May Tama Ba o Maling Lingwahe sa Edukasyon?: Why speaking in tongues is essential to national identity

Image not mine

Much has been said – for and against – the Department of Education’s (DepEd) recent shift to Mother Tongue Based-Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE).  Proponents assert that the utilization of the language/s that school children use at home will facilitate learning for students, resulting to more confident, effective and active learners as evidenced by the results of numerous studies conducted locally and abroad, which show marked differences in performance levels of students under the MTB-MLE over students exposed to traditional mono and bilingual education.  Critics, meanwhile, assert that such a move is impractical, even downright ambitious, given the meager resources of the government vis-à-vis the enormity of the required financial outlay and logistical difficulties contingent with its implementation.  At best, they contend, the MTB-MLE program is a noble initiative that will fizzle out in the end because of the above cited barriers.  Furthermore, they argue that it will weaken our nation’s advantage in English proficiency, which is instrumental in the migration of Business Process Outsourcing companies to our local shores and the almost seamless transition of local labor exports to foreign lands – both valuable dollar contributors to the Philippine coffers.

The challenges facing the implementation of the MTB-MLE program are real, varied and daunting.  However, I am of the position that it should be given the best chance to succeed and mature by allowing the program to undergo the process of distillation and fine tuning as it inevitably goes through the initial setbacks and growing pains of its first few years. 

While MTB-MLE is primarily an educative strategy, I believe that sustaining it will result to a much more important and far-reaching consequence – the crystallization of a national identity, something that previous lingual policies, which placed much credence on the dominant language Tagalog and the supposed universal language English, have failed to do.

There are roughly 93 million Filipinos who are fragmented not just by more than 7,000 islands, but also by 180 live languages.  Such is the diversity in our peoples’ ethnicity that it would seem impossible to unite the country, let alone conceive a palpable sense of self.  Attempts to cobble a unified front often involved introducing some sort of symbol that proponents hope will galvanize the citizens into thinking or feeling the same way – national this, national that.  There is no specific designated National language except for the generic term Filipino, which is loosely applied to mean any of the 180 languages.  In practice, however, because Tagalog is the language most used and understood by majority of Filipinos whether as a first or second language, it is often considered as the de facto national language.  This dates back to 1935 when, fresh from the supposed independence from America, the framers of the Philippine constitution elevated it to premier language status.  What this designation essentially institutionalized was to impress on non-native Tagalog speakers, that their mother tongue – and their culture, for that matter -- is not as important as Tagalog.

Language is identity; identity is sense of self.  When you are told to use someone else’s tongue, you lose your sense of self because the validity of your identity is compromised.  We, as a people, began losing our identity some 600 years ago when Spanish colonizers imposed Spanish as the medium of instruction inside the classroom.  We lost our pride in our culture when the Spaniards derisively called our ancestors barbarians for having their own religion, government system, values and way of living.  A new set of Filipinos emerged from this imposition.  They were well versed in Spanish, dressed in the same manner, shared the same value system.  Unfortunately, these new educated and landed elite will, for centuries, define the dichotomy of the Philippine society.

The desecration of the Filipino continued and became almost irreversible when the Americans came and asserted their Big Brother colonialistic approach, again centered on introducing English as the official language of education, even bringing in a boatload of soldier-teachers from the mainland to consummate the subjugation of the Filipino mind.  Like a chameleon, the Filipino elite changed language and colonial preference, even as the societal makeup remain unchanged: A ruling class that is far outnumbered by the poor and downtrodden whose hope for improving their lot in life lies in either serving the society’s cream or acquiring their language through colonial-based education.

The nation would have had the perfect opportunity to reverse this colonial malady when the Philippine Commonwealth was formed in 1935, which came with the chance to forge a new constitution and a fresh start to seek its identity.  But alas, Tagalog, the dominant language, was chosen to represent the nation of 180 languages.  And the Filipino perpetuates colonialism, this time subjugating his own, the result of which we see and feel till this very day: non-native Tagalog speakers being ridiculed for their hard-accented Tagalog, pretentious families in rural communities training their children to speak in Tagalog rather than in their mother tongue, and hardluck probinsyanos flocking to Metro Manila, where they are misinformed that progress and a better life remain in wait – all because they are made to believe that their mother tongue should take a back seat for a dominant language.

It is about time that we acknowledge our country for what it is, and its people for who they are.  We are a nation of 7,107 islands. There is nothing wrong with that. We are a people 93 million strong, speaking 180 languages.  There is nothing wrong with that either.  We lost our identity and pride through language and education.  We will regain them the same way. MTB-MLE should be given the chance to prosper and work its effect on our collective pride, one language at a time.

This is an essay for my graduate school course Socio-Cultural Foundations of Education at UP Diliman.