Medium not the issue, says reader

It is part of the issue...that children as young as six to twelve years old get exposed to his/her own culture through their national language. The love of self, respect for oneself, dignity, integrity, and all those things that are part of our self-identity are forces that help mold our character and determine the development of our self-direction, initiative, and vision. Fired up by one's feeling of worth as part of one nation with a distinct cultural heritage....will give direction to what one will aspire to be...to be honest or a liar, to be true to oneself or to be a copy-cat of whatever one sees from another. Yes, a native language, specially, a national language, the language of the fallen heroes of those who fought for us to be as free as we are now today is no harm. Tagalog or not, it is the heritage from our ancestors that counts...the ones that recorded their national cultural treasures such as our history, music, arts, and literature. It is to our own benefit to treasure and enrich our own cultural heritage and share them with pride to other peoples of the world. The world respect people who value themselves and their own cultural heritage as oppose to those who are merely aping and copying others. And if the only reason why we are willing to forego of our national language is economics….that’s last in the lists of many people in the developed countries. They expect any president that comes from non-speaking countries to deliver speeches in their own native tongue and they are used to listening to translators as they speak. They have no respect for copycat and who show more pride in speaking in English when they have their own language. I know this because I live among Americans who value patriotism because many of them are patriotic. They expect no less from other people toward their own native land and culture.

“Not giving quality education to our poor people is more anti-poor than teaching them English. Why don’t we just support that directive?”

The directive is this: Two government directives required the teaching of English to children starting in the first grade in public and private schools.... retired Supreme Court associate justice Isagani Cruz, said EO 210 was "anti-poor and alienates Filipino school children from their Filipino heritage."

Quality teaching is not synonymous to both ways; teaching through Tagalog and/or teaching through English. Both are affected by time constraints…learning through one’s native tongue and learning through a “foreign” language. One can do untold damage to a child mental development whose brain cells has already begun processing the stimuli of her environment through a medium his parents and the people around him have helped him internalized the cognitive elements he must acquire if he has to continue in his mental maturation. The basics of learning, the skills that will empower this child to learn further such as ….sequencing, sensing degrees, measurements, and contrasting the attributes and similarities of her surroundings will determine whether he will become successful adult learner. Backed by educational researches conducted by linguists and educators, the bilingual education policy makers in the USA has favored a later exit in primary language education program and allowing students to enter learning through a second language at a much later year…through high school. The following is excerpts published by US Congress on Promoting High Standards and Bilingual Skills….

G. Promoting High Standards and Bilingual Skills
The Congress finds that--
(9) quality bilingual education programs enable children
and youth to learn English and meet high academic standards including
proficiency in more than one language;
……..While the study's results are too numerous to review in their entirety,(22) they include the following:

l Substantial amounts of native-language instruction do not slow down the acquisition of English-language skills, including literacy.

l Contrary to expectations, only 17 percent of children in early-exit programs and 26 percent of those in immersion programs had been "mainstreamed" after 4 years.

l At the outset, early-exit students outperformed immersion students in English reading and mathematics, but there was little difference between the two groups after the 3rd grade.

l Their rates of academic growth roughly paralleled those of English-proficient children in regular classrooms, but their achievement remained below national norms.

l In the late-exit model, growth curves became steeper the longer students remained in the program; their achievement test scores in English reading, English language, and mathematics approached (but did not quite reach) national norms by the 6th grade.
l This pattern was further confirmed by variations among the late-exit programs themselves. In one such program that lapsed into an early-exit model during the study, scores fell off dramatically.

David Ramírez, the principal researcher, explains the policy implications:
If your instructional objective is to help kids stay where they are --around the 25th percentile -- then give them immersion or early exit [programs] and they'll keep their place in society. If your concern is to help kids catch up to the norming population, use more primary language. In the late-exit programs, they're growing faster in content areas and in English, too. It's really clear that you will not slow down a child's acquisition of English by providing large amounts of native-language instruction [quoted in Crawford 1992].

