The Great Language Debate Friday, April 27, 2007
The Philippine government's pursuit of English as the primary mode of instruction in schools can be attributed to its direction of molding a workforce for the global economy.
The more English-proficient overseas Filipino workers the government can send out and the larger number of call center agents that universities can churn out, the better it would be for an economy driven by human capital.
As in the case of every misplaced priority, the policy runs counter to research studies showing that children, whose early education is in the language of their home, tend to do better in the later years of their education. (Thomas and Collier, George Mason University, 1997)
It also completely ignores a World Bank study (Dutcher and Tucker, 1994) that says:
-Individuals most easily develop literacy skills in a familiar language.The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization believes that it is the basic right of a child to be taught in his or her mother tongue.
- Individuals most easily develop cognitive skills and master content material when they are taught in a familiar language.
- Cognitive/academic language skills, once developed, and content subject material, once acquired, transfer readily from one language to another.
- The best predictor of cognitive/academic language development in a second language is the level of development of cognitive/academic language proficiency in the first language.
- If the goal is to help the student ultimately develop the highest possible degree of content mastery and second language proficiency, time spent instructing the child in a familiar language is a wise investment.
Beyond the preachy rhetorics, other studies on bilingual and multi-lingual methods of education across the world also show that students do better in school if they are taught in their mother tongue instead of an English-only medium of instruction.
If there is indeed a need for students to learn English, University of Southern California's Stephen Krashen (1999) believes that giving a child good education in the primary language allows English input to be more comprehensible.
Why is Malacañang then so petulant on insisting an English-homogenized medium of instruction in schools?
Update: Retired Supreme Court justice Isagani Cruz led a group of educators who filed a case before the High Court today to nullify a Malacañang executive order and subsequent Department of Education rules and regulations requiring the use of English as the principal medium of instruction in schools.
Labels: education, english, language, linguistics, Philippines
posted by Jojo Pasion Malig @ 4:33 PM,
