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Educators, writers and students trooped to the
Supreme Court on Friday to challenge the Arroyo administration’s
language policy.
They petitioned the Court to stop
the Department of Education from continuing to carry out Executive
Order 210 strengthening the use of English in the school system at
the expense of Filipino and the other Philippine languages.
The petitioners described the
policy as both “unconstitutional and mistaken.”
The petitioners are asking the
Court to issue a writ of preliminary injunction or a temporary
restraining order—telling the administration to desist from
carrying out EO 210 and any of its implementing regulations.
They are also asking the Supreme
Court to declare EO 210 and DepEd Order No. 36, S 2006 null and
void, saying these are in violation of the Constitution.
The educators seeking a repeal of
EO 210 include Dr. Patricia Licuanan, president of Miriam College;
National Artists Bienvenido Lumbera and Virgilio Almario; University
of the Philippines sociologist Randolf David; Isagani R. Cruz,
president of WIKA Inc.; and Efren Abueg, writer in residence at De
La Salle University.
They are represented by Pacifico
A. Agabin, former dean of the UP College of Law.
The petitioners claim that EO 210
and Department of Education Order No. 36 (which operationalizes EO
210) patently violate Article XIV of the 1987 Constitution.
The 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 educators claimed that the
implementation of EO 210 would emaciate the constitutional policy of
propagating the use of Filipino. They cited a 1991 congressional
study to refute both EO 210 and a House bill with a similar intent,
written by Cebu First District Rep. Eduardo Gullas.
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 a Congressional Commission on Education (Edcom) in 1991.
The commission—made up of 10
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, written after
an 11-month study, became the basis for reform laws that
restructured the Department of Education and created a separate
commission to supervise higher education.
Edcom also ordered the DepEd to
develop instructional materials in Filipino. It envisioned that all
subjects in elementary and high-school education—except English
and other languages—would be taught in Filipino by the year 2000.
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