PARADIGM SHIFT? A Query on the K-12 Multilingual Education using
the Department of Education Order no. 31 s.2012 & the Mother
Tongue Curriculum Guide
ABSTRACT
Communication is a crucial part of any transaction, especially
in government policies and laws, wherein the implementer and the
policy maker should have a clear-cut vision what a certain
program would look like and have an effect on the country at
large.
In lieu of the major changes in the Philippine education
system, this paper interrogates the background of the
controversial K-12 Education System, shifting from a ten year
educational cycle to a twelve year cycle, mandated by the
Department of Education, by looking at the policy and curriculum
guide that has shaped its implementation, specifically zoning in
the much speculated Mother-Tongue based learning. Namely, these
are Department of Education Order no.31 s.2012 and the K-12
Mother Tongue Curriculum Guide circa December 2013.
As mentioned earlier, this paper looks primarily on the
Mother-Tongue based Multilingual Education, the prime factor of
this newly refurbished education system, to check for certain
themes and patterns that may show unique features,
implementation issues, relations of power between the policy
maker and the implementers, and the like. By looking at such
themes, one could already extrapolate the success, or the lack
of it thereof, of this momentous benchmark of Philippine
education that would affect a single generation, at the very
least. Interviews are made to validate or serve as an assessment
about the implementation of the text.
INTRODUCTION: Getting into our senses
When everyone was in their formative years, one could possibly
remember the lesson about the five senses -- the sense of sight,
smell, taste, touch, and auditory senses. These are lessons all
learners go through, simply for knowing the senses and getting
into it, so to speak, makes one ready for the type of learning
to be experienced soon-after. Experiential learning is about
facilitating and stimulating the five senses and use it as a
stimulus that the learner can incorporate through learning, for
learners forget mostly about the factual, cognitive data, but
remembers what they had felt during a wonderful learning
experience.
In the Philippines, learning in school is of such a
different experience. More than what the students would learn in
classroom instruction, in it, the students had learned the harsh
realities of life in day-to-day school events as it simulates a
microcosm of society, as it should, but not always in a good
sense. Public education is deteriorating, if it has not, and
private education, no matter the quality it provides, dictates a
price to be paid in exchange of the said "quality". It is quite
impressive; still, to notice how Filipinos treat education as
the sole and viable solution to escape the said realities.
It is but common notion that education is the key to most
Filipinos' "success" in life, which education seems like a
crucial one way ticket out of poverty, repression, abuse, or to
the more principled sense of heritage that nobody can take away
from someone. It is nothing but the logical explanation why,
though seemingly cliché, farmers would sell carabaos and farms
just to send his or her son or daughter to the city and acquire
university education. This university education, however, would
not be possible without the strong foundation of a basic
elementary and high school education. Looking at this common
scenario of Filipino life, in this country where the inequality
in instruction between public and private education cannot be
left unnoticed, how can the masses, which primarily depend on
government-subsidized public education, compete with the
products of private educational institutions?
This growing common knowledge about the said disparity
between public and private education was, however, set aside in
2012 as the government admitted that the then current education
system was flawed and it has to be refurbished. From a regular
ten-year cycle, the government willed to have a twelve-year
basic education cycle, as the Philippines is one of the few
remaining countries left in the world to have a ten-year
education cycle (The K-12 Basic Education Program, 2014). A lot
of mixed reactions came from the partnership of parents and
teachers -- the first for the financial issues that would come
after to make their sons and daughters finish basic education
with two more years, and the latter for the they know a lot of
changes would be in effect and so it would be an added burden in
contrast to the meager compensation of teachers -- othering the
students who would undergo such cycle, the basic component and
primary concern of the education system. These reactions would
soon be set aside as Department of Education Policy number 31,
series of 2012 was enacted by April that same year. During the
summer in-service training of teachers, curriculum revamps had
been a talk, and last-minute seminars sponsored by the
Department of Education were held at the Philippine Normal
University to disseminate certain guidelines on the said program
as the policy stated it should be enacted that upcoming school
year 2012-2013. The following year, by May 15th, Republic Act
10533, or the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013, was passed,
making the Department of Education policy the previous year a
law, mandatorily asking for all schools' -- public and private -
- strict and utmost compliance.
During these stressful days for the education sector,
"birth pains" as one euphemistic comment would put it,
curriculum revamps were constant; new grading systems and
evaluating tools to measure learning competencies were cascaded,
and time allotment per subject area was reiterated. One new
offering mandated by the curriculum, however, stood-out because
of its new approach regarding the very medium of education --
the said Mother-Tongue Based Multilingual Education.
