other regions, is a bad idea.
So no, I’m not disagreeing with you per se, it’s just that we have to address these issues the best we can.
Jon,
Absolutely no one is talking about “forcing English on non English speakers.” Unless of course you consider having English as one of the five official “tool” subjects in the Basic Education Curriculum tantamount to “forcing English on non-English speakers” — including those where English is not regularly spoken in the home.
Perhaps we should abolish the English subject and lay off about a fifth of the teaching force because we are indeed “forcing” it on non English speakers. By having English in the curriculum we are requiring them to learn it, otherwise they don’t get a public school diploma.
But if you ask me, having English as one of the five subjects is the right way to address the needs of children who don’t know how to speak it. Especially if they want to work abroad as OFWs, or work domestically in the highest paying, most satisfying jobs available.
Of course, they don’t really need any English at all if they intend to become GROs or trike drivers.
Anyway, like you, I’ve been puzzled at what the PDI’s position actually is on the matter.
Let me try to summarize the lay of the land.
At present we have a BILINGUAL policy on medium of instruction, but with Pilipino taking the bigger share over English since 55-60% of the curriculum is Pilipino and Makabayan (Social Studies) both taught largely in Pilipino. While Math, Science and English are taught in English with 40% of the curriculum allocated to them.
What Gullas basically wants to do is maintain the bilingual education policy but make the mix 70% English (or thereabouts) by introducing more English-based instrucdtion by increasing the curriculum time of Math Science and English.
What PDI wants, is a MULTILINGUAL education policy, very similar to Nene Pimentel’s 2007 proposal for ten mediums of instruction (English, Tagalog, Iloko, Pampango, Bicolano, Binisaya, Tausug, etc.)
PDI wants a Tower of Babel.
by the way, a number of metro-Manila residents talk in barok-Tagalog, too. Do this simple test — ask someone to give you directions on how to get from XYZ to the nearest Post Office or a specific restaurant. You may be surprised by the clarity (or vagueness) of how metro-Manila residents express themselves.
eric gamalinda, the ny based writer, puts it this way: english is tongue ng ina mo!
djb, from time immemorial, you’ve been appropriating the term “mother tongue hypothesis” to mean the relative effectiveness of mother tongue over a foreign language as a medium of instruction, and here springs your objection. in strict linguistic parlance, however, the mother tongue hypothesis actually refers to the role of the mother tongue as the main source of interference in acquiring and/or honing skills in learning a foreign language. your meaning and the formal academic usage as applied in linguistics are poles (or is it false?) apart.
and if you insist that someone provides you with scientific evidence as regards the effectiveness what you call “mother tongue hypothesis”, go google instead jim cummins’ notion of “linguistic interdependence hypothesis”, which i think is more relevant in the argument for pushing and maintaining the bilingual language policy. and yes, you can always email him at university of alberta where scientific studies (i.e., research based on experimental grounds) regarding his hypothesis are abundantly conducted.
p.s. how goes your reading of steven pinker’s “language instinct”?