The illustrious club of educated men
By Patricia Evangelista, Philippine Daily Inquirer

MANILA, Philippines—The Department of Education would like to reverse the decline in the quality of Philippine education. Within the next five years of the Aquino administration, the DepEd will replace the existing 10-year educational cycle—six years of elementary, four of high school—with a 12-year education plan that includes seven years of primary and five years of secondary education.

Education Secretary Armin Luistro says after K12, a high school diploma will be enough for employment, forgetting that employment decisions are not a function of presidential decrees. The DepEd believes too much is being taught in too little time. Former Education Undersecretary Juan Miguel Luz, now education adviser to President Aquino, says the problem is one of quality. Because only 10 years are spent in primary and secondary education, he believes the system becomes a smorgasbord of “a little bit of this, a little bit of that.”

Butch Abad, campaign manager and now budget secretary to President Aquino, says one Japanese consultant noted that Filipino students end up being more tired than Japanese students “because we cram so many subjects in such a short period of time.”

Beyond the single argument of “too much cramming,” the gentlemen of the DepEd—and Abad—boil the issue down to a tautology of justifications: The current 10-year basic education cycle in the Philippines “is already obsolete since most nations already implement a 12-year education plan.” We must “catch up with the rest of the world,” and “if the rest of the world has gone 12 years or more, I don’t understand how we can think we’re smarter.”

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First language
From a feature release by the Linguistic Society of the Philippines

“Whatever the first language is, enrich it to pave the way for easier language acquisition.”

This was the recommendation made by Dr. Maryanne Wolf, director of the Center for Reading and Language Research and Professor of Child Development at Tufts University, during TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) 2010 conference in Boston, Massachusetts, last March.

In that conference, attended by more than 5,000 language experts and educators, she told the delegates that an individual truly understands a language only when he or she begins to learn a new one. She added that a brain that transmits messages with the use of two languages is always better than a brain that uses only one.

This concept reinforces the new language policy in basic education in the Philippines that endorses the use of multilingualism. Known as Mother Tongue-based Multilingual Education (or MT-MLE), this language policy strengthens the use of two or more languages for literacy and instruction, according to Dr. Ricardo Nolasco, adviser on multilingual initiatives at the Foundation for Worldwide People Power.

Dr. Nolasco explains that everything starts from where the learners are and from what they already know; thus it makes sense to make the beginning learners read and write in their first language (or L1). This first stage becomes the basis for teaching subjects like mathematics, science, health, and social studies in L1.

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Language matters
By Randy David, Philippine Daily Inquirer

It is that time of the year when we are prompted to revisit language issues in our society. In what language should we educate our children? What language should the government use to communicate with our people? What language should the courts in our country use? Is the bilingual policy that makes Filipino and English the official media of communication and instruction serving the national purpose? Are we doing enough to develop and enrich Filipino as the national language, as mandated by the Constitution? These issues have remained contentious and unresolved:

Even as languages evolve on their own, nations find themselves having to choose which languages best work for them as they pursue specific goals and purposes. As with persons, language preference ultimately mirrors a nation’s hierarchy of values. In the post-colonial years, especially in those societies marked by cultural diversity, the designation of a national language was thought crucial to the task of nation-building and political integration. Today, nations that have premised their growth on being able to ride the tide of globalization find little need to develop their own languages. They not only turn to English as the language of modernity; they also want to make it the lingua franca of their people.

This brings instant rewards to individuals who seek careers in the modern sector of the economy or in the global labor market. But for the majority who remain in the country, the costs are immense. Education becomes an alienating experience for schoolchildren, who cannot use their own language to create and access knowledge. Social inequalities are exacerbated…

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Lope k. Santos and Bien Lumbera
By Elmer A. Ordoñez, The Manila Times

The 1906 monumental novel Banaag at Sikat (Glimmer and Ray) by Lope K. Santos has come to life with Bienvenido Lumbera’s dramatization of the novel set to rock music. Hopefully, with this musical, readers, young and old, will seek this long neglected novel that formalist critics (including historian Teodoro Agoncillo) denigrated as a “socialist tract”, i.e., political propaganda. Macario Adriatico indeed wrote in his introduction to the 1906 edition that Banaag at Sikat was a “socialist novel” and that it marked “the dawning of the ‘day of socialism’ in the Philippines. Socialism then was not a reprehensible term.

The idea of socialism, particuIarly anarcho-syndicalism, was brought to the Philippines by ilustrados, including Jose Rizal through his novel El Filibusterismo in the character of Simoun, and by Isabelo Reyes with his experience in Spain’s radical movement and [with his reading of] socialist books like Enrico Malatesta’s. Lope K. Santos imbibed socialism from Malatesta and de los Reyes, who, in 1901, founded the Union Obrero Democratico, which later led a mammoth rally of workers and peasants against United States imperialism.