A benchmark of the K-12 education, using the said "mother-
tongue" language as the medium of instruction for the students
up until the third grade aims to be a culturally-sensitive
education thrust that would give these young pupils the
necessary acquired language skills for the succeeding years of
instruction using the Filipino and English languages as its
medium. This thrust lies in the idea that language is acquired
if the necessary skills are put in the proper place early on.
This picturesque idea of a culturally-sensitive Philippine
education system is yet bound too many questions for the
internal diaspora of peoples are commonplace, and the languages
used in a geo-political area are not equivocal with the
languages spoken at the household level. Basic observation in an
area -- city or province outside Manila, probably with the
exception of the eight (Agoncillo, 2003), or ten (MCFarland,
1997) major Filipino languages, still uses Filipino or English
to transact in day-to-day encounters and the facility of the
dialect (or the elevated status of a mother-tongue language) is
limited to the household or to know dialect-speaking others.
Strangers would be regarded as such and are addressed in
Filipino or English. This observation would provide enough
empirical evidence to speculate that most of the country behaves
in such way, with regards to language.
With these thoughts in mind, it is only right to
interrogate the validity of the said program or thrust on the
following grounds:
First, the use of mother-tongue languages is a crucial part
of learning for it is not only a taught subject like English, or
Filipino, but also a medium of instruction, and by such,
communication is at peril if the said mother-tongue language is
not the real language spoken at home by the child.
Second, pedagogy relies on the primary communication
between policy maker and implementer. If the policy is
communicated properly to the very implementers in direct contact
with the students concerned, then implementation is not supposed
to be an issue and the whole mother-tongue based learning
pedagogy is in good hands, eliminating the first concern
mentioned above.
It can further be deduced that the primary point of
interrogation of the said program would be on the
communicativity of the policy and guide at hand, Department of
Education Order no. 31 s.2012 and the K-12 Mother Tongue
Curriculum Guide circa December 2013. These said documents were
selected for these were the backbone of the project, and by
writing such documents, the major changes in the education
system was enacted and was state-sanctioned. These documents
would also be the limitation of this study, itself, for the
study will just focus on the preliminary guide for
implementation of the said policy, as well as the curriculum
guide for Mother-Tongue based learning. Another limitation to be
put into consideration is the validity of a curriculum guide, as
such was not crafted to perfection at the moment of publication;
most curriculum guides like the one for Araling Panlipunan, has
underwent several revisions depending on pedagogical issues,
internal political machinations, and countless academic debates
on what and how things should be learned.
It is common-sensical that to assume that the policy and
guide, especially the Department of Education order, to be a
clear-cut way of making the implementers follow the vision and
drive of the state in a way relating to the concept of
'governamentality' and ‘discipline’ (Foucault, 1991) and as
mentioned above, to eliminate the issues regarding pedagogy.
Upon first scanning the document, however, showed that there
were new issues arising from how the document itself was crafted
-- certain assumptions of the policy maker that were left
unmentioned but could be presumptuously expected to have been
understood by the implementers. This theme would be found to
recur and project a different facet, such as unspoken power
relations. More so, there are points of confusion and possible
areas of flaws that were left to be (mis)interpreted by the
implementer, that could jeopardize the whole ambitious project.
The themes mentioned would be the major points of analyses of
the two said documents, and would be cross-referenced with
interviews coming from the implementers – the teachers of Mother
Tongue – to validate and assess, at the same time, the kind of
interpretation the proponent and the teachers grasped from the
text.
The study is, however, limited by the number of Mother
Tongue teachers interviewed, and a more strategic, systematized,
and geo-politically-aligned series of interviews is proposed to
be conducted in the future. These interview findings would then
have to be collated and compared with the message found in the
text of the said documents found in this paper. The scope of the
study is the first three school years the K-12 MTB-MLE
curriculum is implemented; the Department of Education may
conduct their own assessment of the program, if they really plan
on having one that would improve, or disprove the validity of
this undertaking.
RELATED LITERATURE: Using prior knowledge
Before anything else, there is a need for the project’s
introspection by looking at the Philippines’ history of language
plans that were implemented from the Spanish Colonial times, up
to the present K-12 Mother Tongue language instruction. Only by
doing such introspection will one be able to understand where
the current education program of the state is situated, and its
probable trajectory.
