Through the Eyes of a Young Filipino Bookworm
A reaction to the essay, “Filipinizing the Young Filipino Reader”
According to my mother I have been a voracious reader since age two, greedily devouring books as though they were the tiny bags of Chiz Curls I snacked on behind her back. My first book was The Ugly Duckling; I knew it by heart and would recite it out loud at the back seat of the car during long drives. A few years later I began collecting books from the incredibly flat, two-dimensional Sweet Valley Kids series. I balanced those junk books with real literature though; I read and reread The Little Princess and The Prince and the Pauper hundreds of times, and held a morbid fascination for Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories. Reading books in English during my grade school years is what makes me disagree with Bienvenido Lumbera’s initial proposition in his essay, “Filipinizing the Young Filipino Reader”.
According to him, our educational system has failed miserably to raise a breed of Filipinos who would take pride in our own country and who would develop a genuine interest in reading. In order for that to be reversed, his contention is to have reading materials printed in any of the Philippine languages, depending on where the child is born. “Unless the government makes Filipino the medium of instruction for school,” he writes, “we will continue to be plagued by the problem of young readers resisting the enticements of reading.”
While it is true that a lot of Filipinos haven’t discovered the joys of reading and probably never will, changing the medium of instruction from English to Filipino is not the solution. Filipino has already been used in the curriculum and we can see that it has not produced encouraging results. A lot of young students still wrinkle their noses at books, or dream the American dream. The medium of instruction might not be the only problem as to why our educational system is not very effective; there could be a lot of factors (such as inadequate teachers, poor learning conditions, the students’ attitudes, etc.) that contribute to their indifference to learning. Furthermore, one cannot diminish the mindset that most Filipinos have–that foreign is always better—through education using our national language. Colonial mentality is practically a part of Filipino culture; it has been with us for hundreds of years. At the back of their minds, the majority of Filipinos will still dream of striking it rich in the States or in Saudi—anywhere but here.
Lumbera also failed to consider those Filipinos who grew up reading and learning in English in his essay. Even though the characters in the books I read in my childhood presented different values and ideas to those that I was used to, I never considered emulating them. Moreover, my love for stories about orphans, boarding school princesses, and Californian twins did little to alter my cultural identity. As far as I know, my Filipino values and traits are have not been tainted by American ones. I still give those who are older than me the respect that they deserve, particularly my parents. I’m not a friendly person by nature, but I have this knack for doing whatever I can to please people. And though I am more comfortable with conversing in English, I can still speak Tagalog using the proper accent, albeit a few grammatical errors.
His proposition is impossible to realize now because President Macapagal-Arroyo restored English as the primary medium of instruction on January 2003. Think about it; it doesn’t make sense for the government to change it back to Filipino. If that happens, students who belong to the lower-income bracket will never learn to speak English well, whereas children from affluent families can still be exposed to English through their parents, friends, TV shows, etc. Naturally, the latter will find it easier to establish connections or have an edge in the job market, particularly at this day and age when fast-growing industries such as information technology considers English literacy just as vital as computer skills. Without knowledge of English, it will be difficult for a lot of Filipinos to find employment locally and abroad. How can foreigners do business with us if their calls to Philippine offices get received by secretaries who can only speak and understand Tagalog? The language barrier could cause some serious damage to our fragile economy, not just in terms of losses for local companies. Manpower is the best resource the Philippines can offer to the world, and one of the reasons for that is because Filipinos are reputed to be one of the best English-speaking Asians. Filipino nurses, caregivers, and teachers are in high demand in industrialized Western countries. And call centers, the latest US investment in the Philippines, need to be manned by operators who are proficient in oral and written English.
Lumbera did, however, make a compromise for reading materials to remain in English as long as the content can teach the young reader about Filipino culture. I believe that this method is more feasible, because we can still benefit from using English as a tool that will make us more marketable without losing our Filipino identity. I’m not saying that learning in English will suddenly make us proud of our country. But since the texts will be written in such a way that the young reader can relate to it as a Filipino, it will give him or her sense of who we are as a people.
One thing I really dislike is when people accuse me of being ashamed of being a Filipino just because I would rather express myself in English than in Tagalog. It’s a very ridiculous assumption because a person’s language preference has nothing to do with nationalism or sense of country. I am a Filipino, and I will always remain a Filipino wherever I am, no matter what language I choose to learn in or speak.
