Kallautang-Observer-May 2009

 

 MOTHER LANGUAGE EDUCATION AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

By Dr. Aurelio Solver Agcaoili

 

As of this writing, and based on an email I received from Ched Arzadon, one of the key proponents of Mother Language Education—or MLE—in the Philippines, the Provincial Board of Ilocos Norte has approved the first moves to reconsider the merits of MLE in the province’s public schools.

 

While we have yet to find out where this insight-filled action of the political leaders of Ilocos Norte will lead us, we can now say with certainly that many people are now beginning to sit up and revisit one more time the pedagogical effects of a monolingual form of education the Philippines is following, a monolingual form that sometimes passes itself off as bilingual, with the latter concept borrowed wrongly from the United States.

 

There are enemies of the MLE, and a number of those are people who do not understand the merits of cultural and linguistic diversity even if in all honesty they are honest about the need to protect the diversity of the flora and fauna of the Philippines.

 

Translated in simple terms, this schizophrenic attitude of many people of the Philippines simply tells us of the incapacity of their minds to understand that the chasm between their understanding of the need for biodiversity and their understanding of cultural diversity is not a healthy mental disposition.

 

The reason is simple: one’s real commitment to the preservation of the tarsier monkey in Bohol should have the same intensity as the commitment to the preservation of the various languages and cultures of the country. For while the preservation of all kinds of flora and fauna is important for our ecological health, it is also equally important to make it certain that the various cultures and languages of the country are preserved, maintained, promoted, and perpetuated for all generations.

 

For languages contain in them our forms of knowledge of self, others, and the world, forms of knowledge that took generations to produce, solidify, crystallize, and systematize, forms of knowledge that forever will give us the clue and cue to how human life has been lived, how is it being lived, and how should it be lived in accord with other forms of life.

 

In short, when we lose a language, we lose our sense of self, we lose our sense of others, and we lose our sense of the world.

 

The problem with Philippine education since the colonial times is that it has been an instrument of the continuing production and reproduction of the same vicious cycle of ignorance for the least advantaged, and opportunistic knowledge for the most advantaged.

 

There is nothing more sinister in Philippine education than to witness that those who come out of Philippines schools and colleges are the vary agents of systematic cultural denigration against their own languages and cultures.

 

We thus have many Ilokanos who are ignorant of their Ilokano language and culture because the appreciation of their very own language and culture has never been part and parcel of the definition of a ‘good education’ in the Philippines.

 

We thus have many Ilokanos who hate their Ilokano language and culture—and many of them are the teachers who should know better—because they have been conditioned to believe that the Ilokano language is ‘provincial’, ‘parochial’, and ‘regional’ and is not up to par with the standards from the center of power and commerce and hegemonic education, standards that are essentially Manila-oriented.

 

We combine these bad habits of the mind—this ignorance and cultural denigration—and we have a social bomb ever ready to be detonated in order to erase forever the traces of ‘Ilokanoness’ in the minds of the Ilokano people.

 

The trick in Philippine education is that this rendering of the people of the country as imbued with ignorance and equipped with that ability to denigrate his or her own culture and language has been a systematic and systemic project, what with the ruse that a student needs to learn only about himself or herself, about others, and about the world through the national language, Tagalog, now rendered P/Filipino, and nothing else. Okey, there is that token teaching of English as an international language, which many, for reasons that are obvious, are unable to master.

 

Thus, with Tagalog as the national language as foreign as English to those coming from other non-Tagalog areas, we have two strange languages mediating the act of equipping students of the Philippines with the necessarily life skills in two languages that are never theirs in the first place.

 

If we are to believe in the government census data for the last ten years that only about one-fourth of the population of the Philippines are native speakers of Tagalog, the numbers will give us an ugly, inconvenient truth: that most of our students do not learn the life skills because these are not mediated by—and taught in—their own language.

 

This whole brew of abracadabra in Philippine education, Tagalog-language mediated-style, has given rise to millions of students who cannot solve problems in mathematics, who cannot understand the basic concepts of science, and who cannot speak about themselves, their communities, and the world through their own language.

