Senate should go slow on House bill reinstating English

as medium of instruction
Bayan Muna Rep. Teddy Casiño today warned Senators not to rush a House-initiated
measure reverting the medium of instruction back to English, saying it would have
disastrous consequences on learning and the propagation of a distinct Filipino culture.

Casiño, former vice chair of the House Committee on Basic Education and one of seven
congressmen who opposed the recently-approved House Bill 4701, expressed
apprehension over the announcement of House Deputy Majority Leader Eduardo Gullas
that four senators have now supported the bill.

“The proposal to reinstate English as the medium of instruction is myopic. Being a knee-
jerk reaction to the demands of foreign employment agencies and call centers, it fails to
consider the full impact of language on education, culture, and national development,”
said Casiño.

He pointed out that the proposed measure ignores every single study made on language
and education, which all show that the native language is the best medium for learning
and cultural assimilation, especially in the basic levels. “In fact, in the hearings of HB
4701 itself, all the experts agreed that the native language was still the most effective in
terms of facilitating knowledge and socialization,” he stressed.

This was why the Congressional Education Commission (EdCom), which conducted the
most comprehensive assessment of the educational system in the early 1990s,
recommended the strengthening of the bilingual policy in education, added the young
solon.

“It is not the bilingual policy that is to blame for the decline of English but government’s
failure to equip our teachers and schools with the necessary funding and support to
properly implement a progressive bilingual policy. English has gotten worse not because
we have taught more Filipino than English, but because government has failed to improve
the educational system in general,” stressed Casiño.

“To illustrate, even if we make English the medium of instruction, as long as 70 to 100
students are crammed in a classroom, as long as we have a shortfall of more than 7,000
classrooms, more than 40,000 chairs and two million textbooks, and as long as we have
underpaid and undertrained teachers, I strongly doubt if English will improve in this
country,” he said.

“If English is the problem, then a drastic increase in the budgetary allocation for English
teachers and providing adequate teaching materials and facilities will do the trick. If they
want to improve math and science, the same thing should apply,” Casiño added.
In contrast, he said, countries like South Korea, China, and Japan are now aggressively
teaching English but as a second language and not at the expense of their native
languages. They are careful to continue using their own languages as their main medium
of instruction.

“No post-colonial country has ever developed using a foreign language as its medium of
instruction. Show me a developed country today and most assuredly, that country uses the
native language as its medium of instruction,” dared Casiño

Source: http://www.bayanmuna.net/?p=475