In the latter years of the Spanish colonial era, actions
were taken as the monarchs in Spain, through the viceroy of
Mexico, urged that the natives be taught the Spanish Language.
The reforms of 1863 and the Moret Decree paved way for the
introduction of primary schools (Gonzales, 2003). These schools
were called Escuela Publica del Nino y Ninas, and by 1868, there
were already three grade levels in these makeshift schools
(Canete, 2009). It was said that by 1898, there were 2000 of
these schools and only two per cent (2%) up to six per cent (6%)
of the population was said to have been fluent in Spanish.
The language plan at this era was said to be hardly
explicit, as the education system was inchoate and highly
elitist (Gonzales, 2003).
In the American era, an initial assessment made by McKinley
and Root, through the two Philippine Commissions, showed the
great but obvious shift from Spanish to English, as the
sponsored language of the state even though there were no laws
to support it. The English language, according to McKinley and
Root, showed that it should be propagated as the way of the
democracy, as it was the language of government and competence.
Lastly, English was suggested, and was used, as the language of
education – dubbed as the language of advancement (Gonzales,
2003).
As mentioned, the language plans in this era was geared
towards civil service and education though there was no
formality in this scheme for there was an absence of laws or
agencies to promulgate the language plan rather than the ones it
was already incorporated in.
In 1936, however, during the second year of the
Commonwealth under the American flag, a National Language Law
was authored by Norberto Romualdez, and the following year,
there has been a creation of a National Language Institute for
the development of a national language -- technically, this
“national language” was the Tagalog language of the people of
central Luzon (Gonzales, 2003). Perhaps this proposition of
Romualdez came from an American linguist in the name of Frank R.
Blake, who have suggested that Tagalog be the basis, if not the
“national language” itself, of the archipelago due to its
richness of form and its literary potential. It is also as the
language of the capital city, and fusing different Filipino
languages into one would be impracticable. This would be
seconded by big names such as Eulogio B. Rodriguez -- who
proposed that Tagalog be the basis of the national language
though it should be developed by Filipinos, themselves, rather
than wait for the Americans or other foreigners to do it for
them, and Manuel L. Quezon -- who said teaching English to
Filipinos seems futile and, ultimately, he would endorse Tagalog
to be the national language to replace English in 1937. It would
take effect in 1946, after the Second World War (Frei, 1959).
In the Japanese Occupation, from 1942-1945, learning
Nihongo was mandatory, and after the war, instructions in
schools went back to English from 1946 to 1974. By then,
Nationalists have proposed a bilingual scheme, in order to
incorporate Pilipino (formerly Tagalog) as the other official
and national language, through the department Order no. 25,
s.1974, or the Implementing Guidelines for the Policy on
Bilingual Education, issued by then the Department of Education,
Culture, and Sports (Espiritu, n.d.). The bilingual scheme was
reiterated in 1984, and in 1987 through the formulation of the
new Constitution. By then, the name of the national language
that was Pilipino, was renamed Filipino (Gonzales, 2003). This
language plan would be used until the present, until around 2013
during the onset of the K-12 Mother Tongue scheme for language
instruction.
Mother Tongue-based education, defined as when the students
would facilitate learning through the practice of the language
used at home, also has its long history. The project is not a
new idea after all, as it traces its roots back to 1953, when a
UNESCO-sponsored study had experimented in Iloilo, the use of
Hiligaynon as the language of instruction for young learners.
These experiments were said to be successful, as it had resulted
to the creation of a Vernacular Education Policy, which was
planned thoroughly but was never fully implemented from 1957 to
1974. It was an ambitious plan, as it would have been a test
case for the eight major languages, or the languages most used
in the country, and the project would use these eight identified
languages as the language of instruction in their respective
geo-political areas in grades 1 and 2, before the students’
transition to grade 3. Despite the preparation, it was not fully
implemented due to the lack of resources not only for the
students, but most importantly the teachers who were ill-
equipped for the implementation of the program.
In the late 1990s, during the Estrada Administration, the
Vernacular Education Policy that has been in deep slumber was
resuscitated, as it was revised, and the languages of Tagalog,
Ilokano, and Cebuano were identified for pilot testing. It was,
however, shelved once again, as internal political issues
between the leaders of the Education department surfaced
(Gonzales, 2003).