 

We have with us right now generations of ill-equipped students and young people unable to appreciate who they are and unable to articulate what citizenship is all except to imagine that the real life is out there in Singapore or Hong Kong or the Middle East where they can earn dollars by eking out a life even in the most dire of circumstances, including the possibility of being held hostage by Somali pirates for months, as in the case of more 120 seamen being held hostage by these pirates.

 

The logic of the ruse is this: we are forming students from Aparri to Zamboanga so they can be useful to Manila by way of their ability to speak Tagalog.

 

We are forming students and occupying their minds so they can be useful to companies and employers who speak English.

 

Either way, we are the loser. Either way, we call this phenomenon socially unjust.

 

For to make students speak and see and understand the world through other languages other than their own is one of the most fundamental abominable act we can inflict upon educands.

 

For to make a people speak a language or two at the expense of their own language is not only socially unjust but is fundamentally a contradiction to the very notion of education.

 

Education, by its nature, is cultivation—is rooted in ‘educare’—to cultivate. It is the cultivation of the mind so that the mind that is cultivated will get to see more expansively, more comprehensively, more freely.

 

But when the manner of cultivation is one in which it is done against the very tenets of ‘educare’, education is not education but miseducation.

 

And every act of miseducation is socially unjust.

 

With MLE—with the return of the mother language of the students in the classroom side by side with other languages—Philippine education will finally get to have the chance to redeem itself from its history of hell and non-sense, contradiction and social injustice, miseducation and lack of freedom.

 

The movement to bring back Ilokano and other major languages of the Philippines into the classroom is not going to be a walk in the park, for sure.

 

We expect a counter-movement, illogical as the one presently being waged by those receiving undue entitlements and privileges from the unjust and exclusivist Tagalog-English framework of Philippine education.

 

But there is no greater resistance than those waged by the oppressed, than those who have been marginalized and peripheralized, their resistance fundamentally one of claiming and reclaiming of their sense of self, a sense of self that can only be mediated by their commitment to make their languages and cultures alive.     

 

For true education is always this: education to life. For true education is always this: education to justice and linguistic democracy. 

Published, Observer, May 2009

Hon, HI

4th Nakem Conference Bulletin 10

4^TH NAKEM INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

Honolulu, Hawai’i, November 11-14, 2009

 

DAP-AYAN:

SHARING AND UNDERSTANDING

ETHNOLINGUISTIC WORLDS

TOWARDS CULTURAL PLURALISM

 

Convened and hosted by

 

Ilokano Language & Literature Program

Dept. of Indo-Pacific Languages & Literatures

University of Hawai’i at Manoa

Honolulu, Hawai’i, U. S. A.

 

CALL FOR PAPERS

 

·      Ilokano and heritage language teaching and the world languages curriculum

·      Appreciating ethnolinguistic worlds

·      Tangible heritage from the various ethnolinguistic groups

·      Theories and practices in the sharing and understanding of a heritage

·      Cultural pluralism as a philosophy of education

·      Pathologies of multiculturalism, remedies of cultural pluralism

·      Languages and cultures in the diaspora

·      Subversions of the multicultural Philippines experience

·      Mass media, popular culture, and heritage education

 

Send abstract to the Abstract Selection Committee: Aurelio Solver Agcaoili, nakemconference@yahoo.com; Lilia Quindoza Santiago, lilias@hawaii.edu; Raymund Llanes Liongson, rliongson@gmail.com. For logistics and finance, email Clem Montero and Julius Soria, respectively: montero@hawaii.edu and soria@hawaii.edu.  For more information, visit nakemconferences.blogspot.com.  

Language Struggle, 7

(Note: This is part of the continuing exchange among advocates of our linguistic and cultural freedom.)

ON MOTHER LANGUAGE IN EDUCATION AND MOTHER LANGUAGE EDUCATION AND THEIR PROMISE 

Dear Ched,

I see that you have been able to quickly come to terms with the sentiment of some language advocates about why they could not picture why MLE is one tentative panacea we can imagine to fire up our struggle for equity and cultural justice and linguistic democracy. 

The literary allusion to the Trojan horse, with Troy and its soldiers at the back of our heads as this protracted language and culture war rages on, is representative of the history of our disenfranchisement, with the concept of 'our' here clearly non-Tagalog peoples and places of the homeland accidentally we call the Philippines. 