A review of the Ramírez study by the National Research Council (NRC) questioned the statistical procedures used to compare the late-exit model with the other two approaches and concluded that the research design failed to control for possible pre-existing differences among students and schools. But the NRC endorsed some of the study's major findings, in particular "the importance of primary-language instruction in second-language achievement in language arts and mathematics" (Meyer & Fienberg 1992).

Evidence on these points has continued to accumulate. Analyzing the academic progress of 42,000 language-minority students over periods of eight to twelve years, Thomas and Collier (1996) have confirmed many of Ramírez et al.'s (1991) conclusions. This ongoing research compares five well-implemented program types -- two-way bilingual education, DBE with sheltered English (content-based ESL), TBE with sheltered English, TBE with traditional (grammar-based) ESL, and traditional ESL pullout alone (see Glossary). The researchers have identified a consistent pattern: students' long-term growth accelerates in proportion to the amount of native language used. The most promising results are being achieved in the two way bilingual model; the least promising, in the ESL pullout approach (see Chart II). http://users.rcn.com/crawj/langpol/BestEvidence.pdf

According to cognitive educational psychologists, by age two to three, the child has already been acquiring through his native tongue the language that allows her brain to relate and see logics of the phenomena around her as he experienced them first hand. By age five, he is ready to learned vicariously, through code representations of his experiences from objects he is manipulating and increasingly through pictures and then through printed words. The degree of internalization is greatest if he is to acquire these internalization through a familiar language code he already have, then the quality education we are talking about will enter here as a factor at this juncture, the merging of the native medium with another medium, a foreign language in a gradual fashion. At first, with some vocabulary words and basic expressions that the child can easily relate to what he already knew. In this stage of his learning….the aim of education is to allow him the ultimate use of his native language to fulfill his potential as a well-rounded individual who will be capable of making informed decision according to his conscience and critical thinking. The hypothesis that the acquisition of foreign language and its use depends to a greater degree to the extent of the child’s mastery of his native language in all its facets: grammar, vocabulary words, expressions and idioms is a proven theory already. A child who will be forced to stop using what he had already gained from cradle up to when he is to start schooling at age six through another language is almost like killing who he has been and must start all over again. This explain for the delay of the learning up to a standards of many students who were forced to exit their schooling from native instruction into entirely new setting with no native instruction but just foreign language in the United States as early as third grades. Bilingual Education is the offshoot of many researches that had been done to support it. But even in this program, basic to its success is the qualification of the teachers and the program itself, how it is implemented. These two are basic factors to quality education.

It is not a question of stopping the first language and starting totally anew from zero with another foreign language. That’s not how the world even in its foundation is set up. There is a slow and gradual process in the order from simple to complex development of all living things…one-celled or multi-cellular beings as we are. Let’s not be impatient when it comes to children’s development. There can never be quality in anything if things are rushed without looking at how children grow as learners, from early childhood to adulthood.

I can understand why Gloria Arroyo is impatient. The economic growth that is keeping her awake night and day will come in due time if she takes care of other things within her expertise and not meddle in the education of the country’s children. Leave the policy making in education in the hands of the experts and all she can do now is to make sure the peoples’ money are spent wisely to strengthen the capability of all people to think critically and wisely. As a nation we seem to be in dire need to regain that ability our fore fathers seem to have better than we are today.

I believe, if our politicians speak in the national language through which all Filipinos understand, (like the Chinese with their written language), will they become more sincere, honest, and wise when deliberating about the needs of the country and how they can meet these needs. Then, they will know what matters and will understand what is meant by common national interest. It is not really money that matters. Ang salapi ay lalagpak sa ating mga kandungan…maski hindi natin ibigay ang ating lahat kung alam natin kung paano ang pagiging mabuting tao.

buzz actu www.buzziactu.com

I hear what you are saying, but I generaly look at things a little differently. I appreciate your position and your williness to share your thoughts on this topic.

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well thats something to think about. nice, hope you keep this blog alive! will you post more related articles?