At present, the country is now faced with another language
plan – the K-12 Mother Tongue Based Multilingual Education or
MTB-MLE – the said banner project of the Department of
Education. It was first stipulated in a policy, Department of
Education order no. 31 s. 2012 in April of the said year, while
a law followed to legitimize it – R.A. 10533, or the Enhanced
Basic Education Act of 2013 almost a year after, ratified in May
2013. As the enhanced curriculum was enacted June of 2012,
wherein training was meager and the academe was caught
unprepared, curriculum guides were released to guide the
teachers who are to do the necessary changes and improvements as
the unmentioned but main implementers of the policies.
The said Curriculum Guide c. December 2013, and the
Department of Education Policy no. 31 s. 2012 are the main
documents set for interrogation in this paper. These were chosen
for these were the backbone of the project – one for the
creation of the K-12 MTB-MLE, and the other for its
implementation. These documents were also the ones supposed to
be directly in the hands of the implementers.
DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSES: Learning by doing
Going back to June 2012, curriculum guides for all subject areas
were given to school heads and administrators, supervisors and
middle managers, and the teachers. Because of the strict policy
by the Department of Education, teachers were forced to find a
way to have a curriculum guide for the respective subject areas
they teach, sometimes through certain connections to the
department, or via internet, as more curriculum guides are
downloadable. Some are through connections to the very authors
of some parts of curriculum guide – colleagues in the academe –
from flash drive to flash drive, from training to training that
made everyone believe that being and looking busy in such a
muddled time would mean that everyone is contributing in this
monumental and historic change in the education arena.
Schools in the provinces, especially the ones farther from
Metro Manila, and in public schools even around the metro, the
situation could not be worse. Public school teachers simply
waited for the curriculum guides for the different subject
areas, for lesson plans, and text books for weeks and months --
getting the said instructional materials even after the second
quarter. The situation in the schools in the provinces would not
need any further explanation. The country is unprepared and yet
these discombobulating events and scenarios were projected as
“birth pains” – necessary sacrifices for the creation of this
magnum opus.
Some people in the academe who have had active
participation conception and development of the K-12 program
have spilled some beans -- anecdotes -- like how the
instructional materials that were carefully constructed and
passed right before the deadline so it could be disseminated
immediately were put on hold by some members of the Education
department, causing too much delays. Another source said that
the content of the said curriculum guides were even changed or
tampered with. It was said that members of the said department
had created a textbook when opportunistic-cum-business minded
publishing companies raced to have the first K-12 aligned books
to sell by using the members of the government agency as the
very authors, using the earlier or old curriculum guides that
were not consulted with the academe. There is quite no harm done
here, except that the revised and enhanced curriculum guides
edited and proofread by the experts were tampered and reverted
to the original unedited version just so it could still be
aligned with the already printed textbooks.
Still, the K-12 program is not jeopardized for it
continuous to runs on its third year, right on course as it
should be, as no official formal evaluation has been made just
yet for it is seems too early to do so, or maybe too late when
one would soon be generated.
As of now, the only viable assessment of the K-12 program
would not be on the part of pedagogy, or on how things work, but
on how things are perceived to work – to check if the vision of
the state is the same vision everyone concerned in the project
has. This can only be done by interviews and anecdotes like the
ones above, and by looking deeply at the documents or text at
hand.
Context of the Documents
A. Department of Education Policy no. 31, series of 2012
The Produced in April 17, 2012 by the secretary of Education,
Armin Luistro, the document was made as a policy addressed to
all school heads -- both public and private. Attached to it was
an Implementing Guide but it was probably made by somebody else
in the Department of Education (DepEd) think-tank, or a result
of the public-private partnerships. The Implementing Guide
stipulates the mechanics of the changes in the education
curriculum, as the ten-year education cycle shifts to twelve.
The language used in all two parts of the document is English.
It is accessible via internet but it was believed to have been
e-mailed or post-mailed to the addressees.
B. MTB-MLE Curriculum Guide circa December 2013
The Curriculum Guide was probably made since May 2012, right
after the K-12 Program has been conceived, but the copy being
interrogated in this study is from the December 2013 revision.
It seems that the Curriculum Guide changes from time-to-time,
logically eliminating errors for every revision, or perhaps due
to the internal political and self-induced machinations as
mentioned in the anecdotes above. The language used to write
this document is also in English, and is largely circulated via
the internet. As per the interviews, more private school
teachers use the internet to look for resources like the
curriculum guide, while public school teachers wait for such to
be cascaded down to them.
