No to teaching Tagalog in higher education!

I had fun when I attended the Public Consultation by the Commission on Higher Education on the proposed use of Filipino in teaching the General Education Courses and the addition of Filipino as a Core Course at the Parklane Hotel last Tuesday morning. At the podium was Dr. Ma. Cristina Padolina, CHED Technical Panel for General Education, Dr. Amelia Biglete Director IV Office of Programs and Standards Development, Dr. Freddie Bernal of CHED Region VII and Dr. Isagani Cruz, who writes a column for the Philippine Star and a CHED consultant.

Though I was a bit late, I didn't waste time and gave these CHED officials a piece of my mind. I gave them a very clear message that studying the Filipino language, which is 99.9% taken from the Tagalog language would only bring down the average of our college students because Tagalog is not an easy language to learn. Indeed, even my Tagalog friends admit that their children have a difficult time learning Tagalog in school even if they spoke this language.

Above all, I told the panel that even if I got a top notch grade in Tagalog and put it in my curriculum vitae when I'm looking for a job… chances are, the fellow seeking the same job who speaks no Tagalog, but is fluent in English would get that job. So I told the panel… why are they holding this consultation in the first place? We believe that when a student goes to higher education, there should be academic freedom.

As I said earlier, I had fun at this consultation because Cebu is the heartland of Cebuano speakers and we want to preserve our Cebuano culture and I wasn't alone as many attendees spoke their minds about the issue… one even dared to ask…"Isn't having so many units of Tagalog in elementary and high school not enough… that we should teach Filipino also in college? Of course, there were a couple of Tagalistas in that forum. If you didn't know, a Tagalista is a person who promotes Tagalog nationalism through the use of our national language.

There was one lady who spoke after I finished my talk and she insisted that we should support our national language. Not many people know that in the United States of America, they do not have a national language. This is why Federalism is one way we can preserve our language and culture. Alas, we are still very much a centralized form of government, which is why one ethnic group is forcing their language upon the rest of the Philippines.

I then reminded the panel about the book that came out last year entitled "Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty" by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson and the operative word they used is "Inclusive Growth." So I asked them, why should our language be exclusive only to Tagalog when we have many languages in the Philippines? Someone used Japan as an example, but that is comparing apples to oranges. The Japanese have only one language, Nippongo except in the Islands of Okinawa, which has a different language, while the Philippine archipelago has a diverse culture and languages.

Incidentally, Kenneth J. Arrow, a Nobel Laureate in Economics in 1972 gave his comments about the book "Why Nations Fail." He said, "The authors convincingly show that countries escape poverty only when they have appropriate economic institutions, especially private property and competition. More originally, they argue countries are more likely to develop the right institutions when they have an open pluralistic political system with competition for political office, a widespread electorate, and openness to new political leaders."

There you go, now you have a general idea why the Philippines is still poor and virtually a failed state, despite the billions of pesos that our overseas foreign workers  remit to our country annually despite our healthy economy. This is due to the fact that this country is ruled by a political elite, many of who are now being sent to jail or under hospital arrest because of the pork barrel scam. The political elite is currently being ruled by Pres. Benigno Aquino III, who like his mother Pres. Cory Aquino, always love to speak in Tagalog in their speeches both here and abroad.

In February 1986 when Tita Cory took over the reins of the Philippine government after the People's Power Revolution in EDSA, she threw away the Marcos Constitution of 1973, the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant and everything that was Marcos, except his policy on the national language and even went further by signing an executive order ordering all gov't offices of agencies that the official communication must be done in Tagalog. Thankfully, then Cebu Governor Emilio "Lito" Osmeña filed a case against that executive order and won. I dare say it is time for CHED to go global and drop the issue on teaching Tagalog in higher education.

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