Pagsasao: New Book

MLE and the Promise of the Ilokano Nation

In another light: An Email from Mark Vertido

I was one of the students who joined in the MLE forum in MMSU-CTE, Laoag last July. We were given an assignment to make a reaction on the MLE. I am lucky because I was there myself and I have listened well to your talk. I was really moved by what I heard and so I myself am now in support of the MLE because of its points for a better education system in our country. Maybe the Tagalogs have their harsh opinions to the MLE but this is what we need and I do not see any danger at all.

And I am very proud of my school for preparing the orientation program on MLE this September 17-18.

Thank you sir! God bless!

Mark Vertido, by email, September 4, 2009

The above is an email I received today.

It is one of those emails you least expect and when the cold of Fall comes to sneak into your chill heart, with a letter like this one invariably bringing--and giving--warmth.

And it is warmer because you do not know that there are people who were there but who listened with a full heart to the message that we brought at the first-ever Mother Language Education Forum we held at the Mariano Marcos State University in Laoag in July.

One thing that strikes me is this: Here is a young man, still trying to get his degree in education, and yet is now ever-ready to look into the challenges of Philippine education.

Here is a young man prepared to face squarely as well with the demands of these challenges--and a young man with the guts and the gumption to deal with these challenges.

We see here a contrast with the 'reporter' of Ilocos Times who, unable to write something relevant, focused on something that is not even part of the conversation: my having said that "Quezon is stupid" because the president--one of the greatest, that 'reporter' cited the teachers who came to listen--launched Mother Language Education.

By golly, Quezon was Quezon: he was mentally afflicted with monolingualism, the cause of all our troubles, and he launched MLE?

So this letter, and some other letters I have received, testifies to the truth of our struggle: that it is high time we fought for our linguistic and cultural rights.

That it is high time for us to call it quits with the inutile 'bilingual education' in the Philippines.

That it is high time we named some of the teachers of our classrooms as the very agents of our linguistic and cultural incompetence--the agents of our miseducation.

Hope, indeed, springs eternal.

We have hopes for a better education: Mark Vertido, who I do not know personally, will be in our classrooms to preach the good news of our cultural and educational justice.

A Solver Agcaoili

Hon, HI/Sept 4, 2009

Statement On the Ilocos Times Story: Aug 21/09

IMPORTANT NOTICE

The author of this statement is not allowing the uploading of this material to any other site except at: dadapilan.com and at the author’s blog, asagcaoili-ariel.blogspot.com. Written permission for uploading in other sites required. To request permission, email the author at: aurelioagcaoili@yahoo.com.

Statement on the Mark Limon news story, “University of Hawai’i prof calls Quezon ‘stupid’”, Ilocos Times, July 27-August 2, 2009

By Aurelio Solver Agcaoili, PhD

President, Nakem Conferences International

Trustee, 170+MLE Talaytayan

Program Coordinator for Ilokano, University of Hawai’i

The news story, bylined by a certain Mark R. Limon, who claims that he is representing the Department of Education of the Division of Ilocos Norte, is flawed, inaccurate, and lacking in good and acceptable journalistic exercise.

I ask that this author retract his news story by coming up with a public correction of his mistake and by apologizing for his inaccuracies.

Here are the glaring mistakes:

From the news account:

1. A professor of the University of Hawai’i at Manoa called president Manuel L. Quezon “stupid” for launching the Mother Language Education.

My response: The writer does not have his facts straight here. I never said that Quezon was stupid for launching Mother Language Education. Quezon did not know what MLE was all about so how could I attribute that to him?

What to do with this pretender of a writer? He should be taught how to write as factually as he should.

2. Speaking before an audience of officials and teachers from the Department of Education and the Mariano Marcos State University in Laoag City, Dr. Aurelio S. Agcaoili who is lobbying for the use of mother tongue in basic instruction in local schools said that the declaration of Filipino based from Tagalog language by Quezon as the national language fostered the decline of functional literary in the country.

First off the bat: the writer does not know how to write properly. Just check his sentence. Which one is modifying which? Is he supposed to be a teacher telling the right things to his students? If he is a teacher teaching students to write, he should get out of the classroom soonest.

Next point: if he knows all the government data—and these are empirical evidences—then he should know what he is talking about: that we have gone to the dogs because of the government’s bilingual education policy. This is a flawed philosophy and practice of equitable education. He should check TIMMS. He should read other publicly available data from Deped. He should check the BESRA document. He should check the premise of the Gunigundo Bill. He should check the premise of the Deped Order No. 74 S. 2009. He should understand by heart the intent of EFA of which we are a signatory. And if he does not know where to look because he is ignorant, he can always ask me. My email is: aurelioagcaoili@yahoo.com.

