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By the Coalition for a Correct
Language Policy
OUR coalition of educators,
writers and students has petitioned the Supreme Court to stop the
Department of Education from continuing to carry out Executive Order
210. That EO strengthens the use of English in the school system at
the expense of Filipino and other Philippine languages.
We are asking the Court to order
the administration to desist from carrying out EO 210 and any of its
implementing regulations, principally DepEd Order 36 S 2006. We
also ask the Court to declare EO 210 and DepEd Order 36 null and
void because these violate the Constitution.
The educators seeking EO 210 to
be repealed include Dr. Patricia Licuanan, President of Miriam
College; National Artists Bienvenido Lumbera and Virgilio Almario;
University of the Philippines sociologist Randolf David; President
of WIKA Inc., Isagani R. Cruz; and Efren Abueg, writer-in-residence
at De La Salle University. Atty. Pacifico A. Agabin, former dean of
the UP College of Law, is our legal counsel.
EO 210 and DepEd Order 36
Article 14 of the 1987
Constitution, which declares Filipino 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.” EO 210 and Department f Education Order
36 violate the Constitution. The implementation of EO 210 would
emaciate this constitutional provision propagating the use of
Filipino.
An important Congressional study
in 1991 refutes both EO 210 and a House bill with a similar intent,
written by Rep. Eduardo Gullas of the First District of Cebu.
HB 4701 on “Strengthening and
Enhancing the Use of English as the Medium of Instruction in
Philippine Schools,” certified as urgent by President Arroyo,
passed the House but was not acted on by the Senate in the
Thirteenth Congress.
The Gullas bill goes against the
findings of the Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM) in
1991.
The commission—made up of ten
senators and congressmen, and chaired by Sen. Edgardo J. Angara—recommended
specifically that Congress make the vernacular and Filipino the
medium of instruction for basic education.
The EDCOM report was written only
after 11 months of serious study. It became the basis for reform
laws that restructured the Department of Education and created a
separate Commission (CHED) to supervise higher education.
EDCOM also ordered the DepEd to
develop instructional materials in Filipino. EDCOM envisioned that
all subjects in elementary and high-school education—except
English and other languages—would be taught in Filipino by the
year 2000.
Pupils taught in mother
tongue learn faster
Dr. Licuanan, a psychologist, has
found that since students learn more and faster when taught in their
mother tongue, the emphasis on English in basic education “will
actually have a damaging effect on Filipino student learning.”
She says the “English-first”
policy will further disadvantage the Filipino poor who drop out of
school at elementary and secondary-school level.
According to DepEd’s
statistics, of every 10 pupils who enter Grade 1, only 5 finish
Grade 6. Only 2 students go on to high school but only 1 make it
through to college.
In most provinces, net enrollment
rates continue to decline, because of economic hardship. Negros
Oriental has begun to provide school lunches for some 135,000 pupils
in its 527 public elementary schools—in an effort to keep these
children in their classes.
Dr. Licuanan warns that early
dropouts revert to illiteracy. In 1989, functional illiterates made
up 16.8 percent of the Philippine population aged 10 years and
above.
These high dropout rates make an
effective way of teaching at elementary level imperative. The very
limited time that so many Filipino children spend in school must be
put to the best use.
English-first policy
will hurt learning
Former Education Undersecretary
Juan Miguel Luz has associated himself with our (the petitioners’)
complaint. He points out that the emphasis on English is
“misleading and dangerous” because it will force both the young
learners and their teachers to concentrate on the language and not
on Science and Math and literacy, which are more basic to learning.
Luz cites Unesco’s studies
which show that young children learn how to read and to do sums
faster and better when taught in their home-language.
These international findings were
validated at the national level by research in Bukidnon province.
There, the Summer Institute of Linguistics teaches indigenous people
in their mother tongue. The Bukidnon pupils score relatively high in
literacy and numeracy tests given by the Department of Education.
(Concluded tomorrow)
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