Philippines: ENGLISH IS AN IMPORTANT LANGUAGE!

[Harold Schiffman]

Tuesday, September 04, 2007
What to do, what to do!!!!!

It has been days since the PDI published an article about 4M Filipinos
who are not functionally literate...let's not even talk about being
culturally literate here...but when a major broadsheet in New York
City foregoes its entire book review section, as reported here
[http://www.cjr.org/cover_story/goodbye_to_all_that_1.php?page=all],
there must be something wrong with global literacy in general! Now for
the fate of the Philippines, whose educational authorities can't seem
to make up their minds on the nation's language policy -- I've said
this once, and I'll say it again:

ENGLISH IS AN IMPORTANT LANGUAGE!

So when English ceases to be the primary medium of instruction, as is
requested by a bunch of idiots here, our nation shall go down that
barbaric path of not being able to read our own literature in its
IMPORTANT languages--three centuries of Spanish, and one century of
Philippine Literature in English AND the rest of antiquity in Spanish
and English...and in LATIN, by way of both English and Spanish...and
that's it!

We shall be doomed!

It is enough that the study of Tagalog begins with Lope K. Santos'
Balarila in Grade 2. That's it! But to rob generations of an important
language with which to compete in the global arena, ah, is MADNESS!!!

Fine, go ahead and think in your native tongue! That is to be expected
when at home: parents should be teaching their children the native
tongue, or the language of the private sphere, at home!

Now don't go giving me the nationalist argument...Indonesia keeps its
people in the dark by intellectualising their language...and blocking
off everything else.

In the social arena, one can tell how much of the general population
has turned into a barbaric, Sybaritic mob: how? They don't appreciate,
much less answer, the question, "So what are you reading these days?"

And the sorry lot has the right to feel insulted by it. All the more
insulting is a nation that can't read in either English or Tagalog.
(Filipino is not a language; Tagalog is.)

http://myalchemy.blogdrive.com/archive/577.html

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