MikeLigalig.com

By Jes Tirol (Bohol)

Proem

Since the time of President Fidel Ramos until now under the administration of President Gloria Arroyo, the buzzword has always been to make the Philippines and the Filipinos globally competitive. However our idea of competitiveness is a distorted one.

Definition

The word competition is defined as a striving against another or others for some object, as a prize, or for superiority; a trial of skill or ability; a contest.

It means that we will gather together talented Filipinos, develop them as a team, like a basketball team, and let them play against the teams of other countries with the objective of beating their teams.

What is happening?

Our educational system has been goaded to produce excellent graduates. Nursing schools are required to have all their teacher to be holders of a Master's Degree. The Nursing schools are required to have a base hospital and many other stringent requirements. It is a laudable move in order to produce excellent nurses.

However, we can observe the result. Almost all our nurses and doctors desire to work abroad. Despite thousands of graduates our hospitals still lack nurses and doctors. They do not have to desire to work here in the Philippines because the pay is not good.

In other words, we have the talent but our government does not know how to maintain or manage a team. Our health-care team is given deplorable support. The situation is true with other professions except maybe for lawyers. Even priests are going abroad.

The Result

The end result is that we are turning out Filipinos that are globally employable. Their command of the English language makes it much easier to go abroad. We are not really aiming for global competitiveness but global employability.

Much as we desire global competitiveness we must not delude ourselves because the end result of our struggle is global employability.

In the world of pool-billiards, the present world champion is Alex Pagulayan. He is a Filipino but he represents the country of Canada. Canada became globally competitive employing or using a Filipino. In other words we are still colonials in the service of our masters.

Proposal

My idea of how to become globally competitive is similar to the Chinese and Japanese method, use Bisayan as a medium of instruction. Only very few Chinese and Japanese work abroad because of the language barrier. Brilliant minds are retained in the country and found ways and means to compete with other countries.

You may think that it is a preposterous proposal. After studying Sugboanon Bisayan for many years now, I found out that it has so many terms, words, etc. that are equivalent to the English terms. We need to coin only few more words. In my case, I can teach the whole Civil Engineering course in the Bisayan language. The nursing course can be taught fully using the Bisayan language; the same with the nautical course, and other courses.

Do you know the Bisayan word KURANG? It means lesbian to lesbian or homosexual to homosexual relationship. The word KURANGRANG describes the sickness or disease obtained due to such relationship. It is practically equivalent to AIDS in English.

Take Lawyers as Examples

Our lawyers, even though well versed in the English language, do not emigrate because the knowledge they have will be useless in other countries. Some will go abroad for further studies and training but if they want to be good lawyers, they must return to the Philippines.

The Chinese and Japanese also go abroad for further training but they return to their home country where they will be comfortable using their own language. The procedure of the Chinese and Japanese made them globally competitive. In our case, it is only in law that we are globally competitive that is why we have now so many laws that we could not understand.

Epilogue

Be that as it may, what I'm trying to say is that, our leaders did not understand how it is to be globally competitive. To make use of the situation, the Filipinos transmuted globally competitive into globally employable.

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