3. Teachers who attended the occasion, while they approved the use of mother tongue in the basic instruction in schools (sic), consider the remarks of Agcaoili as a disrespect (sic) in the memory of Quezon as one of the greatest president (sic) of the country and a contempt (sic) on the Philippine Constitution.

First off the bat again: he should return to grammar school. Just look at the ‘sics’. There are so many. And we call him a writer?

Second: what ‘remarks’ is he talking about when his lead sentence is wrong?

He speaks of me as having “contempt of the Philippine Constitution.”

Is it contempt of the Philippine Constitution, to use his phrase, to fight for the constitutional and fundamental rights of students, their fundamental right to their languages and cultures, their fundamental right to get educated through their own languages? When a government deprives its citizens of their rights to their languages and cultures—and their right to get quality education because it is an education grounded in the language that they know—is this not a fundamental violation of human rights by the same government that makes pronouncements of its respect for these rights? Here is where the sense of citizenship is called for—a sense of citizenship this ‘writer’ does not have a full grasp of.

In following the logic of the ‘writer’, he commits so many fallacies, including a fallacy we call sweeping statement or hasty generalization or insufficient evidence. His use of the phrase, “Teachers who attended,” without a qualifying quantitative marker, is rather unfortunate. He has not learned enough from his argumentation class much less from his philosophical analysis course.

Here is his first lesson in the logic of statement making: an A-statement (which is a universal affirmative, really) is not the same as an I-statement (which is a particular affirmative). We should remind him: One swallow does not make a summer, dear teacher. His logic is convoluted. He writes incoherently as well. He will never make it in my philosophy class.

4. Agcaoili is in Laoag City to attend (sic) the Launching (sic) of the Mother Language Education (sic)…

Wrong: I was not in Laoag simply to attend. I was there to speak and to serve as one of the leaders and organizers of the forum.

If he cannot even grant me this role that I played to hold the forum, what does he know then?

The MLE Forum was a joint project of 170+MLE Talaytayan, the Nakem Conferences International, the Nakem Conferences Philippines, and Mariano Marcos State University.

In that forum, we purposely invited the three superintendents of the three divisions of schools in the province to serve as panel reactors. We involved the local governments units, which was why representatives from the Office of the Governor and from the Office of the City Mayor of Laoag came.

Meaning, the MLE Forum is an initiative drawn up from our concerted effort in the nationwide alliance and that I was not there simply to ‘attend’ that forum. Fact is fact.

We wanted all the members of the community to understand that it is our fundamental right to demand from the socially irresponsible government for what is due us.

We wanted the teachers to understand that we cannot take this wanton ‘lobotomization’ of our people sitting down any longer.

We wanted people to understand that there is plausibility and promise in a political imaginary we call cultural pluralism in education and in the performance of our public lives, a performance informed and guided by our celebration of our diversity as a nation-state.

We wanted to announce that there is hope in Philippine education, that sector that is in the top list of the corrupt government bureaucracy; that light is possible in this darkness that we are all going through and which has been our lot for so long and which we must now refuse and resist in a concerted way; and that social and educational redemption can be had if we all worked together to struggle for the pursuit of what has been denied of us for decades.

I am not sorry that this message fell on deaf ears (such as those of Limon’s) and that the ‘writer’ slanted the news story to suit his ill-conceived motives. I have only some pity for him. He is supposed to be a public school teacher and he should know better.

5. …and to launch the compilation (sic) of researches of the Nakem conferences 2007-2008 entitled SUKIMAT.

Wrong: this phrase does not make sense for its fuzzy ideas, as cloudy as the mind of Limon.

Fact: SUKIMAT IS NOT A MERE COMPILATION.

‘To anthologize’ is not the same as ‘to compile’.

Limon, certainly, can compile with his clear books and binders. But with the kind of writing that he displayed with this questionable news account that put me in a bad light, I doubt if he can anthologize.

Sukimat—if he has read it—is an anthology of conference papers Limon is not capable of writing or presenting in an international conference that gathers many of the best minds of the Ilocos and the Amianan, including one paper from abroad. Certainly, with his kind of writing and way of thinking, he cannot be included in this list of the best minds.

His knowledge of book writing and ‘compiling’ is as pedantic as his reasoning.

His use of that inappropriate term ‘compiling’ is rather crude and reveals his lack of knowledge of intellectual refereeing process, editorial work, and book publishing.

The book gathers 12 of the conference papers presented in the two Nakem international conferences; the papers form a unity that is beyond the mental capacity of this public school teacher who should be forced to go back to school and learn the basics of education to human freedom, to the ethics of writing, and to education to democracy and justice. He probably has not heard anything about liberatory education and emancipatory pedagogy.