In recognizing this historical fact, we cannot say--by force of a sweeping argument--that this sentiment of cautious non-alignment, even non-involvement and non-engagement is moral and valid, legitimate and historically-grounded. 

It is, Ched. And it is real. The politics or its lack of our disenfranchisement has become everyday, even if we refuse to recognize its pervasiveness. 

More than 70 years of marginalization and disenfranchisement is equal to three generations of deprivation: three generations that can be accounted back to my parents and passed on to my children. 

I stand in between as a middling witness to these falsities that have been passed on as truths to my parents, to me, and now, to my children. 

And I am terribly, terribly sad for all our sad peoples and for our sad republic. 

Those of us from the ranks of MLE advocates, by the way, are from the ranks of the middle-aged people who, probably early, had that inchoate unease in our early years of reading "Pepe and Pilar" in Tagalog and English and all other fantastic stories that valorized our feudal sense of things, including this feudal view of language in its early form, with Tagalog as the symbolic 'father' of our abilities and social capacities to communicate to and with each other as a nation-state.

We must see that this feudalism in Tagalogism--not simply the imposition of a language that is incidentally Tagalog but the whole illogicality of that pedagogic and pedantic political exercise by a Tagalog president and his relentless reincarnations even in the country's premier Colleges of Education eventually graduate into fascism, when Tagalog gained ascendancy as 'the' language of the nation--is a symptom to a problem. 

And with Tagalog and Tagalogism being accorded an army and a navy, Philippine linguistic fascism has another name, and it is fetishistically sporting it so: Tagalogism and Tagalogization in the form of the 'nationalistic' fantasies of creative writers, cultural critics, and even national artists who do not represent our sense of 'nationalism' that can account the pluralism that is us, the diversity that is our social resource, and the difference that is our virtue and redemption.

Now, with MLE eliding into something other than its being MLE, with inequity theoretically framing it under the guise of a statist nationalism that is largely viewed from the obnoxious conception of nation-state from the center, you--we cannot--trust an alternative like this one that is not grounded on this long history of inequity and this equally long history of struggle of our marginalized peoples. 

In one of our GUMIL Conferences in the 90's, I was responsible for putting up a conference where Ilokano scholars participated and shared with writers what they thought of the systemic marginalization in the writing of our Philippine literature, with canons that are dubiously pro-Tagalog, except for the story of Lam-ang and other tokens just so they can remind us, these critics and canon writers that they are 'including'. 

But we must remind ourselves that this token inclusion is a neocolonial master's way of saying, here is your carrot and candy, now do not speak up against us because, indeed, we have included your Lam-ang and you have not right to say we forgot.  

The lesson here is the assurance that this decades and decades of systemic and systemic inequity will be addressed squarely by MLE, and sadly, even if you did not care to admit it, one tactic to do that is clearly political. We call this the redeeming power of inclusion so we can do away, once and for all, this exclusion that has marked what we are as peoples of the homeland.

If MLE failed to do that, then rightly so, we have a Trojan horse. 

Let us not forget that we have not been forewarned of the evils of Tagalogism and Tagalogization under the guise of the nation and the state--under the guise of nationalism. What we have been promised is the redemptive power of speaking a common language that has caused not unification but a chasm that has divided us more and more.  

We must remember--and remember with clarity, that the intention to build a nation was what justified the imagination of a 'national' language, however dubious that was, because, among other things, it was grounded on a fossilized view of the nation-state that was largely based on Quezon's idea of the 'polis' as the of the hypervaluated examples of the dancing four sisters of 'egalite, fraternite, liberte' who are at the same time the purveyors of colony and empire--these dancing four sisters being held as exemplars of what we can do to ourselves in terms of state-crafting and nation-building: Germany, Spain, England, and France. 

Remember that we were building up a nation in making 'Tagalog as the basis of the national language' and we paid the salaries of people, who under the guise of that purpose, became the very people who oppressed and continue to oppress us by denying us of our linguistic rights and cultural freedom. 

Remember that we were building a state in making 'Tagalog as the basis of the national language' and we paid for all the Tagalog grammar books (remember Lope K. Santos' 'Tagalog balarila' and its illusions about a universal balarila of our salvation, that dubious grammar of our freedom?) and Tagalog dictionaries (schizophrenic as they are since many of them could not even figure out if they are indeed Tagalog or Pilipino or Filipino, except of course, that dictionary that passed itself off, in the sense of a eureka, that here at last is a 'Filipino' dictionary because some words from Hanunuo Mangyan and other languages have been included, and that 'pinakbet' has entered into its lexicon) and the salaries of teachers of Tagalog in our classrooms. 

