Livewire: Filipino Homicide

As part of Mission 347, 3 updates 4 7 days, I'm posting one of my Livewire columns, published in the January 2009 issue of the FEU Advocate.

A rejected cadaver left to rot and decay despite its historic battles—a prophetic image of the Filipino language pushed to the edge of a cliff by its own kin, nearing a kiss with reality.

Cebu Representative Eduardo Gullas penned a bill, House Bill 5619, the proposed act strengthening the use of English as the medium of instruction, which has already passed the House of Representatives, mandating that English be the only medium of teaching. In this bill which has received many scathing remarks from professors, students and columnists, such as Philippine Star columnist William Esposo who stated that Gullas’ bill will lead to national suicide. English will be the only medium of teaching nationwide upon grade 3, thus, superseding Department of Education’s Order No. 25 which mandates bilingualism in teaching. Gullas’ frame of thought which led to the inking of the bill is one of concern to unemployment and for Filipinos meeting the global standard. 

English is gradually devouring, with effortless mastication, Filipino as the primary language. More so, this bill’s endorsement lessens the distance between knife and wrist. To even attempt to prove this point is like eating ice cream at Baguio during the once-in-a-blue-moon 6.3 degrees mark. Despite nakedness of truth, it is of course inexcusable to sharpen the tip of this ‘ball’point pen.

No single broadsheet national daily is written in the national language compared to other ‘more progressive’ Asian countries. The Midas-like lifestyle of the bastardized siblings; the older of the two, ‘Tag-Lish’, and the toddler, ‘Eng-Galog’, with ‘coño talk’ as his nickname, who’s bound to overshadow his elder brother, are both reared by gossips and unhealthy trends. FEU and FEUCSO, as well as other educational institutions, campaigning English as if it’s a losing candidate when in the contrary, it’s Barack Obama going against Manny Pacquiao. Pinoy television series reduced to fantasy and redundancy, as well as the actors, in storylines, or more so, American TV shows with superimposed ‘Pinoy’ at the beginning to make it appear more ‘pango’ and ’kayumanggi’ and the premature delivery of ‘Filipinized’ or ‘Tagalized’ versions of Fergie’s Clumsy, Rihanna’s Umbrella and Leona Lewis’ Bleeding Love—all three sending global postcards which reads, in bright neon colors, that we are ill with bruised creativity and paralyzed originality, a seemingly malignant cancer of colonialism and the aging misconception that fluency in English equates to intelligence and excellence. And finally, this being written in English, instead of Filipino, to nourish this obese frame of thought.

In the first ‘Mano Po’, Maricel Soriano stated an unarguably strong pulling force which is hopefully the mindset that shreds the bill into oblivion, she was trying to decide whether she should leave the Philippines for good or move to China, her character’s descent. What made her stay was the thought, that when she thinks, the voice in her head is not Chinese but rather Filipino. 

Case in point, educators should play with their students’ strength. A school-age child thinks and understands better in his dialect—the language of his mind. Therefore, to facilitate accommodation and learning, teachers should present it in a form familiar to the child. Even tertiary level students have better absorption of a concept explained in Filipino than in English, and to think, those that will be affected by the bill are in primary. If that’s not illogical, then I don’t know what is. 

Introducing Science and the Milky Way Galaxy is already insisting fruits and green leafy veggies as a kid’s afternoon snack. What Gullas’ bill would do is ask the child to go on a South Beach diet. 

It is also hard to ignore, that out of 238 members of the House of Congress there are only 36 who can truly salvage the language. And there are 202, who’re stagnated on the idea that English fluency is the Darna, or Superman for them, of Philippine education.

Such flow of thought remains married to colonialism and Filipinos’ pseudo-freedom. Push this bill through and eventually Esposo’s prediction will trump Madame Auring’s and Nostradamus’. English will supersede, dominate and even erase, as it is already felt, dialects and Filipino. If such damage can be done to Filipino, rooted from the Tagalog dialect, which is spoken by the whole archipelago, to what extent can it do to the dialects of the minority—seemingly sending these dialects as castaways to Survivor.

Dr. Jose Rizal once said he who does not love his own language is worse than a smelly fish. One cannot love his own language if he learns a foreign one. And if Rizal also holds true to his words that the youth is the hope of the nation’s future, then the unfortunate youth encapsulated by Gullas’ bill will bring a Westernized future and not one of originality and rich culture.

To the Filipino who is most literate in English or in any other languages, does your mind speak to you in any of those? Or did you have your nose lifted and swallowed handfuls of Glutathione to undo your own lineage?

Does your mind also speak in Filipino? Let it talk to me at edge_guevara@yahoo.com