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Childhood Dreams: Excluded Middles
By Averill Pizarro, Manila Bulletin

There’s this book called “The Giver” that every 12 year-old is supposed to read. I read it when I was around eight or so, but I felt like I was 12 anyway because there are few serious books that talk about eight-year-olds (authors mistakenly think you only get smart and introspective when you hit 12) so I decided that 12 was probably a general category for kids and that I was part of that group.

I don’t remember where I got mine but it was probably a gift from one of my godmothers since they were the ones who always got me the best books, like fairy godmothers did for the princesses.

Anyway, in “The Giver,” there’s this boy named Jonas and he’s 12 too, and they have this sort of ceremony, like a graduation for all 12-year-olds, where they tell you what job you’re supposed to have in the community for the rest of your life.

The story gets much more interesting later on, and in the end Jonas sort of runs away from the community and I did not understand. I remember, though, that it was the first time I ever seriously thought about what I wanted to be when I grow up.

Of course, when you’re a kid, your mom buys you all sorts of toy stethoscopes and toy nail polish and toy kitchen utensils and you say you want to be a doctor or a beautician or a chef when you grow up. My favorite was always the astronaut phase.

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From Quezon to Noynoy
The Manila Times

There’s no question that Filipino has become the language of the nation, burnishing the national identity and gluing national cohesion.

It is spoken from Batanes to Tawi-tawi. From its birthplace in the Tagalog region, it has radiated to all the regions and provinces, including Muslim Mindanao, the highlands of the Cordilleras to historic Chinatown.

From the rabble of regional tongues, Filipino, is spoken in many accents, with interesting local quirks, the popular medium on radio and television that trumpet the “nagbabagang balita [hot, hot news],” speeded up by the tailwind of OPM (Original Pilipino Music).

Filipino has traveled a long way from President Manuel L. Quezon, who insisted on its propagation as the national lingua franca, to President Benigno Aquino 3rd, who used it to address his countrymen in his first two major addresses.

Its flowering has not been easy. The Cebuanos, fortified by local pride, favor their language over what they consider is an intrusion of the Tagalogs.

Academics decry the lack of depth of intellectualization, meaning it has not matured enough to express itself in the language of science, math, technology and philosophy.

But the leading universities—De la Salle, Ateneo de Manila, and the University of the Philippines—have taken the challenge, pushing the limits of the national tongue with strong programs and faculties.

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Filipino, Filipinas
By Michael Tan, Philippine Daily Inquirer

It’s august, which has been designated as the month of the national language because this is the birth month of Manuel L. Quezon, who ordered the establishment of an Institute of National Language in 1936. This institute recommended Tagalog as the basis for a national language, incorporating words from other Philippine languages.

There was, and still is, resistance to Tagalog as a base, mainly from Cebuanos, who insist there are more Filipinos whose mother language is Cebuano. But I think it is a good sign that some Cebuanos, the younger ones especially, are beginning to use that Tagalog-based Filipino to argue against Tagalog—a bit like crazy columnists like myself writing in English about how English was forced upon us.

Meanwhile, Filipino continues to evolve. The University of the Philippines recently launched the revised edition of UP Diksyonaryong Filipino, which I see as a moving documentary of that evolution. “Sumusunod sa takbo ng panahon” (moving with the times), the cover proudly proclaims.

For today’s column, I want to focus on the issue of orthography or spelling. There have been some pretty fiery debates around this issue. There was a camp that wanted to use only the sounds of Tagalog, or Philippine languages, which meant no letter “f” for example, which meant our national language would be Pilipino…

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The flexibility of the English language
By Harold Raley, Galveston News

When English abolished its ancient IndoEuropean cases (accusative, nominative, genitive, etc.) in the Middle Ages (roughly 1100-1300 AD), it lost a bit of precision, but this was more than offset by the marvelous grammatical freedom it gained and the flexibility it had to interchange parts of speech, especially verbs and nouns.

The result was that many nouns in English also could become verbs. Thus, a noun such as “decision” can become “to decision” (as in a boxing match).

The list of possible switches is practically endless: “to model,” “to author,” “to railroad,” “to bellyache,” “to steamroller,” “to motor,” “to captain,” “to doctor,” “to foot (a bill),” “to bill,” “to chicken (out),” “to rubberneck,” “to bully,” “to brick (in),” “to boss,” “to monkey (with or around),” etc.

Many nouns in English can become negative verbs by adding “de-“ to them: “debunk,” “declaw,” “deconstruct,” “degrease,” “delouse,” and, lately, “to defrag (a computer),” etc.

Occasionally, a noun can have two verbal meanings: “to dust,” which can mean either to remove dust (from furniture) or to apply it (to plants).

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Perverting the English language
By Szandor Blestman, WeeklyBlitz.net

I might not know much about anything, but I do know a little about the English language. I was born in the Midwest of the United States where it is the spoken language of the vast majority. I also actually studied it in college and, yes, we did actually delve into its history and closely examine how to use it in a grammatically correct way back when I went to the University of Illinois.

