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By Prof. Fred S. Cabuang
(Conclusion)
Sibayan (personal communication) has advocated a top-down approach,
in addition to the bottom-up approach. That is to say, instead of
relying on grade school teachers alone to use Filipino as a medium
of instruction and having a group of grade school writers from DECS
produce the teaching materials, selected universities should have
been given the task to identify professors who were both
knowledgeable in the field as well as competent in the language to
do massive teacher training for the upper grades and to create not
only textbooks but reference materials in Filipino to enable the
department to do a good job of making the transition. Unfortunately,
in spite of numerous surveys during the whole decade of the 1970s
and the early 1980s on the problems of implementing the program
through regional and provincial studies, teacher training by regions
was left to the initiative of the regional directors of the system.
Token seminars and workshops were held but systematic and detailed
training in the nitty-gritty of the use of the language, based on
classroom experiences, was inadequate; the task of speaking about
concepts and principles in social studies by Grade 5 was found to be
very difficult for ordinary classroom teachers.
Thus the findings of the 1985
national survey indicated that, in some schools, implementation had
just begun.
The 1987 scheme also recommended
that new materials be composed for non-Tagalog regions at the
initial transitional level, and it recommended the restoration of
the use of the home languages as “auxiliary languages,” a
recognition and legitimation of the ongoing practice of using
different media of instruction in class including the use of the
home language for explaining content taught in Filipino and in
English.
In the meantime, in an attempt to
restructure the language academy of the Philippines, a law was
passed in August 1991 under the Aquino administration establishing a
new language academy called Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (KWF)
[Commission on the Filipino Language] with an enlarged group of
board members representing different major and minor languages as
well as different academic disciplines. The Commission was charged
with the mission not only to develop Filipino as a language of
literature and as an academic language but likewise “to preserve
and develop the other languages.” The KWF is made up of a division
for linguistic research, a lexicography unit, a unit dealing with
Philippine languages other than Filipino, a section for the
dissemination of its findings through publications and workshops,
and an administrative unit.
Essentially, the KWF has the same
structure and basically the same personnel at present as the former
Institute of National Language (Linangan ng mga Wika sa Pilipinas),
except that an enlarged board now meets regularly to deliberate on
language policy and use and to advocate the expanded use of Filipino
in academic life.
After the ratification of the
1987 Constitution, which mandated Filipino and its development, as
well as clarified the official status of Pilipino and English, and
opened the door to using Filipino not only for the social sciences
but also for the natural sciences, regional centers for the
promotion of the Philippine national language were set up in
different universities in the provinces.
On constitutional grounds, the
local government of Cebu Province challenged the notion that
Filipino had already been recognized as the national language and
contended that Filipino was still in the process of development and
hence could not be imposed on the province. The Provincial Board
supported that proposal.
The KWF won its case for Filipino
in the lower court; the case is now on long-term appeal. In the
meantime, pending the appeal, English is once more being used in
teaching the social sciences, and the Filipino Language Class is the
only class in the curriculum using Filipino as both content and as
medium of instruction. This avoidance of the use of Filipino has
taken its toll on achievement in those subjects taught and tested in
Filipino in other parts of the country, a situation which the
Cebuanos have found difficult to accept. There is a strong petition
at present to have social studies tested not in Filipino but in
English, a policy that would favor Cebuanos. The DepEd has refused
to change the language of testing in the social sciences.
It seems that what is clear and
well stated in the Philippine Constitution is the official use of
English, a foreign language, while the other languages spoken in the
different regions are rendered “auxiliary” meaning
“supplementary” or “reserve.” Are the regional (or
provincial) population of the Philippines being told to use their
regional languages for communication and instruction only, if
Filipino and English cannot be used? Or are they being forced to use
Filipino and English only, since majority of the population speak
English and Tagalog?
Linguists, anthropologists,
language advocates and indigenous minorities are fighting for the
survival of the endangered languages in the world. Out of more than
6,000 languages that are spoken worldwide, linguistic experts
predict that at present rate, more than half of these languages will
perish from this earth in the next two or three decades.
Some of these are Philippine
languages.
While present laws favor the
dominance of Tagalog-based Pilipino or Filipino, there should also
be laws to preserve the other languages.
(Major Sources: The Language
Planning Situation in the Philippines, Bro. Andrew Gonzales, FSC,
Mckinley’s Questionable Bequest, Allan Bernardo, Summer Institute
of Linguistics and Ethnology Group)
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