Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, June 21) —Faith-based group Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) Philippines believes suspending the use of mother tongue as main medium of instruction in early basic education will do more harm than good.
During a Senate basic education committee hearing on Wednesday, SIL Philippines representatives said their work on the ground shows young children absorb lessons best if these are taught in their mother tongue.
“Kapag ang bata natuto doon sa strongest language niya ng isang konsepto, hindi nawawala yung konsepto na yun. I-le-label mo lang siya na ibang lengguwahe, pero ang konsepto ay natutunan na hindi na yun mawawala,” SIL Philippines consultant Maria Osorio-Van Zante explained.
[Translation: When a child learns a concept from his strongest language, it never leaves him. It can be labeled in another language, but the learned concept does not disappear.]The committee on Wednesday took up updates on the implementation of the government’s mother tongue-based education program for kindergarten to grade 3 students.
House Bill 6717, approved last February, was also discussed. The measure seeks to suspend mother tongue-based education until the Department of Education (DepEd) addresses the lack of learning materials written in the languages used in the program.
Currently, the program uses 19 languages including Ilokano, Waray, Chavacano, and Sinurigaonon.SIL Philippines also noted the importance for the DepEd to assess if certain mother tongue languages are still widely used among children in their communities.For example, Kapampangan, in some communities it is vital but there are communities where not all children speak it anymore so we have to adjust and find out which communities are really using Kapampangan,” said SIL Philippines consultant Ryn Gonzales.Most of the discussion is on language diversity but we also have this language endangerment issue in our hands,” Gonzales added.SIL is an international non-profit group that helps in language research and development in local communities. According to their website, literacy and bible translation are among the group’s core contributions.Former Komisyon ng Wikang Filipino chair and retired University of the Philippines linguistics professor Ricardo Nolasco is also pushing for the continuation of the mother tongue-based education.He is especially against the removal of the mother tongue as a separate subject in grades 1 to 3.
