MikeLigalig.com

By Jes Tirol
Columnist
The Bohol Chronicle

Proem

Philippine Daily Inquirer columnist Randy David wrote “All over the country, the old farming communities are disintegrating in the wake of the unabated conversion of agricultural land…Ironically, the agrarian reform program has worked against the rural folk.” (PDI, Jan. 26, 2008, p. 10).

In my analysis the above observation is true and correct.  My question is, why could the rural folks not cope with the situation when there are now many high school graduates in the countryside?  What happened to their educational training?

Only In The Philippines

The expression “Only in the Philippines” is now very popular.  The people and media are looking for situations that happens only in the Philippines.  The following situation is one of my contributions.
When there is a contest, it is the standard that the “first” is the best, the “second” is next lower, and so on.

In Bohol our “first language” is Sugboanon Bisaya.  Our “second language” is English, and our “third language” is Tagalog.  In our schools there is a subject entitled “Teaching English as a second language”.  It is admitted in the academe that English is a second language.

It is only in the Philippines, the second language English is considered better than the first language Sugboanon Bisaya.  In fact only the second language is allowed to be the medium of instruction in our schools.  Only in the Philippines, the second language is taught in school while the first language is not taught and studied!

Therefore in the Philippines the “second” is considered better than the “first”.  So next time you obtain second place in any contest, be happy because in the Philippines context you are better than the first place.

Our Situation

The brain of a child is initially wired-up or programmed for the mother language.  In our case, Sugboanon Bisaya.  However, the mother language is only extensively used from Grades I and II.  From Grade III onward to college, the English language is extensively used.

It is admitted in psychology that the child will think and talk to himself using the mother language.  The problem is, when the child goes higher in the education ladder, the Grade II level Sugboanon Bisaya could no longer cope with the level of the English language.

If and when the student will drop out during the high school level (and there are many), the student lapses to the use of the mother language.  Why?  Because the community is using Sugboanon Bisaya.  In effect, the drop out student will go back to his Grade II level in education because that is his real education in the mother language.

So why could the rural folks not cope up with the changes brought about by the Agrarian Reform Law?  It is because his Grade II level of education is not equal to the task.

The Proposal

My proposal is to teach Sugboanon Bisaya vertically parallel with English.  If the law says that English should be emphasized and Bisaya would only be “auxiliary”, so be it.  Teach Sugboanon Bisaya as an “auxiliary” language.  It means study Bisaya and in every grade level assign a separate subject using Bisaya that would synthesize all the other subjects taught in English or Tagalog.  In other words, Sugboanon Bisaya will be a true “auxiliary” language.

As an analogy let us compare it to computer languages.  There are now so many computer languages.  In computer programming it is possible to process the same data with the use of different computer programs or languages.

Let us assume that Sugboanon Bisaya is the BASICA computer languague and the English is the C++ computer language.  The BASICA language is very fundamental.  It can also program data but it lacks the capability to perform the “frills” of the C++.  The preference in computer programming is of course the C++ but if for some reason it is not available, the back up BASICA language can still perform the task without the “frills”.  In fact the BASICA without its frills is better in computing mathematical data.

In the same manner, if we teach Sugboanon Bisaya vertifically parallel with English and of the same level of difficulty per year level, then if the student will drop out and lapses to Sugboanon Bisaya his level of education is till the same.

It is not true that Sugboanon Bisaya is inferior to English.  I know this because at present I am making a Sugboanon-English dictionary.  It has the terms but only you do not know it because you did not study it.  Just like the Japanese language, they also have the terms equivalent to English and you do not know it because you did not study Japanese.

So in order to improve the educational level of the rural folks we must teach Sugboanon Bisaya vertically parallel with English.  I do not propose to lessen the English language proficiency.  I propose only to strengthen the Sugboanon Bisaya.  It also strengthen the understanding of the English language.


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