Oh, how we venerated Tagalog at the altar of this skewed notion of nation and this equally skewed notion of state!

Here is what we can do: we need to clarify that intentions alone do not make our act ethical.

Intentions are never the final arbiter of what is moral and justifiable because they account the basic freedoms we are fighting for. The ethical adage remains: Bonum ex integra causa malum ex cucumque defectu.

We can keep on announcing our good intentions--as all the Tagalogistic fascists are saying and claiming in the name of the country they cannot even spell in accord with the demands of cultural pluralism because of historical ignorance and because of their ignorance of the notion cultural diversity as the source of our national conversation and ergo, national communication, with that Tagalog logic that says that since Tagalog has no 'F', then, as it is always the case, the spelling of the homeland should be 'Pilipinas' and not 'Filipinas'--but good intentions alone would not advance our cause of human freedom if these intentions did not find their context in the larger view of what we want to achieve with and for our people. 

 

I offer a philosophical questioning that I hope will guide the praxis that we ought to draw up, as this praxis gains ascendancy with the vigor of its truth, first and foremost, and with the energy of its ideology, only secondarily. Or it could be that we forge in our struggle the melding of the two to account our renewed orthopraxis:  

1. We need to establish clearly what this MLE is all about in terms of some basic distinctions we have to do: (a) the role of MLE in redeeming ourselves from all these inequities that have been our lot since 1935, and thus, this act would elevate our pedagogial purposes from plain pedagogial pedantry (which to me, is an inutile imagination as we have to put back politics in our MLE classrooms) and (b) the role of Mother Language in Education (MLIE), which is not the same, conceptually, as plain and simple Mother Language Education (MLE). 

2. We need to eventually trod upon sacred ground when we will work out tactic. We do this by being mindful of some other related concepts, particularly issues related to the community where we find our MLE classrooms. These issues are first language, lingua franca, and second language.

With this MLE initiative, we are going to fiercely guard the ground we have claimed for ourselves. 

It will not be easy guarding it, as many of the enemies are also us--they are, in fact, coming also from our ranks. 

Of course, there are the plain enemies whose intent is to make all of us 'Tagalog-speaking' nationals in the country that is in truth and in fact, linguistically and culturally plural.

One of the points they will raise against us is this: how are we going to communicate to each other as a nation-state, as a people, without Tagalog (well, tell me, let us not kid each other now: ask the respectable linguists and they will tell you that darn truth about P/Filipino, because in reality, we have been held hostage by this equation: Tagalog=P/Filipino)?

Our response should be this: communication is motivation, and the best motivation is equity, justice, fairness, democracy, and respect for human rights. 

And our languages are our fundamental human rights.

And the opportunity to be educated in our languages is one educational motivation--and educational resource--we can put in place. 

Frankly:  I do not understand why every one is so worried about the extinction of the tarsus when no one is crying foul about the extinction of our languages. A report from the Ethnologue says that we have lost four of our languages already. Which language is coming in next?

Now, we have to be continually cautious of Trojan horses. 

We are not playing victim here--but if we do, can we ever blame the victim for what happened to her or him? 

Let the ember of this struggle continue to fire all of us. 

Aurelio Agcaoili

Nakem/UH

 

Marhay na banggi sa indo gabos! 

Benjie, I am not representing Commission on Higher Education or any of its interest. Ched is short for my full name- Maria Mercedes. My family's roots are from La Union, Ilocos, Nueva Ecija, and Pangasinan. I also lived in Benguet, Manila, Laguna, and Bicol. 

