Why English language hasn't really helped us
INQ7.net
UNFORTUNATELY, I cannot agree with Ramon Vicente Berenguer's views on the English language. Unfortunately, our proficiency in that language has not propelled us to the "top of the list of the world's literate societies." On the contrary, our universities didn't even make it to the list of the top 10 schools in Asia, much less worldwide. Some ASEAN countries that speak bad English have overtaken us and a number of Asian countries that don't speak English at all have long left us in the dust.
The only advantage that English literacy has brought us, I guess, is call center jobs, not exactly the kind of career that produces Nobel Prize winners or patents. Sure, Japanese, Koreans, Chinese and other Asians are trying to learn English. They are building their knowledge base, however, on a good foundation of scientific literacy and a strong sense of nationalism. I guess they want to learn English to sell to the world, unlike what elite, which has already sold our country out.
I have long heard the promises that English literacy would bring, yet until now I have yet to see them. For almost a century now, Filipinos have maintained a respectable level of English proficiency compared with our neighbors. If English were so critical to success, why are we being left in the noodle house or "pansitan"? I guess it's because English has served more of a barrier than a steppingstone. Rather than promoting interregional communication, it has silenced the majority of our people who are unable to grasp a foreign language.
Instead of promoting learning, it hinders the assimilation of knowledge, as students still need to translate the concepts to the vernacular before they can understand them.
And it promotes injustice, as the rights of simple men are trampled on by the English-speaking elites that use laws that may as well be foreign since they are written in a code that the simple folk can barely understand.
I am not saying that we should give up English. It's just that we should put it in its proper place. It is a foreign language that should be treated as such. We shouldn't write all our laws, nor all our books, or conduct all our transactions in English at the expense of the native tongue. English is and should only be a secondary language. Promoting it as a national language will only produce dire effects -- like alienating the common Filipino in his own country.
ARI LUIS HALOS, University of the Philippines, Los Baños, College, Laguna (via e-mail)
Preposterous view on English language – Opinion - Letters (July 11, 2005)
