Commentary
Mother-tongue education is way to go
By Isabel Pefianco Martin | Philippine Daily Inquirer
11/01/2008
At a recent policy research forum hosted by SEAMEO Innotech, language education specialists from the Department of Education, the National Economic and Development Authority, Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino [Commission on Filipino Language], Summer Institute of Linguistics, and others from educational and non-government institutions, including the Linguistic Society of the Philippines, gathered to discuss “Language of Learning: Models and Best Practices.”
It became crystal clear to all present that mother-tongue education should be the way to go so that basic education in the Philippines would truly move forward.
The reasons behind promoting mother-tongue education do not seem to be evident to many educators and lawmakers in this country, even if the concept is almost axiomatic to the rest of the world. How else do we explain the fact that there are 205 co-authors of
House Bill 305, which seeks to make English the sole medium of instruction in Philippine schools?
In the Philippines, mother-tongue education is already being practiced with success. The Lubuagan First Language Experiment, conducted by the Summer Institute of Linguistics in close collaboration with the Department of Education, revealed that students taught in their native language performed much better in Math, Science, English, and Filipino achievement tests. In fact today, first-language teaching in Lubuagan is no longer experimental. It was so successful that the community decided to adopt it as the norm.
The Lubuagan experience proves that mastery of content is best achieved through mother tongue-based teaching. Mother-tongue education allows students to bridge from their first languages to the second languages, including the two official languages, Filipino and English.
Mother-tongue education does not have to be implemented in formal school settings alone. This is evident in the basic literacy experience of the Pulangiyen tribal community of Bukidnon. At the Policy Research Forum hosted by SEAMEO Innotech, Fr. Pedro Walpole, S.J. presented an approach that combined culture-based education and the basic education curriculum of the Department of Education, necessarily founded on mother-tongue education. This ultimately deepened the schoolchildren’s ownership of their culture. Father Walpole estimates that there are about 300 informal educational activities throughout Mindanao that are similar to the mother-tongue basic literacy efforts in Pulangiyen, Bukidnon. Unfortunately, these informal settings continue to elude the Department of Education’s attention.
The idea of mother-tongue education in the Philippines is certainly not new. The 1948-1954 Iloilo Experiment in Education Through the Vernacular has already shown the benefits of teaching in the first language. The 1991 Congressional Commission on Education included the use of home languages in its policy recommendations. Similar recommendations were made in the 1998 Philippine Education Sector Study of the ADB and World Bank, the report of the 2000 Presidential Commission on Educational Reform, and the National Learning Strategy of the 2008 Department of Education Basic Education Sector Reform Agenda.
Despite the popularity of HB Bill 305, An Act to Strengthen and Enhance the Use of English as the Medium of Instruction in Philippine Schools, within the seemingly uninformed confines of the Philippine legislature, mother-tongue education continues to gain advocates among language professionals, teachers, and parents.
The Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino was the first to issue a statement endorsing mother-tongue education by supporting House Bill 3719, also known as the Multilingual Education and Literacy Act, authored by Rep. Magtanggol Gunigundo of Valenzuela City.
The Philippine Business for Education, one of the largest associations of businessmen in the country, adopted the UNESCO position that the mother tongue is essential for literacy in any setting. In May 2008, delegates to the Nakem Conference held at St. Mary’s University in Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya, passed a resolution supporting HB 3719.
In September, the Linguistic Society of the Philippines, one of the oldest and most prestigious associations of language researchers in the country,
gave its full support for the Gunigundo bill.
The National Economic and Development Authority, through Director General Ralph Recto, cited the harmony of HB 3719 with the goals of the Philippine Education for All (EFA) 2015 Plan and the Updated Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP) 2004-2010.
Even parents are supportive of mother-tongue education. Some Parents-Teachers and Community Associations (PTCA) have already issued statements of support for HB 3719, among them, the PTCA of Marikina City and Rizal province, as well as the Public School District Supervisors Association of Marikina City. As of this writing, I have already received pledges from stakeholders in Cebu, Bicol, and Pangasinan.
Why must we insist on mother-tongue education? Dr. Aurelio Agcaoili, convener of the Nakem Conferences, sums it up eloquently:
“HB 3719 is a bold admission of a very simple but emancipatory principle of education: that each educand learns better and more productively if he learns what he is supposed to learn in his own language, and thus, in accord with the tools of his own culture.”
Local Language to be used in basic Eduation | House Bill 3719
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