Why schools are failing our children (1)

root cause of degradation in the quality of education can be traced back to the uncontrolled population increase. the growth in educational logistics just cannot catch up with the increasing number of people. control population growth and everything else will improve.

the problem in the educational system in the country  lies/broken down as follows: 50% government/deped factor; 40% teacher factor and 10% parent factor. Its basics!

This is what we get if the government just keeps on experimenting with our education like a guinea pig. Hey take the cue of our asian neighbors – they are going English.  Globalization would left out people who speaks only their native tongue. Korean are here to steal our ONLY advantage – ENGLISH. Funny how our publishers translate foreign knolwedge, mostly science, when they only do most are changing the spelling of the foreign word to make it sound ours( e.g. technology to teknolihiya; platform to plataporma; chemical to kemikal; nuclear to nuklear; and so goes the long list).

I am not convinced with your arguments Mr. Congressman for the following reasons:

1. You are not a linguist yourself to speak with credibility on how students learn best in language learning; meaning, you need to be an language educator yourself to be able to speak with deep understanding about the empirical pieces of evidence that connect to language proficiency;
2. Your basis in authoring House Bill No. 162 is based on a couple or few studies, which need to be challenged by other language experts who work in the same field; your claims are not even fully cited to establish credibility (plagiarism? ask the experts);
3.Studies that are done in the US or in any other countries may not be applicable in other places considering several other factors (demography, culture, accessibility and frequency of use of the target language, and the list goes);
4. The real problem in education does not necessarily lie on the curriculum offered in our schools, it’s in the provision of ideal classroom setting that is not afforded to the Filipino children, i.e eliminate overcrowding, solve scarcity on the supply of materials, shortage of teachers and classroom, insufficient training for teachers, and corrupt education officials (I challenge that you lawmakers solve these problems first, then blame the curriculum on why our schools fail and still quality language acquisition is not achieved.);

I appreciate your noble purpose of trying to raise the quality of learning in the country; however, I challenge you to read extensively, balance your use of the sources, encourage our academicians to carry out extensive research based on local setting, then argue that the study done in this place is completely relevant  and applicable to our country.

I believe that you need to delimit the scope of your claim, meaning you should avoid hasty generalization. Why not claim, “This is one of the reasons why our schools fail our children”. However, I am afraid you wouldn’t as your proposition would appear weak and insignificant, the reason you want to magnify the circumstance.

Yes, English is vital in this globalized world. I personally have
been quite surprised when travelling to other nearby Asian countries and seen
how much English is sought after. I recently went to Vietnam after 10 years of
being away and a higher percentage of youth are able to converse in English
compared to before. The same observation for Cambodia. The opposite perhaps has
happened in the Philippines.

I do not think the mother tongues (i.e. the regional and local languages
including Kapampangan, Cebuano, Ilokano, etc.) are at fault for declining
English proficiency, as they have largely been excluded from education in the
last few decades. It is the heightened use of Tagalog/Filipino, both in schools
and in television, which has eroded English proficiency and at the same time
sidelined the other mother tongues. As Congressman Gunigundo notes, Filipino is
not the mother tongue of most Filipinos — learning is therefore slower and our
children are graduating not fully literate in ANY language.

I don’t completely agree with Congressman Gunigundo that the medium of
instruction is THE REASON why our schools our failing our children. It is a
factor though. And if using the mother tongue helps children pick up concepts
and gain literacy more quickly (which they can then apply to future second
languages), then I see how it can help English proficiency in the long run.

Those who would like to impose Filipino as the primary medium of instruction
across the country seem to have the weakest basis in my opinion. 1). They are
deluding themselves in thinking that Tagalog-based Filipino can be used like a
native language for everyone without serious communication barriers. Yes, the
majority of Filipino adults know how to speak it, but they learned it after
many years. For elementary schools students, it is simply not as transparent a
medium as their mother tongues would be. 2). It would further undermine English
proficiency. 3) It underestimates the backlash to such a policy. 4) It would be
an insensitive move against the country’s diverse groups. 5) It contravenes
international statutes that provide for the provision of education in
minorities’ mother tongues. In other words, a Filipino-dominated system would
not be pedagogically sound nor competitive economically nor socially
acceptable.

Mostly the reasons some people give for increased Tagalog-based Filipino use
are “national unity” and patriotism. I think this is naive and
insulting. Do they think Filipinos are so dumb and juvenile that we can’t
figure out a way to be at peace unless we all are linguistically and culturally
identical? Patriotism of the homogenizing kind is an atavism that has been
dwindling globally since World War II. It is not necessary for a country to be
uniform in order to be economically and socially stable. Take Switzerland for
example. Filipinos can learn and speak different languages and still be
Filipino and still love being Filipino. Meanwhile we have to embrace practical
advantages such as English. Therefore, dare I say it, we should go back to the
days of my parents when Tagalog was just a subject. English should be the
primary medium of instruction in university and high school. And the main
mother tongue of a municipality or province can be strategically used in
elementary for heightened comprehension, gradually transitioning to English.