Filipino children fare badly in academic performance

SENSING hesitation from the Department of Education (DepEd) on using the child’s first language or the child’s mother tongue in teaching, a lawmaker championing the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTBMLE) system has called on Sec. Armin Luistro to get rid of the old language of instruction and implement mother tongue-based teaching in the first 6 years, at the least, of elementary education.

Valenzuela City Rep. Magtanggol Gunigundo laments that DepEd is still married to the current bilingual system of teaching, without minding that Filipino children’s performance in school are among the worst in the world.

In his privilege speech delivered yesterday during the celebration of the International Mother Language Day, Rep. Gunigundo urged Sec. Luistro and his department to look closely on the situation and listen to what the children feels about the current educational system.

“I urge the Secretary to send his people to the field, make them interact with the teachers who are faced with the challenge of teaching school children in the language that they do not understand,” Rep. Gunigundo said.

As the principal author of HB 162 titled, “The Multilingual Education and Literacy Act,” Rep. Gunigundo is pushing for the use of the child’s first language as medium of instructions in school for eight years, as opposed to what the DepEd is posed to implement.

“I am strongly opposed to the implementation of MTBMLE until grade 3 only, because international research have shown that six years of teaching in mother tongue is an absolute minimum,” explains Rep. Gunigundo. “K+12 with 3 years of MTBMLE is weakest and least desirable set up for functional literacy goals and acquisition of second language purposes,” he added.

“Unless they have studies to prove that three years of mother tongue language of instruction is better than the eight years, then I will retract my stand and will support them,” he said. “Until then, the school performance of children will continue to suffer,” warned Rep. Gunigundo. –SAMMY MARTIN REPORTER, Manila Times