Ode to Filipino English Speakers! Nationalism be damned.

Blogger's Note: The English language was one of the foundation of our educational system. Before, we were considered as third largest English-speaking nation after the United States and Great Britain. Now, our English profeciency has went so low are college graduates need additional classes before qualifying for call center jobs. Imagine that! There is a need to return to basics of 3 Rs - reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic - supplemented with science and computer knowledge. We should relive the times that English and Filipino are taught in classes with majority of our subjects in English. While English provides us the edge in this global economy, Filipino remind us who we are and how we came to be. I remember when I went to Australia, they were impress with Filipinos for our capacities to speak English fluently and then changing back to Filipino with ease. That is the advantage of bilingual education. 8-)

The decline of English
Posted 06:05am (Mla time) Mar 20, 2005 By Isagani Cruz,Inquirer News Service
http://news.inq7.net/opinion/index.php?index=2&story_id=31071

I WAS distressed to read a recent report in this paper that students from public elementary and secondary schools are deficient in English, Math and Science as revealed in the results of the National Achievement Test (NAT) and the High School Readiness Test (HSRT) conducted yearly by the Department of Education.

The scores of the students should be improving over the years but have remained "flat," said Undersecretary Juan Miguel Luz. There has been practically no progress in developing the students' aptitudes in the subjects tested where they scored last year from 32 to 38 percent only where the passing grade is at least 60 percent.

I am not much disturbed by the students' poor showing in Math and Science as I myself have little interest or intelligence in those subjects; for example, Chemistry and Calculus had little challenge for me, nor have they proved useful or necessary for me in my chosen career. But the students' deficiency in English was something that caused me much disappointment and regret for that is a subject close to my heart and useful for my work.

There was that time when we were still under the American administration and English was the lingua franca in this country. The various regional groups spoke their separate native dialects-Tagalog, Ilocano, Pampango, Pangalatok, Cebuano, Ilonggo, Waray, Marawi, etc.-but all of them spoke and understood English. This was true not only of the educated people in the cities but also of the rural folk who could manage to get by with the English they learned in grade school before they devoted their full time to their farms.

Each linguistic group had its different and distinguishing pronunciation of English, but they managed to understand each other in this language better than with the different regional dialects despite their many common similarities and, yes, also sometimes humorous differences.

For example, "iklog" in Pampanga is already "ibon" in Manila. A lady senator lost a lot of votes in Cebu when she promised to cut off "lagay," which means corruption in Tagalog but is more personal to Cebuanos.

Such was the popularity of English then that it soon replaced the street signs that used to be written in Spanish. "Se Alquila "became "For Rent" and "Se Vende" translated to "For Sale." Only a few of the old Spanish names have been preserved like "Ambos Mundos," "La Elegancia," and "Casa Alba," but the others have been Americanized to "Doris Day and Night Salon," "Aunt Martha's Superette," and "Lotto Play Here." Even the old "accesoria" was renamed "apartment," then promoted to "town house," and is now a pricey "condominium."

In the old Mapa High School, where I studied before the Pacific War, we had an American principal, Mrs. Sarah M. England, and excellent Filipino teachers in English composition and literature. I remember all four of them with appreciation-Mr. Tension, Mrs. Belmonte, Mrs. Manalo and Mrs. Nisperos-who taught us the beauty of the language and its English and American writers, as well as the translated works of Guy de Maupassant, Leo Tolstoy, Miguel de Cervantes, and others.

We read the classics in unabridged English not as condensed in the convenient pamphlets now available in the bookstores for those who would rather play basketball. The handy Classic Illustrated was still unknown at that time and so we had to read "The Three Musketeers" and "The Count of Monte Cristo" from the book itself. We were also familiar with Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death" speech, the tragic romance of Evangeline, and the melancholia of Edgar Allan Poe.

We were taught the art of letter-writing, which many students now probably do not know or use. Why write, when there's the cell phone or, better yet, you can text. And texting does not even require correct spelling and it's ecr to get to the ..c? u n c r ok but I m nt. I'll never get the hang of this terrible epidemic, but I'm afraid it is here to say, and will further lower the scores of the students taking the NAT and the HSRT. (That was no texting.)

I don't know how things are now with our public libraries, but during my student days they were quite popular with book lovers. They were well-stocked even with the current best sellers that we could borrow and read for free, and come back for more. I was a regular customer and used to walk from my house in Sampaloc, Manila, to the National Library at the ground floor of the old Legislative Building on P. Burgos Street. Every visit was an adventure.

I feel that student tastes have changed much since my classmates and I graduated from high school before the war broke out in 1941. We were more attracted to books then than to basketball, Superman and the Justice League, the Internet, texting, raucous music, and other modern fascinations. I am sure we would have passed those easy DepED tests with scintillating colors.

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