There are four themes that surfaced from the text and
interviews, regarding the implementation of the K-12 MTB-MLE.
These themes show the multiple facets and latent meanings and
messages embedded in the seemingly embedded text of the two said
documents.
Confusion
There was utter confusion going on around the text, from
simple misunderstandings that seem to just require common sense,
up to the incomprehensible ones that not all implementers can
immediately grasp.
First, there are minor typographical errors found in the
Curriculum Guide, but these “minor” errors can lead to more
serious repercussions, just like the confusion regarding the
very act that legitimized the K-12 Program a year after its
inception. In the Curriculum Guide, the Enhanced Basic Education
Act of 2013, also known as R.A. 10533, was depicted as R.A.
10532. The latter refers to the National Health Research System
Act of 2013 (Official Gazette, n.d.), and a little detail
created so much of a difference. Implementers reading the guide
can just be confused or misled by these “minor errors” that
could have been eliminated if the guide was thoroughly revised
for probably two times already.
Another point of confusion is the use of “official” and
“second” language to describe English and Filipino. While it is
established that English and Filipino are the official languages
of the Philippines according to its 1987 Constitution, it was
referred to in the said documents as Second Language. It seems
like it assigns the official languages to a lower hierarchy of
languages, if there is such, and elevates the status of the
Mother Tongue languages to a more “official” one, so to speak.
There is also a muddled interpretation between Mother
Tongue as the language of instruction and the subject matter. A
common misconception about the MTB-MLE program is that the
Mother Tongue languages would only be used as the language of
instruction from Kindergarten, and not as a subject area. This
was further clarified and mentioned in the Implementation Guide,
as grades 1-3 will have a subject area called Mother Tongue –
similar with Filipino or English subject areas. This was not
really clarified in the documents except for the conceptual and
theoretical framework of the Curriculum Guide wherein a tiny
label shows the differentiation of the two. This jumps off to
another seeming anomaly – if the language of instruction is the
same mother tongue, or lingua franca used at the level of the
home, how can an implementer teach it to the children if there
are no standard ways on teaching such subjects for the number of
mother tongues in the country makes it impossible for every one
of it to have an existing lexicography, or similar studies and
developments, in the present? The answer to this question would
be related with the relations of power to be discussed later on.
Right now, it is safe to assume that having a separate mother
tongue subject without the necessary materials for studying it
except perhaps the major languages in the Philippines is nothing
but a moot exercise.
The incertitude continues as words such as “enjoined” or
“may” was used to ask the private schools to comply with DepEd
policy no. 31. It seems that Luistro, in his letter, is unsure
if the private schools must join the education system reform, or
he is not planning on requiring the private schools to abide by
the policy he has created. It was as if private schools has this
leeway; Luistro, coming from a private school before he was
chosen to be the DepEd secretary, seems like he was wearing a
hat of a private school accreditor when he made the letter. Why
was the leeway not given to all, and why was the program and its
implementation hurried? Why would the whole education system,
incapable of solving its old problems regarding classrooms,
teachers, commercialization, and its deteriorating standards,
create new ones through the inception of the new K-12 program?
It seems Luistro can be the only person to answer these, or the
president who asked him to do it; one can only be left to deduce
and speculate from the facts.
Assumptions
It is right to deduce that the main cause of the points of
confusion mentioned a while ago comes from the many assumptions
the documents have that the implementer failed to understand
fully.
First and foremost is that the K-12 program, as a whole, is
already understood by everyone by heart – its essence,
objectives, rationale, components, et cetera, as there was no
explanation of what the program is, especially in the first and
foremost document that orders its implementation and
ratification – Policy no. 31. It seems that the said contents
and explanations of the program was still in the making when the
policy was released in 2012 for the main law that truly
legitimizes and ratifies it, R.A. 10533, was released a year
after, so for the first school year of implementation of the K-
12 program, everyone based what the K-12 curriculum was from
mere undocumented hearsay, or incomplete and unperfected
curriculum guides, and whatever material anybody could have a
grasp on. And this was what exactly happened in school year 2012
to 2013, as any teacher can profess.
