Critics of mother tongue removal do not know what they are talking about

As expected, the enactment of Republic Act No. 12027, which discontinues the use of mother tongue as a medium of instruction from kindergarten to Grade 3, drew a howl of protest from mother tongue advocates. To date, however, they have yet to address the rationale of the legislation.

The incorporation of the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education in the K-12 curriculum was based on studies conducted in homogeneous schools, but there is no evidence to prove that the MTB-MLE is effective in multilingual settings.

Neither have the critics of RA 12027 commented on its provision allowing the usage of the MTB-MLE in monolingual classes. Apparently, they want to continue the blanket application of the MTB-MLE, despite the fact that it was based on studies done in monolingual settings. Despite its myriad native languages and dialects, the country also hardly has any monolingual schools.

The Department of Education (DepEd) in the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR), which saw the folly of the MTB-MLE and stopped its usage two years ahead of the awakening of Congress, is convinced the MTB-MLE does not work even in monolingual classes. DepEd-CAR Regional Memorandum No. 377, series of 2022, (Regional Implementation of the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE)), which restored Filipino and English as mediums of instruction from kindergarten to Grade 3 in the region in 2022, does not make any exemption. Not even in the schools in Lubuagan, Kalinga—the locale of the Lubuagan experiment, the main evidence used by the DepEd to convince the Congress to institutionalize the MTB-MLE.

Between Congress and the DepEd-CAR, without question, the latter has more authority to speak on what is best for Filipino learners, and that’s not only because it acted more promptly on the disastrous language policy than the former.

The region topped the Grade 6 National Achievement Test in 2016 and 2017 and was fourth in 2018. CAR was second in 2017 and in 2018 in the Grade 10 NAT. In the Programme for International Student Assessment, the region was fourth in 2018 and second in 2022.

Strangely, Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino Commissioner Melchor Orpilla cited the Lubuagan experiment as proof that the mother tongue is effective, saying that under the study, the usage of the native language Lilibuagen as a medium of instruction led to a 40 percent ”improvement in educational outcomes.” What counts after the national implementation of the MTB-MLE is that when the pioneer CAR MTB-MLE products took the Grade 6 NAT in 2018, the region lost 9.50 percentage points or 19.63 percent of its English score compared to its 2017 score which was the reason it tumbled from first to fourth in the rankings that year.

The statement of Alliance of Concerned Teachers chair Vladimer Quetua that the DepEd asserted that the use of the mother tongue as the first language of instruction would allow students to develop a ”strong foundation in their native languages before adding additional languages” betrays the utter illogic and detachment from reality of MTB-MLE advocates.

For more than a century, Filipino children, including MTB-MLE advocates themselves have learned English starting in Grade 1, with English as medium of instruction. The English proficiency level of Filipino learners has never been lower than it was during the implementation of the MTB-MLE. When the first MTB-MLE batch took the Grade 6 NAT in 2018, the national English score fell by 5.71 percentage points or 14.14 percent. In contrast, in 2015, the English score rose by 0.57 percentage point or 1.53 percent over that of 2014.

Estanislao C. Albano Jr.,

[email protected]