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<h1 class="gmail-uk-article-title gmail-uk-margin-bottom-remove">Language and the search for national identity</h1>
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<div class="gmail-updated_date">Updated November 28, 2018, 6:20 PM</div> </div>
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<p><span style="text-decoration:underline"><strong>GOVERNANCE MATTERS</strong></span></p>
<p><strong>BY JEJOMAR C. BINAY</strong></p>
<p><img class="gmail-alignright gmail-size-full gmail-wp-image-425443" src="https://news.mb.com.ph/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Jejomar-Binay.jpg" alt="Jejomar Binay" width="220" height="220">A
recent Supreme Court decision on the teaching of Filipino in our
colleges has once again triggered a debate on the national language. By
extension, the debate has also touched on the topic of national
identity, or our lack of it.</p>
<p>The debate, more vitriolic online, stemmed from a recent Supreme
Court decision upholding the validity of a directive from the Commission
on Higher Education (CHED) excluding Filipino from the list of required
subjects in college.</p>
<p>The high tribunal, in a 94-page decision, lifted the temporary
restraining order (TRO) against Memorandum Order 20 issued by the CHED.
The memorandum excluded Filipino, Panitikan, as well as Philippine
Constitution from the “core courses” in college.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court said it disagrees with the position of the
petitioners that excluding Filipino from the General Education
Curriculum (GEC) violated Section 6, Article XIV, of the Constitution.
The provision mandates government to “take steps to initiate and sustain
the use of Filipino as a medium of official communication and as
language of instruction in the educational system.”</p>
<p>College professors, language advocates, and some national figures
were quick to denounce the ruling as a “blow to nationhood and Filipino
identity.”</p>
<p>The teaching of Filipino, they maintain, goes beyond
grammar, since discussions also tackle culture and identity. One
professor even spoke harshly: “While other countries show appreciation
for their language and culture, we ourselves kill our own.”</p>
<p>Those who agreed with the ruling, on the other hand, point to
Filipino as the main culprit behind our economic stagnation. Filipino
cannot even be considered a true national language, they maintain,
because it only institutionalized Tagalog, the language of so-called
Imperial Manila. Our national language policy, so the argument goes, is
the product of oppressive Manila-centric, or rather Tagalog-centric,
political elites, who wish to dictate their language and culture on the
nation.</p>
<p>Both sides need to calm down.</p>
<p>For one, the anger at the High Court is misplaced. Legal observers
note that the high tribunal did not ban the teaching of Filipino but
merely upheld the authority of CHED to formulate policy to implement a
national law, which in this case is K-12. It is not within the scope of
the court’s powers to decide which courses are included in the
curriculum.</p>
<p>While there are advocates for the primacy of their own regional
languages, there are also advocates for English as a primary language.
The latter group argues that the focus on Filipino has contributed to
our economic decline, considering that English is the language of
business and technology.</p>
<p>These advocates need to be reminded that for decades – and even until
now – we have proudly proclaimed our country as a predominantly
English-speaking country in Asia. This has been the main reason for the
boom in the BPO industry starting in the late 90s.</p>
<p>Yet our non-English speaking neighbors in Asia — Japan, South Korea,
Vietnam, China — managed to overtake us economically despite their
non-proficiency in English. They did so by building their economies on a
strong educational foundation of mathematics, engineering, and
sciences.</p>
<p>In his latest book, Identity, the historian Francis Fukuyama cites
the observation of sociologist Ernest Geller who noted that the need for
“precise communication between strangers” during the rise of the
industrial age necessitated a uniform national language, and an
educational system to promote a national culture.</p>
<p>Writes Geller: “The employability, dignity, security, and
self-respect of individuals…now hinges on their education…modern man is
not loyal to a monarch, or a land or faith, whatever he may say, but to a
culture.”</p>
<p>Applying Geller’s thesis — that economic necessity dictated the
development and propagation by the State of a common language — we may
conclude that centuries of economic underdevelopment under colonial
powers did not create the conditions that would have necessitated the
need for a common language. In fact, some have argued that language was a
cultural weapon in the hands of our colonizers. The Spaniards withheld
the spread of Spanish as a common language, while the United States
employed English as a tool for cultural conditioning.</p>
<p>What this most recent debate over a national language exposes is the
strong undercurrent of “tribalism” in our country. It validates my
observation that when we still debate about our national language, we
have yet to evolve a sense of identity. We remain predisposed to
identify ourselves as belonging to “tribes” rather than a “nation.” It
is a tribalism that will further deepen under a federal set-up.</p>
<p>Breaking our nation into federated states — as proposed by advocates
of federalism — will only deepen tribalism. While the draft federal
constitution prohibits secession, it does not provide a constitutional
injunction on the establishment of state or regional languages. The
existence of a separate states, in fact, encourages it.</p>
<p>Since language is an important marker of culture and identity,
federalism will render our search for a national language, and by
extension our search for national identity, more elusive and
contentious.</p>
<p><a href="mailto:jcbinay11@gmail.com">jcbinay11@gmail.com</a></p>
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div></div>