Second, the policy makers, Luistro, et al, thought Policy
no. 31 would be disseminated to all implementers and members of
the education sector and academe concerned while it was simply
addressed to school heads. Yes, it is easy to say the school
heads would practically disseminate down the organizational
chart of their respective institutions, but since there was no
line or statement in the policy that stipulates it, the heads
can freely decide if the implementers need to see the policy or
not; making the implementation of the policy rely according to
interpretation of the heads instead of asking the faculty how to
read the policy as direct implementers of it. This made the
initial implementation of the K-12 program as an administrative
decision rather than an academic one – implementation was done
as to how the schools sees it fit and viable to their own
institution’s mold, especially for private schools who were
given such a leeway. For the public schools, rules were stricter
as the top-to-bottom managerial style perpetuated from the helm
of the Department of Education.
Third in the list is the usage of the metaphors to
illustrate the role of the Mother Tongue language in the
achievement of the students’ goals in the later life. In the
Curriculum Guide, the Mother Tongue language was directly
referred to as a bridge that would supposedly enable the
students to achieve success. More than this, in order to
construct the “bridge”, there should a strong “scaffolding” in
the form of the students’ prior knowledge rooted in the
experiences of the children, and can only be expressed, at
first, using the Mother Tongue. Also, there is the “passport”
metaphor which says language is the passport to a better life
through education.
Looking at the “bridge”, the “scaffolding”, and the
“passport”, it seems that these metaphors have deeper meanings
that are also implied but have been left unsaid. Among the
three, “passport” seems to be a giveaway – the current education
system, no matter how much it is enhanced – still supports and
promotes labor migration. The word passport is very appealing,
as there has always been a promise of a greener pastures abroad;
true for millions of OFWs who risked leaving the country, and
also for the aspiring ones who would sell properties just so one
can get out of the country. “Passport” here does not simply
imply a mere tool, but it also represents a promise of a better
life; it is as easy as saying to the student that: “a better
life awaits you, get this passport, but study first so you will
be prepared in life and in order for you to succeed” – which is
quite pathetic - as the symbol for school achievement has
devolved from a respectable diploma to a labor-migration magnet
represented in the passport. The scaffolding and bridge
continues the metaphor, as though saying that the life that
awaits abroad is a life where one succeeds by earning or saving
money from physical and arduous, manual labor. Now students will
aim for a blue-collared job abroad rather than a higher degree
in a university using a diploma. The education system is set-up
just so it can produce manual laborers that can be sent abroad,
to send remittances and keep the economy afloat.
Power
It was already mentioned that there is stark contrast
between the kind of leeway given to the private schools in
implementing the K-12 program, while there is strict, and utmost
compliance for the public schools. Logically, the public schools
would have been the benchmark or the standard that the private
schools should be able to at par with, for it is in the public
schools that the state can fully exercise its powers, so it
quite remarkable to notice the kind of K-12 implementation the
state does to its own agency.
According to public school teachers, themselves, the
implementation of having a Mother Tongue subject area is so
standardized it seems as though it is too strict to follow. The
level of standardization comes from the Division Head, meaning
the head of the agency for a whole city or province, as it
hands-down standardized lesson plans and instructional
materials. Even the quarterly examination is standardized as it
comes from the division office – one exam for all public schools
in the division – to check whether the teachers teach what they
are supposed to in the Mother Tongue subject area.
In the provinces, a bigger kind of repressive action has
risen. Use the case of the Bicol provinces in the southern part
of Luzon. Teachers complain about the kind of standardized
Mother Tongue subject area instructional materials they have for
the said standardized teaching tools – lesson plans, materials,
hand-outs, and quarterly examinations – are supposed to be
taught using the “mother tongue” of the province’s center – Naga
City. Thus, every public, or private school if they choose be,
would use such materials even though in reality, the mother
tongue languages across Bicol has several varieties. By mere
introspection, verified by Bicolanos, themselves, shows that
Naga Bicol is different from the Camarines Norte Bicol, for it
is near the Tagalog provinces and the kind of Bicol language
they use have the semblance of Tagalog words that have already
been used and diffused in their own societal context. Same is
the case of Albay Bicol, and that of Sorsogon or Masbate Bicol,
wherein people who are already near the Visayas, share the same
Bisaya words or Waray words they are more often in contact with,
due to trade or other reasons. Thus, imposing Naga Bicol to all
of these places kills the mother tongues of these places, and
defeats the purpose of the whole program – or, maybe it does not
for the objective of the K-12 machinery could not be to better
the education system but to standardize and homogenize the
provinces with the provinces of the center, for the case of
Bicol is not an isolated one, and surely, all provinces in the
country undergo the same horrid procedure.
