INQUIRER.net
MANILA, Philippines — Educators, led by the Wika ng Kultura at Agham Inc. (WIKA), have asked the Supreme Court to nullify two government directives that required the teaching of English to children starting in the first grade in public and private schools.
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo issued Executive Order 210 while Department Order 36 was issued by the Department of Education to implement the President’s executive order.
In a 24-page petition for certiorari, prohibition with preliminary injunction, the group, led by retired Supreme Court associate justice Isagani Cruz, said EO 210 was “anti-poor and alienates Filipino school children from their Filipino heritage.”
They said the continued teaching of English pursuant to the EO and its implementing order would only make pupils “functional illiterates.”
“The EO and the implementing order deprives school children coming from the lower socio-economic classes of the desired benefits in education for it has been shown that due to poverty, such school children receive very little public education, or a poorer quality of education than that available to rich families,” the petitioners said.
Citing government and institutional studies, petitioners said that children in grade schools would learn faster if they would be taught in Filipino.
They are also apprehensive that by teaching English, pupils will be alienated from their own cultural heritage, thus creating a generation of young people who have no cultural values.
Thus, petitioners said EO 210 and Department Order 36 were unconstitutional.
The EO was promulgated on May 17, 2003 (Establishing the Policy to Strengthen English as a Second Language in the Educational System) while Department Order No. 36 was issued as its implementing rule.
Under the order, English should be used as primary medium of instruction in all public institutions at the secondary level while Filipino would only be used in the learning areas of Filipino and Araling Panlipunan.
“The provisions of EO 210 and DepEd Oder No. 36 that English shall be taught as a second language starting with the first grade violates the above-quoted provisions of the Constitution since Filipino is actually only the second language in non-Tagalog areas. The EO thus subverts the present status of Filipino in non-Tagalog areas, and violates the constitutional injunction that regional languages shall serve as auxiliary media of instruction,” the petitioners said.
They added the 1991 report of the Congressional Commission on Education which recommended that the vernacular and Filipino should be the medium of instruction for basic education.
Through this, DepEd implemented in 1991 and 1998 a program for the development of instructional materials in Filipino and by the year 2000, all subjects except English and other languages were taught in Filipino.
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