Now I understand the wariness of some of you about the MLE initiatives and why you are calling it a trojan horse. I see your point that it is indeed possible that certain interest groups would piggyback on our efforts to promote their own agenda. This warns be to be more careful 
so that such will not happen or else MLE which is supposed to demarginalize pupils will end up reinforcing another marginalizing force. This is why we need your help because you have the eye to discern the tactics of such groups. As I said, our only intent as educators is that all children would be educated in their mother tongue so that they would develop critical minds to discern and address injustice in their midst. Btw, to situate MLE in the larger discourse of education reform, please read the transcript of the UP Centennial Lecture on Education Reform which is linked to our MLE blog http://www.motherto ngue-based. blogspot. com/

Thank you, Apo Maestro Agcaoili, for the Nakem's support for the MLE alliance and for being among the first to sign our online petition. I see that that the alliance would be participated by groups coming from language/culture, education and other development- oriented groups. I 
hope, too, that such alliance would be felt even among virtual communities. 

Sa indo gabos, Dios mabalos sa indong pagtabang.

Ched Arzadon 

Language Struggle, 5

MOTHER LANGUAGE IN EDUCATION & MOTHER LANGUAGE EDUCATION

(Below is an exchange I had with Ched Arzadon, one of the key advocates of Mother Language Education/Mother Language in Education)

Ched, aloha:

You have our assurance, from the ranks of many enlightened Nakem Conferences, Timppuyog Dagiti Mannurat nga Ilokano Global, America, and Filipinas (TMI Global), and GUMIL Filipinas cultural workers, rsearches, teachers, and creative writers. 

This MLE has been our ranks' concern for so long, and we read this Manifesto in the way it ought to be read from our own end. Many of our people have signed the online petition as you might realize. I have signed, and I am number 25, if you care to know.

This politics of language thing is one concern that we have to look into in the alliance, and I am certain it is not going to be a walk in the park. 

But we will be there, armed with the hoped-for capacity to discourse with other language advocates with a certain humility to be present to others and with openness to truth and its demands before ideology. 

Let us all move on. We go 'divide et tempera', and we are all done in. 

Best to all of us.

Aurelio Agcaoili
Nakem Conferences/ UH Manoa

--- On Fri, 11/21/08, ched estigoy-arzadon <removed> wrote:

From: ched estigoy-arzadon <removed>
Subject: [DILA] Re: PETITION for mother tongue based learning

 To: DILA@yahoogroups. com
Date: Friday, November 21, 2008, 4:23 AM

Since there is a continuing discussion about motives underlying the   petition I posted for mother tongue based learning or  multilingual  education (MLE), please allow me to share the context in  which the  manifesto came to being. I helped craft the manifesto,  along with two  of my friends from NEDA Education and Manpower Development  Division. 

We're together in the Teacher Education and Development  Program  yahoogroup where the MLE framework has been the topic for  months. We  crafted the manifesto as part of our personal advocacy for  MLE. Mine  was crystallized when I attended meetings sponsored by  SEAMEO where  MLE programs initiated by DepEd and NGOs were presented. I was drawn  to MLE for its efficacy in affecting learning and for  addressing the  needs of marginalized learners. 

Being from the education sector, it was clear in my mind  that the  manifesto we put together was all about catalyzing
EDUCATION REFORM  in the country. It was actually right after the UP  centennial lecture  on education reform that the manifesto was finalized.  Lobbying for a  language bill was just a fraction of my concern. If you  visit my blog 
> http://demarginaliz ingeducation. blogspot. com/ you would  find that I  wrote how MLE as a pedagogical approach would be  implemented now  (with or without an enabling law) in all learning  situations  including in catechetical and Sunday school classes. 

In my eagerness to gather support, I sent the appeal to all  my e- groups, including those I found in the search engine of  yahoo that  advocate culture and language development (like DILA). I  posted the   appeal in this group not knowing fully well the dynamics  and extent  of language politics that exist among language experts like  you. I'm  learning a lot from you. Thanks for those who have  patiently expained  some historical background. I am sorry if you felt that I was  imposing the manifesto in disregard to your experiences of  linguistic  injustice. That was not my intention. Well, though some  of you may  not affix your signature, based on your exchanges, I feel  that you  are one with us in advocating for culturally and  linguistically responsive education. 

Dios ti agngina.

Ched Arzadon

Language Struggle, 4

POPULAR CULTURE AND ITS REDEMPTIVE POSSIBILITIES

(Below is an exchange I had with Melanie Lapid on popular culture and the language struggle in the Philippines. Her email has been removed.)

Melanie, aloha:

You are right. Armed with our critical tools and skills, we go the popular culture way. Mindful of what we can and what we cannot do, that is how we are going to advance our cause.