It is quite understandable that there is no propoer
lexicography or similar undertaking for all of the languages in
the Philippines, so the current K-12 MTB-MLE system could not be
that inclusive, but why implement it if it is that unprepared?
This shows that maybe, the state has more objectives to meet
that just bolstering up the current education system.
The complete opposite is what resembles in private schools.
As what was concluded from the reading of Luistro’s Policy no.
31, the private schools had the option whether to implement K-12
fully, or not, and have the Mother Tongue subject area, or not.
Some private schools abide fully, but perhaps these usually come
from small schools with little student population. Some schools
implement it but not fully, due to their own administrative
reasons, like lack of employees, or low enrollment rate. Big
schools, however, do not comply or just ring around the bush
with their Education lawyers – they proclaim that their
students, mostly children of the rich and affluent, uses English
as their Mother Tongue, so there in no need to create another
subject area.
In here one can see the following: first, the bigger the
school is, the more “leverage” it seems to gain from complying
with the policies of government agencies; second, language in
the realpolitik has been arranged in a hierarchy – English for
the rich and affluent, Filipino as the imposed language of the
center, and the respective mother tongues as the promoted
language of the masses. It is no question that the mother tongue
languages has been referred to the “other” languages in the
text.
Policy
It is also surprising to not that the effect of showing the
policy paper, or document, to the main implementer of the
program helped the psyche of the teachers who now teach Mother
Tongue as a subject area. In the table below, one can see the
binary opposing perception of the Mother Tongue teachers
regarding the implementation of the K-12 Program, as a whole.
Table: Perceptions of teachers regarding the K-12 Program, as
classified between the teachers’ chance to have read or not read
DepEd Policy no. 31, s. 2012 and the Curriculum Guide for Mother
Tongue – the main documents that created and ratified the
program.
Read one or both documents Have not read any of the two
documents
- based on a study
- “anthropology”
- “mabuti at epmhasised
ang pag-aaral ng Tagalog”
(as Mother Tongue)
- not studied well
- “napakagulo”
- “babalikan mo na naman”
- “mas maganda ang dati”
It can be seen that the two perceptions were completely
opposite the other, as one can say that obedience can be related
with the kind of “delegation” of task given to him or her. The
people from the left column, who responded that way, are private
school teachers, and they have seen the “shared-ness” of the
monumental K-12 task so their compliance level is also high. The
respondents from the right column, public school teachers, from
the top-down scheme of DepEd to its rank, shows that it is not
healthy for the system for it conspires resentment and un-
openness to change and compliance. Perhaps, public school
teachers were not able to see the documents for they are not
asked to comment or even “think” about the viability of the
project, as they are seen as mere implementers of the
standardized system – are they seen as a commodity to be used in
this factory-like, hyper modern education system? This seems
like a fatal flaw for the success of the K-12 program lies on
the hands of its very implementers.
It seems like this is the reason why, despite the weak
persuasion skills of Luistro as shown in his policy letter, the
Curriculum Guide seems to legitimize its validity by being not a
“guide”. The Guiding Principles of K-12 MTB-MLE is reminiscent
of legal writing, and has a bibliographic citation of a study
for every bullet in the principles, while no reference was given
to local studies undertaken before it starting from the UNESCO
project in 1953. It seems more of a scheme wherein readers are
obliged to follow it directly, and not divert from it. If these
whole-document Curriculum Guides were not meant to be shown to
public school teachers, does it mean that the state is subtly
enforcing strict compliance for the private schools? If so, why
is Luistro’s policy contains a mixed or different message? Could
it be that the latent agenda of the program has changed over the
course of a year? Gain, these questions leave the public, if one
is so keen, to speculate answers for his or her own liking.
Findings
Summarizing everything deduced from the text and
interviews, one can see that the policy is confusing. It
constantly showed mixed messages, intended or not. Second,
having to read the copy of the policy has an effect on the
compliance of the implementers as it showed the “shared-ness” of
the task and responsibility they have at hand. Again, this may
be intended or not by the policy makers themselves but it has
elicited the kind of mixed reaction and perception from the
implementers. Also, labor migration has been identified as one
latent message of the text. Third, the documents showed
unrealistic assumptions due to the lack of ample consultation
and evaluation on the ground.