In my critical introduction of Sukimat and in the foreword of MMSU President Miriam E. Pascua, the historical and thematic contexts—even the ideological perspectives deployed in our choice of articles as editors (Dr. Alegria Tan Visaya, Dr. Anabelle Castro Felipe, and myself)—the philosophy behind this anthology (a philosophy subsumed under a new category of epistemological perspective and engagement we are fighting for and which we tentatively call ‘Ilokano and Amianan Studies’) has been explained, expounded, elaborated. In his short-cut way of informing what the Sukimat is, he ended up telling a half-truth, which is the same as a half-lie.

Maasiak kadagiti adalan daytoy a maestro a din sa met nakasursuro.

And to think that we are paying for his public school teacher’s salary, his action is most abominable.

He is doing a public disservice. He should be held accountable, to say the least.

Honolulu, Hawaii/ August 21, 2009

MLE/Nakem/TMI in Bayombong

The First of August, the Death of Cory Aquino, and an Appointment with Ilokano Writers and Amianan Culture Warriors

 

It was the first of August.

 

In the early hours of the pre-dawn light when my journey had led me to the snaking roads of Santa Fe, the text message came as a jolt: Cory Aquino, at 3:18 AM, was dead.

 

I had time to think: the road was closed to traffic, what with a freight truck carrying empty Pepsi Cola bottles skidding while on an uphill climb and filling the two-lane road with bottle fragments.

 

The country’s weather station had predicted a storm coming along the path I would take to go to Bayombong in Nueva Vizcaya where I was to lecture on the issue of  “becoming-nation” as this bears upon the issues of mother language education, cultural democracy, and linguistic justice—abstracts all that have demanded of me so much of my vacation time.

 

Dr Boni Ramos, research director of St. Mary’s University, had been able to put everything in order before taking a quick trip to Manila to welcome his returning son from Texas who had gone on there for a couple of years to work as a nurse.

 

No, I did not go to the home country for the R & R, understood by those who have the dollars to squander.

 

I did my own R & R: resistance and radicalism, if this struggle to bring back our languages into the classroom could be taxonomized this way.

 

My R & R of two months, thus, was work, work, and work.

 

And this work took on various twists and turns, with two books to finalize (Kallautang and Sukimat) and with a war to be staged and to be won (Mother Language Education nationwide campaign) that included a lecture series that brought me from the Amianan provinces up to the Zamboanga-land.

 

The last of the series of lectures—two of them—I had to cancel for lack of material time.

 

The soul has to rest—and the body too even if the mind is all too willing to put on some more nights on the road, with no decent sleep at all.

 

Or else, burn out is not something that we like to go through.

 

The SMU lecture was mind-boggling, with an audience that was collectively ready to take part in the MLE campaign to resist this homogenization of Philippine education and to radicalize our view of cultural pluralism and linguistic rights.

 

After the obligatory Q and A, we headed to one restaurant Bayombong takes as its pride, with the dish definitely evoking memory of home cooking.

 

There was a heavy downpour before and after, a good sign, a good luck.

 

Next, we went to see one Ilokano writer, one of the best women writers who taught students how to write well: Professor Ruperta V. Asuncion.

 

Manang Perting is what we call her.

 

Loving and kind and generous with her compliments, she is the epitome of a long-lost aunt who means so well with her words.

 

She is sick with cancer.

 

But she is strong, bubbly, happy to be home in Bayombong although she says she misses her own home in Los Banos, she misses her garden, she misses her solitude.

 

For she lived alone, and yet she lived in full communion with herself as she was always on the ready to offer her talents and gifts to others.

 

At about past 1:00 PM, we went to see her so we all could sing and dance, dance and sing, and reminisce those things we want kept in the heart forever.

 

I am so happy you came, she said.

 

We are so happy we came to see you, we said, in a choir-like way, when finally, at about 7:00 PM, we gathered the courage to say goodbye.

 

We stayed put for many hours: we stayed put to enjoy each other’s company: Rheo Domingo, Romeo Gervacio, Andy Toquero, Rogie Baysa, Peter La. Julian, and myself.

 

Dr Boni, her brother, was there, of course.

 

At the lunch hour, we were more: Ched Arzadon, Gloria Baguingan, Henry Navarro, Roy Aragon, and Jane Aragon.

 

But now, we had to say goodbye: Dr. Baguingan’s pinakbet and getta-a-daludal were waiting for us.

 

When writers get together, expect the togetherness to get around.

 

We went home with that thought, the darkness enveloping the memory that will come to light our way, pristine and primeval, as we face the terrors and surprises of each day.

 

I tell Manang Perting: Do not go anywhere. I will see you in December. We will do a video documentary of your life.

 

I am not going anywhere, she says.

Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya

August 1/09

MLE and becoming-nation

Agcaoili to speak at SMU:

“Mother language education, education to cultural democracy,

and becoming-nation”

 

St. Mary’s University, one of the premier institutions of higher education in Region II, in partnership with other sectors in Nueva Vizcaya, will host the first-ever Mother Language Education Forum on August 1 at the university’s Teacher Center.

