K-12 mother tongue-rule to test teachers in Basic Ed

By KARLON N. RAMA

CEBU CITY – A component in the government’s K-12 program is giving educators from the Visayas and Mindanao headaches. Incidentally, it is that which teachers are supposed to be already good enough at – use of the local language or dialect.

“How are we expected to teach in the mother tongue when we, here in Cebu, don’t even have a standard in Bisaya?” posed Aurelio Vilbar, a faculty member of the University of the Philippines (UP) Cebu College, echoing what he said were sentiments common among fellow educators.

And it is something that needs to be addressed, particularly in the Visayas and Mindanao, where the local languages are as diverse as the people, added Rev. Fr. Enrico Peter Silab, OAR.

“The Cebuano will speak Sugbuanon, the Ilongo their Hiligaynon, and those from Tacloban and Samar will speak their Waray-waray. In Mindanao, there are the Danao languages of the Maranaw and the Maguindanaon, the Bahasa Sug of the Tausug, and the various languages of the indigenous communities like the Blaan, the Tboli, the Manobos and the Teduray among others,” he said.

Vilbar, together with Dr. Edizon Fermin of the Philippine Association for Language Teaching (PALT), were among the facilitators of a three-day workshop attended by some 300 educators from the Visayas and Mindanao and which closed at the University of San Jose-Recoletos (USJ-R) last July 13.

The training, organized by the Catholic Educators Association of the Philippines (CEAP), centered on the use of the mother tongue – defined as “the first language learned by a child” and mandated as a “learning resource” under Republic Act 10533, which is colloquially referred to as the K-12 law – in teaching Basic Education.

 

Land of many languages

Silab, who is the president of USJ-R, the regional head of CEAP in the Visayas and who sits as vice president for CEAP at the national level, cited the need for educators, particularly Catholic educators, to support each other for capacity-building in the use of the mother tongue and to remain aligned with government goals.

“In CEAP, we speak the same language, the language of a Catholic education that affects positively the lives of people,” he said. USJ-R is hosting a three-day national gathering of Catholic educators and educators belonging to non-CEAP member schools on September 25 to further discuss K-12 related issues.

Vilbar, on the other hand, is urging the academe and media houses, particularly those running publications in the Visayas and Mindanao that are in the mother tongue, to sit down and jointly develop or agree on a standard, adding that this is also one way for the conservation of the local language.

He spoke of a short story in English that were translated separately. One had the word “sibsiban” and the other has “balilihan”, both of which pupils could not readily understand. If expressed in English, both terms denote pasture or grazing land.

One challenge, cited a workshop participant from Mindanao, is that very little government resource has been allocated for the development of language other than that of the currently Tagalog-heavy Filipino, leading other languages

Vilbar said this can be addressed by the intervention of private entities, like the media houses, because they have traditionally served the role as conservator of language, broadcasting or publishing the way they do in the mother tongue.

The greater challenge is resistance from educators, he maintained.

“Most Cebuano prefer English”, Vilbar told participants, because it is the “language of aspiration” among Filipinos and “those who are proficient enjoy a certain kind of status” among their peers.

“Basta maayo mo English, bright dayun,” he said.

Likewise, he added, teachers prefer using English in the belief that children “are more comfortable” with it, particularly those who have middle class parents.

Not exactly true

A survey done in randomly selected schools in Cebu City – done as part of a nationwide study – showed, among other things, that teachers of social sciences here use English in teaching Philippine history and that they were more comfortable with that medium of instruction than they were using Filipino.

“However, we tested in what areas a child have higher grades. Mas dako siya ug score sa Filipino. If teachers taught that in Filipino, mas sayun siguro para sa estudyante. The problem is the attitude of the teacher,” Vilbar stressed.

Thus, he pointed out, the impression that most children are more comfortable with English as a medium of instruction, isn’t exactly true.

“Matod pa sa usa ka bata ‘sa among eskuylahan, dili ko kasabot sa akong maestro; sigi man gud siya og English nya dili man mi mag English sa balay’. And many Filipinos are like this. Maybe they are not used to that, because they are in the public schools. Gamay ra ang dato, kasagaran g’yud sa atong mga Pilipino pobre,” he maintained.

The high attrition rate among grade 1 pupils is partly due, Vilbar argued, to the erroneous belief that children learn better with English.

“One of the reasons is the teacher’s English, the intimidating English. To some kids, makahadlok g’yud ang English,” he maintained. 

Findings

Vilbar cited the paradox in the 2003-2004 National Achievement Test results, where kids in Cebu City scored high in math but low in English.

Since the Department of Education (DepEd) currently follow a bilingual education policy, he said, where math is taught in English, the result should have shown a correspondingly low score in math, given how children were deficient in the language used in teaching math.

“What could the reason for this be? The teacher did not use English in math but the mother tongue. Since the teacher is violating the DepEd law, congratulations kay mas effective man sad kay masabtan man ug i-Binisaya,” Vilbar argued.

He cited an experiment carried out in a school in Lahug, Cebu City. A class with students who were generally described to be poorly performing in academic assessments were taught using the mother tongue and, after a predetermined time, were assessed to now be performing better than the pilot class.

“After two years, the study has proven that the students taught with the mother tongue as the medium of instruction has still excelled than those who were not,” he pointed out.

Spiral progression

Under the government’s K-12 program, children in grade 1 will be taught exclusively in the mother tongue. In grade two, the mother tongue is still predominantly used, with Filipino words slowly getting introduced into the vocabulary.

In grade three, where science, math, reading and languages will be introduced, the mother tongue is still predominantly used, though the medium of instruction for social studies will be Filipino, to introduce the concept of national identity.

Grade three in K-12 is crucial because it is also here were English is introduced.

In the fourth grade, English becomes the medium of instruction for science and math in parallel with the now budding cognitive development of the child.

“Our brain needs 5-10 years to learn academic English. We must be train with the mother tongue from 4-5 years first to make our brain be ready to learn another language which is English,” Vilbar said.

“What will then happen to child having English as their language at home, given they must be using the mother tongue at school? They could just adapt, since the Cebuano counting language, for example, is multi-lingual,” he added.

This continues until high school, until the 10^th grade, where other languages can be offered.

“You can offer a language that is marketable in your perspective. In UP, we offer Arabic. Through offering these, we are into the idea of peace process, understanding people better,” Vilbar narrated.

Dr. Fermin, for his part, stressed that teaching this way awakens the enthusiasm of children to learn other languages, rather than intimidate them.

“Study skill is a general term for techniques and strategies that help a person read or listen for specific purposes with the intent to remember. Domains of literacy are taught first through mother tongue, after which the domains of literacy are taught in the second language then to the third language. Therefore, students now can understand in three languages. Shifting to reading in second language can be taught through experience or oral language and or printed symbols,” he said.

“Students who are literate in the first language should be able to carry their knowledge and skills to reading in the second language provided that they are adequately exposed to the second language and they motivated to acquire it,” he added.