We must admit this: we cultural workers have the ideas but we do not--at least from our ranks at Nakem Conferences--the power of the purse. That is where that 'industry' thing can come to be our ally. 

We need to fund this struggle, and fund it well, in terms of both concepts and currency, this last one meaning the cents that we need to buy the cup of coffee to make us stay awake, so that on the crossroads and on the wayside, we are not going to go astray or fall asleep or both--oh, the cents, the cents, the cents to perk us up so that we will not be enervated by all these wars, big and small, within and out, that we have to contend with each day.  

So there: engage and deploy--deploy and engage--but we are armed as well with the critique for that engagement and deployment. After all, there is war here, really. 

The better soldiers in this war are those who are ready with their ideations about the fundamental things of our struggle.

Best to you in the name of the anito of our languages and cultures.


Aurelio Agcaoili
Nakem Conferences


On Fri, 11/21/08, Melanie Lapid <removed> wrote:

From: Melanie Lapid <removed>
Subject: Re: [DILA] Sisikat no reng amanung rehiun (The regional languages are on the rise)
To: DILA@yahoogroups.com
Date: Friday, November 21, 2008, 12:24 AM

Thanks for your profound comments and kind words, Prof. Agcaoili. I agree with you on the possible pitfalls of culture as we know it getting sucked into the pop "culture" industry and all that it stands for. And I understand those who are wary about getting "contaminated," the risk of becoming "one of its own."

On the other hand, by not have anything to do with "shabby and inane" shows, we might be leaving the field open to our opponents by default. By holding on to our standards (cultural, literary, etc.), without being too snobbish as to avoid all contact with this sector, we will probably be doing the industry, and society, a service.  It
is there, so we might as well use it for our noble objectives. As you say, the better for us to promote our cause.

Mimi           

El dom, 16/11/08, Aurelio Agcaoili <aurelioagcaoili@yahoo.com> escribió:
De: Aurelio Agcaoili <aurelioagcaoili@yahoo.com>
Asunto: Re: [DILA] Sisikat no reng amanung rehiun (The regional languages are on the rise)
Para: DILA@yahoogroups.com
Fecha: domingo, 16 noviembre, 2008 3:01
 
Melanie:
You are probably right on that one note on the power of popular cultural forms as some kind of a tentative gauge for how much success we have gained. 
 
But believe me: popular culture is one tricky business as it is based on the ugly reality of 'industry' and how this industry turns culture into one of its own to
account what we teachers and students of cultural criticism call 'culture industry.' 

I do agree though that we have a moral duty to penetrate' culture and its industry to make our message known and that the more Kuya Germs we can win to take side with us--and the more of those shabby and inane Wowowee and Eat Bulaga take up our cause, the better for us to promote our cause. 

Between our silence--which can mean acquiescence, in truth, in fact, and in practice--and our getting into the mold of popular culture to tell that this systemic and systematic oppression and internal colonization has to come to an end and soon, this second one is a more productive option. The deal really is: let us roll our sleeves. 

Then again, we need critical minds to do critically-oriented pop culture.

A Agcaoili
Nakem Conference 

On Sat, 11/15/08, Melanie Lapid wrote:

From: Melanie Lapid
Subject: [DILA] Sisikat no reng amanung rehiun (The regional languages are on the rise)
To: DILA@yahoogroups. com
Date: Saturday, November 15, 2008, 3:47 AM
Sasabian dang ing kareng mass media, kareng bageng pangmalda, la lalto deng bayung pangimut.

Mipaintagun (king e ku sasarian) ketang milabasan a Sabadung bengi )(Duminggu na palang ganingaldo) a ayalis ke king Master Showman Presents/Walang Tulugan nang German Moreno ing TV. 

Magsalita ya i Ronnie Liang, metung a finalist king Pinoy Dream Academy. Pakilala ne 
ing kayang bayung CD ing Ngiti (Ayli). Anyang kitnan de ot inabe ne ing Kapampangan kareng kantang atiu karin, sinabi nang usu no reng amanung pang-rehiyun ngeni, masali no kanu kareng malda, uling tatagkil la king pusu. Balamu, bagya-bagya, akukwa ta na ing kekatamung pakirasan. Nung angga kang "Kuya Germs" miraras na iti, tutu pin sigurung malapit ta na karin.

