House to okay 'English' bill

The House of Representatives will soon pass a bill that seeks to restore English as the principal medium of instruction in public schools.

Cebu Rep. Eduardo Gullas, principal author of the measure, said yesterday the passage of the bill shortly after Congress resumes session on Jan. 19 “is now just a formality.”

He said the committee on basic education and the committee on higher and technical education filed a joint report last Dec. 14 endorsing the bill for immediate plenary consideration and approval.

He said the restoration of English as the principal medium of instruction could build up “global competitiveness of the country’s labor force.”

“Mounting global unemployment due to the worsening economic slump has merely underscored the need for our human resources to be proficient in English — the world’s lingua franca — in order to stay highly competitive in the job markets here and abroad,” Gullas added.

Of the 238 members of the House, at least 202 signed the report on House Bill 5619 — the proposed Act Strengthening and Enhancing the Use of English as the Medium of Instruction.

Among them are Speaker Prospero Nograles (Davao City) and Majority Leader Arthur Defensor Sr. (Iloilo), and Del de Guzman (Marikina City) and Cynthia Villar (Las Piñas City), chairpersons of the basic and higher education committees, respectively.

In the previous Congress, the House, voting 132-7, approved the English bill on third and final reading. This was in September 2006, or just eight months before the May 2007 midterm polls.

Senators, however, failed to act on the bill because they were preoccupied with the fast-approaching elections then.

This time, Gullas said the House and the Senate would have ample opportunity to pass the bill.

He said once enacted, the bill would supersede Department of Education (DepEd) Order No. 25, which proclaimed a “bilingual” teaching policy.

Meant to develop “a nation competent in the use of English and Filipino,” the bilingual policy was adopted in 1974.

Accordingly, the subjects of social studies, character education, values education, industrial arts, home economics, and physical education were all taught using Filipino, while other subjects were done in English.

However, Gullas said the subjects that were supposed to be taught in English were actually done in “Taglish,” or a blend of English and the local dialect.

This weakened English in a big way, he said.

“As a language is best learned through constant exposure and use, we have to prescribe again by law, and not simply by administrative fiat, the reinstatement of English as medium of instruction, except of course in Filipino taught as a subject,” he said.

He noted that a previous survey by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) indicated that while most Filipinos are convinced that English mastery leads to greater employment opportunities, many still lack proficiency in the language.

In the March 2008 survey by the SWS, only 76 percent of voting-age Filipinos said they could understand spoken English.

Of those polled, only 75 percent said they could read English; only 61 percent said they could write English; only 46 percent said they could speak English; and only 38 percent said they could think in English. – Jess Diaz