Teaching basic education through the language spoken by the child at home is both a policy and a widespread practice among the more developed countries across Asia, such as in Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong, Chinese Taipei and Japan. Not surprisingly, these countries are the top five (in that order) in the 2003 Trends in International Math and Science Studies (TIMSS) tests. This again validates existing international and national evidence that the use of the mother tongue leads to better learning outcomes.

Unfortunately, this distinct learning advantage does not accrue to the typical Filipino grade school learner. That’s because existing national policy prescribes English and Filipino as the mode of instruction.

Dr. Jose V. Abueva, a founding trustee of the Foundation for Worldwide People Power (FWWPP) and a member of the Presidential Task Force for Education, now seeks to invigorate basic education by advocating the use the learner’s mother tongue throughout the elementary grades. Abueva’s stand on mother language education (MLE) resonates well among the country’s top educators and linguists.

Abueva’s proposal actually leverages a constitutional provision that allows the use of the local languages as auxiliary media of instruction.

Abueva explains that “both Filipino and English are used as language of instruction from the earliest years of schooling but these can become obstacles to learning if the children are unfamiliar with either, and the teachers are not proficient in them. Thus some teachers use the mother tongue persistently although unofficially.”

Dr. Abueva says the aim is “to focus on learning for effective education, nationhood, and citizen participation in democratic governance and the national development. It is imperative that the Filipinos are enabled to speak, read and write in their mother tongue and thereby help sustain the nation’s linguistic and cultural diversity and identity.”

The Gunigundo Bill, House Bill 3719, the proposed Multilingual Education and Literacy Act, likewise promotes mother tongue use from Grades 1-6 and the honing of the learner’s skills in English and Filipino as separate subjects before being used as primary media of instruction in high school.

The Gunigundo Bill ostensibly seeks to strengthen the Filipino learner’s proficiency in English, seen by many as the key to upward mobility. But what about Math and Science, which are and always have been the foundation for genuine national development?

Four years ago, then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia suddenly stirred a hornet’s nest by directing the country’s school administrators to replace Bahasa Melayu with English as the official medium of instruction throughout the federal states of Malaysia. Mahathir was driven by the notion that grade-schoolers’ minds and tongues adapt faster to the languages of the Age of Computers and the Information Technology regime—and this would help as well to improve the teaching of Math and Science.

Teachers’ associations of Chinese-managed schools, joined by a number of Melayu-speaking teachers, defied the directive. Today, in practice, the mother tongues are still dominant: the Chinese tongue prevails in Chinese grade schools and Bahasa Melayu in government-run schools. However, the use of English has been on the rise, most likely because using the mother tongue is the optimal way to teach a child to learn a second language.

Ateneo de Manila University president Fr. Bienvenido Nebres, SJ, who heads the Presidential Task Force on Education, wrote several years ago:

“My own experience growing up was that the first language in which I really read a lot was Ilocano. The first long novels that I read when I was six years old were in Ilocano. They used to put out these novelas based on the Bannawag ( a weekly magazine). So the first long writings I read, hundred-page things, were in Ilocano. And I believe that was useful. The fact that you get to reading text in Ilocano transfers later on to reading text in English, and so forth.”

In a preparatory meeting to discuss their final report to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the consensus in the Presidential Task Force for Education (PTFE) was to “recommend the use of the mother tongue or regional language as a language of instruction in the early years of schooling.” The members of the PTFE all agreed that “the mother tongue facilitates the students’ learning of all subjects, including science and mathematics, the national language, and English as a global lingua franca.”

Meanwhile, the committee on basic education has just approved for plenary discussion House Bill 4701, authored by Rep. Eduardo Gullas of the first district of Cebu province. The Gullas Bill calls for the exclusive use of English in the elementary and secondary levels. If HB 4701 is enacted, heaven forbid, it would seriously set back all efforts to achieve quality learning and Education for All by 2015.

Dr. Ricardo Ma. Duran Nolasco is a board member of the Linguistic Society of the Philippines, faculty member of the University of the Philippines Department of Linguistics, and adviser of the Foundation for Worldwide People Power on Mother Language Education Initiatives. Arnold Molina Azurin is a researcher affiliated with the Archaeological Studies Program and a fellow of the Center for Integrative and Development Studies of University of the Philippines, Diliman.