Projecting the long-term effects of the program, using
today’s assessment, shows eminent eradication of the town-local
mother tongues due to the standardization and homogenization of
province-local mother tongues – a common indicator that the
state wanted to “modernize” its system, or just to “flatten” the
culture among all parts of the Philippines and resurrect the
stark regionalization the country has – a consuelo de bobo to
the many peoples who question the legitimacy of the national
language – Filipino. English, however, can still prevail as the
official and enduring language that would bind the country – the
said mother tongue of the elite and affluent. Transmuting this
to the political economy of the Philippines gives one the idea
that the few are favored and are to win over the oppressed many,
as the masses would be sent abroad as a commodity from an un-
industrialized country to keep the economy afloat while the few
-- rich and affluent -- remains in power due to the un-education
of the masses that could and would topple them off their ivory
towers.
This machination will, however, be resisted through the
partial and wrong implementation of the program due, as power is
distributed in these micro-sites (Foucault, 1991), and in these
schools, the plan of the state can be reverted and exposed –
intended or not, consciously or subconsciously -- as this would
mark the failure of the said project.
All in all, this most recent language plan the state is
vying for, will fail once again.
Or perhaps they would win, if the latent agenda of the
state is not education actually; the decentralization and
distribution of power to the local governments that will soon be
used for the strict standardization of the K-12 program. In
return, the newly garnered power will be used to support the
political party of the current administration in the upcoming
elections. Again, all is sacrificed for the political ambitions
of those in the highest bunk of society.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION: Paradigm shift
In totality, the MTB-MLE has rational, and research-sound
objectives that can be very instrumental in bolstering up the
present education system but the vision of the policy maker is
far-away from the interpretation of the implementers –
preparation is seen inadequate, the government and public was
caught unprepared. The K-12 MTB-MLE will not succeed as a
language plan to help revolutionize the education system for the
policy is unclear and the implementation is varied, as it is
dependent on the interpretation of the different school heads
and the teachers in the way it is convenient to them and to
their students.
The public was left to speculate about the project for it
was unclear for all what its real or latent objectives are, the
principles it stands for in behalf. And so the public would
abide, yet again, another law that can change as soon as the
current administration exits. The Philippines has failed, once
again, to make a long-term plan that would be viable for its
people, Now, many are in clamor over the suspension of the law
for it seems to bring more harm than good, rather than its good
intentions, as seen in the recently concluded international
conference entitled Language, Culture, Multiculturalism,
Multilingual Education and the K-12 Curriculum: Trends, Issues,
Challenges, Practices held at UP Diliman Theater from November
20 to 22, 2014. It has sounded more like a political rally than
an academic exercise, and the battle cry was to repeal the K-12
program – the only marking reform made by the Aquino
administration to date, if it is to be considered as one. Now,
the public continues to speculate.
Paradigm shift? Is the country even shifting from the old ideals
and system to a new phase that would revolutionize and eradicate
the way people in the Philippines would think, or live?
I guess not. As of now, we are not even moving.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agoncillo, T. (2003). History and Culture, Language and
Literature: Selected Essays of Teodoro Agoncillo, ed.
Benedicto Reyes Churchill. Manila: University of Santo
Tomas.
Canete, R. R. (2009). Pulilan: The Blessed Land. Pulilan,
Bulacan: Jefarca Arts and Historical Society Inc.
Espiritu, C. (n.d.). National Commisson For Culture and the
Arts. Retrieved from Language Policies in the Philippines:
www.ncca.gov.ph
Foucault, M. (1991). Discipline and Punish: the birth of a
prison. London: Penguin.
Frei, E. J. (1959). The Historical Development of Philippine
National Language. Manila: Bureau of Printing.
Gonzales, A. (2003). Language Planning in Multilingual
Countries: The Case of the Philippines. Manila: De La Salle
University.
MCFarland, C. D. (1997). A linguistic atlas of the Philippines.
Quezon CIty: University of The Philippines Library.
Official Gazette. (n.d.). Retrieved from Republic Act No. 10532:
www. gov.ph/2013/05/07republic-act-10532/
The K-12 Basic Education Program. (2014, November 5). Retrieved
from www.gov.ph/k-12/
Sona Tech Report 2012. Office of the President website, p. 32.
Retrieved from www.gove.ph
Language, Culture, Multiculturalism, Multilingual Education and
the K-12 Curriculum: Trends, Issues, Challenges, Practices.
November 20-22, 2014, held at the University of the Philippines
Diliman, Quezon City
Main Documents Reviewed for this Study:
- Department of Education Policy no. 31, series of 2012
- Mother Tongue Curriculum Guide, circa December 2013
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