 

Invited to speak to educators, cultural workers, graduate students, government leaders, and advocates of cultural and linguistic rights are Aurelio Solver Agcaoili, PhD, president of Nakem Conferences International and executive director of the 4^th Nakem International Conference. Agcaoili runs the only Ilokano-degree granting program in the world, the Ilokano Language and Literature Program of the University of Hawai’i at Manoa.

 

Also invited to join Agcaoili as speaker at the forum are Prof. Ched Arzadon of the College of Education, University of the Philippines, and Dr. Gloria Baguingan, retired professor of linguistics of the Nueva Vizcaya State University in Bayombong.

 

Agcaoili will problematize the issue of ‘becoming-nation’ in light of the problematiques of Philippine education particularly along issues relevant to cultural democracy and social equity.

 

On July 25, Agcaoili spoke before the Polytechnic University of the Philippines Graduate School. In his talk, he exposed the lies and ruses used by government policies on education in the effort to prop up an empty concept of a Philippine nation-state that did not regard the reality of ‘manyness’ of nations in that political concept of nation.

 

Dr Bonifacio Ramos, director of the university’s Research Center, organized the SMU MLE Forum in collaboration with the university’s President, Rev. Dr. Manuel Valencia, CICM.

MLE and education to democracy

The pursuit of education to justice and democracy

By A Solver Agcaoili

       Nakem Conferences

 

Even as the end of summer ushers in a new, more subdued light that welcomes the coming of Fall and even as we celebrate life with the memory of the sand and sea and sun and surf during the warm months, we think of our latest gains in the Philippines: the signing by the Secretary of Education Jesli Lapus of Department Order No. 74 series of 2009, mandating that henceforth, basic education in the Philippines shall be conducted in the educand’s mother language or mother tongue—at least for the first three grades.  

 

These gains border on the miraculous.

 

We were hoping for a miracle—for the signing by Sec. Lapus of this department order—but we did not expect that these gains would come too soon.

 

For in the project of creating a Philippine nation as part of the political imaginary that traces its beginnings in the late 19^th century Philippine revolution, we have at the same time done a lot of disservice to that one reality we easily dismiss as not us: our being multicultural, our being multilingual.

 

Instead of ushering in a new understanding of the role of diversity and pluralism in the political life of the people, the project of a Philippine nation eventually got shanghaied by the believers of centrism in the structural dynamics of state-crafting: a culture based on the center, an economic life based on the center, and a political life, also dictated by the center.

 

As a result, everything became a project of the center, including our sense of citizenship and how this sense is brought about by a state-sponsored education.

 

In this kind of an education, what we have got so far are long years of experiments on what we should not have done at all, to wit, (a) the discarding of vernacular education in 1974; (b) the introduction of bilingual education understood wrongly by educational leaders and policymakers; and (c) and the teaching, among others, of math and sciences, in a language that is strange to the majority of the students.

 

For so long we have been taking up the cause of educating our students to democracy and social justice, by which kind of an education we mean that which makes use of common sense, and lots of it. 

 

One requisite of this use of common sense is the educational perspective that a child can learn more—and more effectively and efficiently—when she is taught the rudiments of reading in her language first, when she is introduced to a relevant understanding of the world through her tongue, and when her math and science skills are taught in the language she knows clearly well.

 

We call this premise the movement from L1, the language of the child, to another language (L2, L3) not her own.

 

How else can we teach a child the rudiments of reading, the surprises in the concepts we draw from mathematics and science, and the common sense we need in getting by in life except through the use of her very own language?

 

Other people and other groups have been fighting for this recognition for so long.

 

If we start to count how long has this struggle been from the moment a national language was imposed, it is more than 70 years of dogged resistance and cultural denigration at the same time, the contradiction the mark of every child going through the motions of basic education in the Philippines.

 

Indeed, to teach a child how to read, how to understand numbers, and how to explain the ways of the world scientifically by using a language that is not her own is one of the most unjust and undemocratic theories and practices of Philippine education.

 

Indeed, to teach a child how to be a good citizen of her country through a language that is strange to her is one of the ways of not teaching her the virtues of citizenship.

 

We wonder about the dynamic of political life in the Philippines, with the boundary between show business and politics effectively erased, with show business people getting into politics easily and politicians becoming show business people with a breeze.

 

We wonder about the students of the Philippines lagging behind in mathematics, reading, and science skills.

 

The trouble is simply this: you teach a child in a language not her own and we are in big trouble.

 

The Department of Education’s order on the institutionalization of Mother Tongue- Based Multilingual Education will help solve this trouble we have had for three generations. 

 

Finally, we are in this business of education to democracy and justice.  

 

Editorial, Fil-Am Observer, August 2009

Hawai’i, USA