English:
They say that mass media, or popular culture, are a reflection of new movements or currents in society. 

I happened to watch, by accident, German Moreno's Master Showman Presents/Walang Tulugan last Saturday night (or rather, Sunday morning). Ronnie Liang, the Pinoy Dream Academy finalist, was introducing his new CD, Ngiti (Ayli)["ayli" being
the Kapampangan version of Tagalog "ngiti" meaning "smile]. When asked why he chose to include Kapampangan songs in the collection, he said that regional languages are now in, and hot with mass audiences, because they touch the heart. It looks like we are slowly beginning to achieve our objectives. If even "Kuya Germs" is reflecting
the trend, then, maybe we have almost arrived.
 
Mimi
 

Language Struggle, 3

(Note: This is part of an exchange I had with Prof.Ched Arzadon, one of the proponents of Mother Language Education. I removed the unrelated part of her e-mail to account the context of my response. The struggle for language rights in the Philippines has gained currency, again and again, because of the continuing oppression of the linguistic rights of the non-Tagalog peoples of the Philippine homeland.)

Ched, aloha:

Let me be very frank as well with my response to you since we are in the MLE advocacy now.

There are two sides, at the very least,to the debate on whether we have to have a national language or not. My answer to this issue is yes and no.

Yes, if we are philosophically ready to revisit the question of nation, nationalism, and cultural nationalism.

There is a problem: if national language--and the notion of 'nation' in that national language is a statist notion of nationalism, then we are done in: there is no recourse but for other languages and cultures to declare a fight a now. Here is the score: for the last 73 years of oppressive marginalization since the institution of the oppressive provision of the 1935 Constitution, what has ever been done to preserve and sustain and allow the 'othered' Philippine languages to thrive? 

Nothing. 

The thing is this: that we paid our taxes to develop Tagalog and Tagalog alone so that after 73 years of being developed, it now is a force to reckon with in terms of linguistic oppression. You go to the field and you will see the rampant cultural denigration of our languages. No one would like to be caught speaking in Ilokano anymore because even at the Laoag International Airport--as in the Ilokano classrooms--Ilokano is not legal, it is not legitimate, it is not moral. This is how bad the field data is. 
You tell that this is not the fault of Tagalog. Yes, it is not: it is a problem rooted in the Tagalogistic language and culture policies of this government. 

Now, tell me: if our language were accorded the same respect, as a matter of vision and insight, would we be at this stage of self-hatred?

The other side of the debate is: do we need a 'national language' based on a statist notion of nation? No, we do not need one. 

Perhaps, the question needs recasting: Do we need official languages? 

Yes, and the official languages should be the lingua francae of the country. Let justice be served. There is a big difference between 'nationalizing' a language and 'officializing' it. Why get stuck up with that Quezonian fetish for a national language? It does not make sense when many nation-states of the world, despite or because of, globalization, have looked to cultural pluralism as a mark of modernity, civilization, and multicultural competency. 

What about English? 

You talk about demarginalization and its powerful liberatory promise for all our peoples? 

English is not going to be our national language but one of the official languages. We need a language for international communication and Tagalog is not going to be one of them, as a matter of fact. 

I used to believe in Filipino and its promises; in fact, I was the founding president of an advocacy group of teachers and cultural workers called KAGURO SA FILIPINO, Kapisanan ng mga Guro sa Filipino. But the way the Tagalogistic mindset has railroaded our linguistic rights by way of the continuing creeping in of Tagalogism made me realize that this 'Filipino' is not the way to go to offer our people linguistic and cultural redemption.                                                                         

I am not for ethnocentrism. This means that I do not believe in the sacredness of Ilokano and Ilokano alone; there is no such thing. Corollary to that belief is the recognition that Tagalogization/Tagalogism (being passed off as 'Filipinization') is pathologic of the same social malady we all do want to happen. We abhor Gulag, Dachau, and the gas chambers so the Ayran race will be purified. 

