English won’t ease RP’s woes -- militants

I for one am guilty about my general language of communication ( i do hope to communicate with those who do not understand tagalog or bisaya though). I still use tagalog or cebuano whenever I'm talking to people in the same tongue (hmm, labo ba/). English is important as the global language, yes, but if we lose our knowledge of our mother tongue, we continue to destroy our local culture. We keep on blaming the west for globalization as cause of cultural identity crisis but yet, we dont realize that we ourselves are causing it. We are vocal against globalization but we fail to catch out tongues ( pun intended) first. (sige na nga, (anong guilty sa tagalog?) "guilty" ako!!!)

I was thinking the other day what kind of future the Philippines would have if we continue to propagate the call center industry. I believe we would become a country without a unique industry or profession. Becoming a service industry is like cleaning up the world's toilets. Don't get me wrong. I do respect the need of our young graduates to earn. I really do. The lack of jobs that can sustain our needs is an important factor to consider. Do they know that there is a recent rise of the creative industry which is now competitively adding to the economic development of other countries among other rise in knowledge and skill specialization based industries? Does the government envision how stagnant the call center service industry will become in the future?

I think the government AND the people as well ( hell, yeah, we the people! because we just keep on complaining about the government yet we do not do anything!!!!!) are just up in our asses to finding solutions to the symtoms of our country's problems, why not use our heads? Where the root of the matter is? Cases like extra efforts to manage our solid wastes without enough effort to reduce consumer culture. We can effectively reduce pollution by trying not to pollute in the first place! Take note GMA's 1 B grant to the PNP to promote peace and order and economic stability. With all due respect to the President's agenda and her advisers, HOW CAN WE SOLVE CRIME IF THE ROOT OF CRIME IS POVERTY? The burden of VAT and the RVAT to everyone is not being used for the right solutions. Just like terrorism, security threats are rooted from injustice, from unfair distribution of resources. So budgeting P500 M + to Department of Education VS P1 B to the PNP is just a bad equation for the solution of poverty.

English won’t ease RP’s woes -- militants
First posted 06:12am (Mla time) Jan 30, 2006
from www.inq7.net
Inquirer Editor's Note: Published on page A5 of the Jan. 30, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

PROFICIENCY in English would not ensure the country’s economic progress, militant workers said Friday as they denounced calls for the restoration of English as the medium of instruction in schools.

“Just because citizens from rich countries like South Korea want to learn English here doesn’t necessarily mean that learning English will translate into economic salvation for us,” Anakpawis party-list Representative Crispin Beltran said in a statement in English.

Beltran was reacting to the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines’ backing of the call of the Department of Labor and Employment, the Makati Business Club and the Joint Foreign Chambers of Commerce of the Philippines for a return to English as the medium of instruction so that more
Filipinos could be hired as call center agents and medical transcribers.

Another militant labor leader, Fernando Hicap of the fisherfolk group Pamalakaya, said the moderate TUCP’s call signified “false hopes and acts of puppetry and class betrayal to the cause of our working people, nothing more, nothing less.”

“This is the kind of colonial orientation and leadership that would [turn] this country into a colony of English-speaking modern day slaves,” he said.

Beltran said the proposal incorrectly assumed that poor English communication skills was the major cause of the economic problems of the country today when the real cause was “the depression of the economy due to foreign plunder and pro-foreign and anti-people policies.”
He pointed out that advanced countries like Japan and South Korea emphasized educational instruction in their mother tongues.

“Economic growth for these countries did not begin with learning English, but with building a strong domestic economy and national industries first and foremost,” he said.

Beltran said the government’s education policy should be directed toward honing Filipinos’ critical thinking skills.

“We should train our labor force to be productive and active shapers of society, not merely [be] appendages to foreign demands,” he said. “Otherwise, we’ll just be creating another generation of American parrots.”

Many literacy studies, according to him, concluded that the best way to teach a second language was by enabling the students to master their mother tongue to the point of critical thinking.
These skills can then be transferred to the second language, he said. Jerome Aning