Why the Filipino subject shouldn’t be removed from college curriculum

It is common for this generation to not know the Filipino language although they are born and raised here in the Philippines. Speaking from personal experience, a lot of my classmates aren’t fluent or don’t understand or speak the language well, hence them getting low grades in Filipino. I am the only or one of few people in the class who is fluent in speaking Tagalog, which saddens me as the beauty of our language isn’t appreciated enough.

The Supreme Court upheld as constitutional the order of the Commission of Higher Education to remove mandatory Filipino subjects from the college curriculum. Tagalog is not a dying language, but removing mandatory Filipino subjects in college can be a factor in killing the language. It may also cause what they call “cultural genocide.” An aspect of cultural genocide is the eradication of all dialects.

Mandatory Filipino subjects should be brought back. Even young people are aware of the effects of our language not being taught by parents, so why even remove it from the curriculum?

Many say that Filipino is a useless subject in college. They say that speaking in English looks good in the eyes of a foreigner. But we also have to take into consideration our roots. The Filipino subject tackles not only the language but also our culture. If we start to forget our language let alone our culture, how will it impact our sense of nationalism? Nationalism unites Filipinos.

People say that we’re proud of our country. But how can that nationalism be preserved if the ones that are proud of our country don’t even know how to speak our language? Understanding our past is understanding how the present was shaped. History and culture give us identity. A part of our culture is language.

As a child, I frequently visited my grandparents during the weekends. Both my grandmother and grandfather would speak to me in Filipino so that I would be able to learn it. When I was about three or four years old, I knew how to say full sentences in Tagalog. By the time I was in kindergarten, I got a 100-percent average for Filipino on my report card. I am now in sixth grade and I have retained my perfect scores in Filipino. My classmates would often ask me to translate words for them and I was given the nickname “English to Filipino dictionary.”

Last year, I joined a Filipino essay writing contest and won first place. From then, my classmates would ask me for help with Filipino. I concluded that perhaps most of my classmates weren’t spoken to in Tagalog as a child so they weren’t able to learn it.

Our language embodies our ideals and aspirations. Our language may consist of words that have come from the Spanish language, but what about those words in our language that don’t exist in any other language? Some say that Filipino is useless as a subject and should be replaced with a subject that’s more “important,” but that is irrelevant as most developed countries appreciate and retain their culture, their roots, and their history.

Are we suggesting that the English language is superior to our own? Do we study English to serve or worship some other country and not Filipino, not even thinking about conserving our patrimony to serve, respect, and honor our country?

MARIA DEANNA BATOON TONG
Colegio San Agustin Makati