Making Filipino optional

Do we Filipinos love Filipino?

My adorable three-year-old niece surely does. Her name is Chloe and she is a half-British, half-Filipino toddler living in Singapore. Chloe is slowly learning to master English, Filipino, and Mandarin. When we ask her to perform for us, she sings Bahay Kubo. When her grandfather commits a mistake, my auburn-haired, fair-skinned pamangkin, remarks, “Ay naku, ano ba ’yan?” Unlike many Filipino toddlers in our country (especially those living in gated subdivisions), she knows how to count from isa up to sampu. When she’s asked to identify Filipino fruits, she enumerates, “mansanas, saging and dandarandan (dalandan).

Despite her occasional failures to pronounce the hard Filipino words, I dare say Chloe is proud to be Filipino. 

Unfortunately, I am not so sure if I can say the same thing about the highly educated members of the CHED panel that created Memorandum (CMO) No. 20, series of 2013. The said memo has not made any provisions for colleges to teach advanced Filipino language and literature, or at the very least, have one or two General Education (GE) core courses (like History and Arts) be taught using Filipino. 

Bringing down Filipino to SHS is not the issue. After all, we may be seeing a future where not all Filipino youth will take college. Therefore, it is fully justifiable to bring down basic Filipino to Senior High School.

What has been a disappointment is their decision about what subject should replace the units that Basic Filipino vacated. For CHED, the teaching of Filipino is no longer necessary. Instead, students are encouraged to take up, among others, The Contemporary World (a subject that deals with globalization), Mathematics in the Modern World, and Science, Technology and the Society. If we have space for advanced subjects due to the transfer of basic Filipino to SHS, then why not create an advanced course about Filipino language and literature?

It is precisely this decision to disregard Filipino language and literature and, worse, provide the option for colleges to teach all General Education subjects in English that is a cause for concern and worry. It gives the impression that the CHED has found in SHS a convenient excuse to get rid of Filipino. 

To illustrate my point, take Math and our Chinese schools here in the Philippines. Chinese-Filipino students are so passionate about Math simply because teachers and parents put a high premium on the subject. In Chinese schools, they don’t just find time for Math, they create time for it. Never mind that the student takes remedial or advanced math classes after school. Never mind if s/he takes more of it during the weekend. It doesn’t matter as well if they miss school days because they had to represent their school in both local and international competitions. That is how a school regards a subject as important. And indeed, our Chinese-Filipino students have shown extraordinary achievement in the field by besting their counterparts from Singapore, Taiwan, and China in International Math Olympiads.

That is the same fervor and passion that CHED failed to demonstrate in their decision to deprive Filipino of its place in the GE core curriculum. Saying they no longer have to teach it because it has been taught in SHS is like saying we taught Filipino in K-12 so that we are over and done away with it like an ordinary prerequisite subject.

It is clear that nobody is out there to target and demean the Filipino language. But it is clear, too, that not many Filipinos love it with enough zeal and fervor so as to use it as a medium for academic and intellectual discussion. It is also clear that the CHED panel lacked members who had the capacity to think of ways by which they could elevate the teaching of Filipino even if they had the opportunity to do so, given the decongested tertiary curriculum. 

Is CHED unfairly targeting Filipino? I do not think so. Has CHED put the national language in danger? No, it has not. But are they promoting it with the passion and fervor that it deserves, being the sole medium that can make us understand what it means to be Filipinos? Is Filipino that important for CHED? Their answer thus far:

“It’s only optional.”