This Tagalogization/Tagalogism is one such rite and ritual. God forbid, we will be monolingual in the days ahead. Many countries that have awakened to the reality of diversity and pluralism are beginning to create spaces for other languages to survive and thrive. The United States has been talking of 'English only' educational directions but this is not going to happen, with its commitment to plurality as a way of life. Many countries, if you ask, are doing the same thing while we in the homeland are quickly turning everyone into Tagalog.  

Ched, the field data cannot lie; we only need to be sensitive to what it tells us. 

One last note on your preference to Tagalog, the colonizer language, to English. 

My answer is quite simple that people do not see in this simplicity is the blatant, brutal truth we refuse to admit: that every act of 'colonization' is an act that immorally violent and brutal: the truth of that colonization if forced upon a people and then a cottage industry of promotion and marketing is created, and repeated over and over again until those who listen to that promotional and marketing tactic becomes so numb he can no longer distinguish fact from fiction, and then, and then, like the Goebbels tactic getting the results, we believe--we believe. In this day and age, we are not going to even think about admitting any form of colonization. 

Ask me again, and I will respond to you in frankness what I think about issues deeply affecting us. On the question of the English language, here is my repartee: it links us, as it has done so, with the world. In economic terms, however bad our English is, it became responsible for the billion dollar remittances that makes this country afloat. And Tagalog? What did it give except the 'wakasan' mentality of the Tagalog komiks. And those pulp now, those romance novels that make our lower middle class peoples--people like me--who need to believe in the fantastic possibilities of romance and love and feudal values. Or add here: the capitalist values or unbridled capitalism, the hero with his solo flight to seeking the fulfillment of his individualistic dreams.  

About what would we use to communicate to and with each other? 

That question begs. Because to communicate to and with each other we need, first, to be motivated to enter in a communication with and to each other. Motivation, while mediated by language, is a mindset, a mentality. Even before we were a nation-state with all its faults and weaknesses and artifice, we have always communicated to and with each other. Did we lack interpreters and translators? Did we lack people who were motivated to speak to and with us via interpreters and translators? Why this Quezonian indolence, one that says, in arrogance, that a president like had to be resorting to Ilokano interpreters to speak to the Ilokanos? Why not? Why settle for a disrespect for the language of a people when in the first instance you said you are in for a respect for the language of a people? When we have decided as a nation to go multilingual, let us go multilingual and for real, and not multilingual in one sense while not multilingual in other senses. This idea of not being able to communicate to and with each other lack merit because this is not backed up by what happens on the ground. Here is the useless equation that speaking a national language equals being nationalist/nationalistic while speaking a 'regional' language is betrayal, is being a traitor to the national cause. Herein lies the context: that regionalism is the stumbling block to the economic and other related developments of the Philippines, and thus, regionalism should be wiped out, erased from the vocabulary of the 'othered' peoples of the Republic. I say: there is nothing more murderous that this statement. 

  

Best now in the name of all the languages of the homeland, in the name of the anito of our cultures,

Aurelio


11/18/08, Ched Arzadon 

From: Ched Arzadon
Subject: RE: Translation of Manifesto into Ilokano and Tagalog
To: aurelioagcaoili@yahoo.com
Date: Tuesday, November 18, 2008, 5:55 PM

Since I find you a kindred spirit (for your passion for MLE) and being a fellow Ilocano and a respected expert in languages, let me share to you my initial reactions about MLE and hope to hear your feedback.

My area is Education (particularly development oriented type like nonformal and informal education) and so I was drawn to MLE because of its demarginalizing possibility. Having jumped into this advocacy exposed me for the first time to the language politics among linguistics people. I never knew that such conflicts and divisions existed. 

Yes, I see the point why Tagalog should not take the privileged position. But what would we use to communicate to each other at this time? Why English? For me I'd rather use one of the languages of the colonized (Tagalog) than the language of the colonizer. I also see that each linguistic group has the responsibility to develop their own language. Maybe I have never understood fully well the insidious nature of the Tagalog linguists that was alluded to by people in DILA. For me, I see myself as a Filipino and I value all languages in the land.

Although Ilocano is my mother tongue, I see that Ilocano is co-equal with other Filipino languages. I also do not see why a God-given gift like our language would divide us. I do not intend to sound offensive or self-righteous. I am just perplexed about the whole thing.   

Agyamanak manen apo kaniayo gapu iti kinaingetyo nga agbaligi iti advocacytayo.

Ched