A bill seeking to discontinue the use of the mother tongue as a medium of instruction from kindergarten to Grade 3 has hurdled the Senate’s final reading on Tuesday, July 23.
Senate Bill No. 2457, also known as Discontinuing the Use of the Mother Tongue as the Medium of Instruction, proposes reverting the medium of instruction to Filipino and English pursuant to the 1987 Constitution.
Regional languages should only serve as a supplementary media of instruction, the measure introduced by Senators Sherwin Gatchalian and Ramon Revilla Jr. stated.
“Mother tongue as the medium of instruction is not a one-size-fits-all solution for every classroom. It is effective only in monolingual environments where learners are uniformly native speakers of the same mother tongue,” said Gatchalian.
He said key experiments cited by the Department of Education as bases for implementing the mother tongue education proved that the policy is only effective when everyone in a school, especially in rural areas, speaks the same language.
The senator also mentioned two studies conducted in homogeneous schools, showing that students exposed to the mother tongue instruction did better in Math and Reading compared to those who were not.
But, Gatchalian said there is no proof that teaching in native language works well in multilingual classes.IMT
