STATEMENT OF THE NAKEM CONFERENCES ON THE PROPOSAL OF OTHER PRESSURE
GROUPS TO MAKE MANDATORY
THE TEACHING OF FILIPINO IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Nakem
Conferences Philippines and Nakem Conferences International, a consortium of academics,
advocates, colleges, universities, and a local government unit are issuing this
statement in opposition to the proposal of some groups to make mandatory the
teaching of Filipino in higher education. The consortium is also an advocacy
group for cultural diversity, linguistic justice, heritage and first language
learning, and emancipatory education in the Philippines and elsewhere.
Nakem
Conferences has been in the forefront of the struggle for what makes sense in
Philippine education. It has sponsored and hosted eight international
conferences in the Philippines and the United States, conferences that looked
into the issues of language education, the diversity of cultures and heritage,
and mother tongue-based multilingual education. In all these conferences, the
consortium has come to understand of the need to recognize that one of the most
effective and efficient ways to announce freedom in education is through a
mother tongue-mediated educational process. The use of the students’ native
language opens up a world for them, a world that is intimate, liberatory, and
self-affirming.
We
welcome the enactment into law of the recent government initiative to address
head-on these issues in basic education through Republic Act 10533 (An Act
Enhancing The Philippine Basic Education System By Strengthening Its Curriculum
And Increasing The Number Of Years For Basic Education, Appropriating Funds
Therefor And For Other Purposes); through the response of the Department of
Education by way of its K-12 initiative and its implementation of that
initiative; and through the well-thought out CMO 20 series of 2013 (General
Education: Holistic Understandings, Intellectual and Civic Competencies) of the
Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) redefining what general education (GE) is
in higher education.
CMO
20 series of 2013 finds its pedagogical context in the adjustment of the years
allotted to basic education, and thus the need to adjust as well the general education
curriculum in higher education. The GE is a curriculum “common to all
undergraduate students regardless of their major” and that “exposes them to
various domains of knowledge and ways of comprehending social and natural
realities.” It is a curriculum that in the end will equip them with (1)
“intellectual capacities such as critical, analytical and creative thinking,
and multiple forms of expression” and (2) “civic capacities demanded of
membership in the community, country, and the world.” In this aforesaid CMO,
there is the iteration of the civic and cultural citizenship of the students
and the need for them to be equipped with the skills needed in the local, the
national, and international communities. There is the constancy in the
iteration of the need for students to become more human and humane via the
general education curriculum.
Thus,
the move of CHEd to consider the mandatory imposition of 9 units of Filipino as
the medium of instruction in three of 12 GE courses, with these units eating up
25 per cent of the total GE units, is not only contradictory to the avowed aims
of GE but also a disservice to the need to offer alternatives to students to
get hold of their own local ethos and knowledge in a more synthesized way. The
imposition of 9 units of Filipino effectively deprives them of their right to
own up, understand, and make good use of the heritage of their own people. The
same is antithetical to the pursuit of diversity in human knowledge, to the
respect for multiplicity in the various linguistic and cultural expressions of
the peoples of the Philippines, and to the attainment of a truly ‘glocalized’
form of education, an education that is just and fair as it addresses the key
issues of social equity in the public act of cultivating the minds of students.
We,
therefore ask the CHEd to pay attention to the needs and wishes of other
marginalized ethnolinguistic communities, and offer them the same privilege
accorded to Filipino to prove that it is serious in pursuing the stated aims of
GE. These ethnolinguistic communities have been deprived of their right to
their languages. We must understand that these languages serve as the lens
through which students could better understand themselves, other peoples and
communities, their nation and other nations, and the world. We must not forget
as well that language rights are inalienable rights; it is the sum of
linguistic rights and human rights.
We
wish to express in no uncertain terms that there is no place for the 9 units of
mandatory Filipino in higher education. Thus, we wish to register our strong
objection to the proposal to consider the teaching of Filipino in higher
education.
Today,
there is the urgent need to offer productive and epistemologically liberating
alternatives in the course delivery of the GE curriculum. Part of the concept
of course delivery—and part as well of academic freedom—is the opportunity
given to the members of the instructional faculty and the higher education
institution in the locality to choose the language they deem most pedagogically
effective in their classrooms.
Issued today, 2 July 2014.
Nakem Conferences
Philippines Nakem
Conferences International
Dr Alegria Tan Visaya Dr
Aurelio Solver Agcaoili
President
President
Dr Jimmy Soria Dr Raymund Llanes Liongson
Vice President Vice President
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