One thing I’ve learned about language is that the same word can mean different things to different people. A simple example of this is to think about something like the word dog. We all know what a dog is, right? Well, the truth is that the word dog places a different image in the mind of someone who owns a German shepherd than it would in someone who owns a Chihuahua. But something physical and solid is easy to work out. One simply goes into more detail or uses more descriptive or specific words. Things can get a little more difficult when discussing ideas and concepts that don't exist in the physical world but are purely in the realm of the mind.

Such concepts would include things like freedom and duty, tyranny and justice, liberty and slavery, etc. Just about everybody has a different understanding of what these things mean, even though many will have very similar ideas. Those who control the educational system can greatly influence how the masses view such concepts. Those who own the media can also shape and even change over time how these concepts are viewed.

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Rickrolling the English language
By Louisa Hearn, The Sydney Morning Herald

Abbreviations of everyday words were once an Aussie birthright, but are our barbies and smokos being swept aside for a new generation of language in which we txt, tweet, rickroll, and lol?

Whether it's Twitter, Facebook or a bunch of cheeseburger-loving kitties (LOLcats) causing the apparent carnage to our written word is unclear, but language experts say the dramatic pace at which technology continues to reinvent itself is most certainly filtering through to the mainstream world.

“I think Facebook and Twitter are a big part of the younger generation's lives. Of the language used online in blogs and chatrooms and on Facebook and Twitter, a little bit of that filters through into offline language, mostly as sort of a fashion statement,” said Susan Butler, editor of the Macquarie Dictionary.

She cites the example of TMOZ (tomorrow) which even now turns up in spoken language.

The Macquarie Dictionary people's choice for 2009 was the word Tweet with the word cyberbully also getting an honourable mention, but popularity is no indication of longevity, and words can disappear almost as quickly as they turn up.

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English language has a way of turning women into men
By Robert Fisk, The Belfast Telegraph

A week ago, in my front-page story on the Hiroshima commemoration, I planted a little trap for our sub-editors.

I referred to Vita Sackville-West as a “poetess.” And sure enough, the sub (or “subess”) changed it—as I knew he or she would—to “poet.”

Aha! Soon as I saw it, I knew I could write this week about the mysterious—not to say mystical—grammar of feminism and political correctness. At least, I guess feminism was the start of it all, for was it not in the Eighties and early Nineties that newspapers started turning feminine nouns into male nouns? This was the age, was it not, when an “actress” became an “actor,” when a “priestess” became a “priest”—which does sound more sensible—and when a “conductress” became a “conductor.” A policeman and policewoman have turned into “police officers” (even if they are constables).

Even in Irish, a “Bean Gárda Síochána” (policewomen or woman civic guard) turned a few years ago into a “Gárda” – simply Guard or (I suppose) “policeperson.”

I've always been bemused by this desire of women to turn themselves, semantically speaking, into men. ’Twas never the other way round. Gary Cooper, Errol Flynn, John Wayne, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt have never demanded to be called “actresses,”nor did Sir John Barbirolli ask to be a “conductress.” Now don't get me wrong.

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The immigrant spouse and the new English language requirement   
By Gloria Nyamayi, The Zimbabwean

In autumn 2010 an additional requirement will be added for those wishing to join their spouses in the UK. As from the 29th of  November 2010,  spouses fiancés or partners wishing to join  their other half in the UK or wish to switch to the spousal dependant visa will need to prove  that they  have an existing relationship and that they have enough funds to accommodate and maintain themselves in the UK. They also need to pass an English-language test.

“The new English requirement for spouses will help promote integration, remove cultural barriers, and protect public services,” Home Secretary Theresa May said in a statement.

She was correct in her assertion that it is difficult to find yourself in a new and strange city, and it is even worse if you can’t speak the language.  It leads to isolation and depression. The situation is made worse when the newly arrived dependant spouse fails to learn the language due to fear and embarrassment. 

Asking dependant spouses to learn the language gives them the opportunity to explore and learn the laws that govern them, because with the ability to read the law comes the ability to know when they are breaking the law or when they are being denied their rights. By asking the immigrants to learn the language before entry into the United Kingdom, the State is playing its role to ensure integration and independence of the applicant (easier and more confident to get a job).

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Move to drop regional language as medium of study opposed

PUNE—The Association of Managements and Principals of Aided Ayurveda and Unani Colleges in Maharashtra has strongly opposed the Central Council for Indian Medicine’s (CCIM) recent move to approve a draft notification that seeks to drop the regional language while retaining English, Hindi and Sanskrit as the medium of instruction for studies in Ayurveda district course.

The draft notification is currently pending clearance before the Union health ministry's department of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (Ayush). The latter has sent copies of the draft to all the state governments for their recommendation.

Suhas Parchure, who heads the association of colleges, has said that the move to drop regional language as a medium of instruction is “uncalled for and unfair” considering that a majority of the Ayurveda colleges in the state have been offering Ayurveda studies through Marathi medium, as one of the options, for the last several years.

“We have written letters to all the concerned authorities including secretary to the department of Ayush; CCIM and the state government demanding that the regional language be retained as a medium of instruction,” said Parchure. “We are not opposed to the other modes of instruction but, the regional language ought to be among the option for students.”

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