Bilingual and

Mother Tongue-Based
Multilingual Education
in the Philippines
1. The language you use at home, and

2. The language you find easiest to understand in

school.
 brief history
The Philippines is the only country in
Southeast Asia today which has a national
policy institutionalizing and enacting as
law the “Mother Tongue-Based
Multilingual Education” (MTB-MLE) in
mainstream formal education.
In 2009, MTB-MLE was institutionalized
through the Department of Education
(DepEd) Order No. 74.

In 2013, a law called the “Enhanced Basic

Education Act” was signed by President
Benigno Aquino III.
This law specified the following:

1.Mother Tongue is used as the medium of

instruction in:

Kindergarten
Grades 1 to 3
2. Transition Phase (Grades 4 to 6):
English and Filipino are introduced
gradually as languages of learning

3. By High School:
English and Filipino may become the main
languages used for teaching.
It came in the heels of the continued dominance of
bilingual education in the country – the mode of
educational provision since the early 1970s during
which a political compromise was reached to use
both English and Tagalog-based Filipino as the
two MOI in the schools.
 Early Developments:
Tagalog and Linguistic
Self-determination in the
Early Twentieth Century
Philippines
 American Colonization

The American colonization of the Philippines

began during the Philippine-American War in
1898–1901 during which Filipinos who just
declared their independence from 333 years
of Spanish colonization found themselves
fighting yet another group of colonizers.
 Linguistic Resistance

Such early expressions of linguistic resistance

to English mainly by Tagalog writers are a
hugely important backdrop against which
bilingual education in the country should be
understood.
“Banaag at Sikat” (1906) by Lope K. Santos
“Pinaglahuan” (1907) by Faustino Aguila
“Tatlong Maria” (1914) by Iñigo Ed. Regalado
The enactments of everyday linguistic
nationalism, even in birthday parties and
other seemingly mundane social activities,
during which Tagalog-speaking Filipinos would
rail against the imposition of English upon
their lives and fight against the possible
demise of Tagalog and other Philippine
languages.
 Bilingual Education Policy (1974)

The government made a policy to use both

English and Tagalog (later Filipino) as mediums
of instruction (MOI).
 Why Tagalog?

In the 1930s, Tagalog was indeed established

as the national language of the country
(renamed “Pilipino” in 1949 and “Filipino” in
1987)
As shown in the work of Tinio (2009), Tagalog
throughout the country’s colonial history with
Spain and the United States enjoyed a literary
and an anti-colonial tradition, and this
argument supposedly proved useful in
justifying calls for it to be the national
language of the Philippines.
Ethnolinguistic or subnational resistance to
Tagalog would prove to be one of the
greatest challenges to the acceptance and
implementation of bilingual education
because regional sentiments against Tagalog-
based Filipino would then coalesce with pro-
English views (Tupas 2007).
Contributions, Problems,
and Challenges :

Achievements of Bilingual
Education
 Filipino Became the Most Dominant Local
Language

At any rate, it was through bilingual education that

Tagalog-based Filipino consolidated its position as
the most dominant local language in the country
(Gonzalez 1980).
 It Promoted Nationalism and Resistance to
Colonial Influence

It drew on the early rhetoric and practice of

linguistic self-determination of Tagalog-speaking
speakers who resisted the imposition of English
(Tinio 2009); it also drew on the more anti-colonial
discourse of the 1960s and 1970s (Tupas 2007)
during which anti-American sentiments took on more
overt forms in street demonstrations and
underground movements because of widespread
beliefs that despite gaining political independence
from the United States in 1946, the structures and
ideologies of American neocolonialism continued to
control much of Philippine life (Schirmer and
Shalom 1987).
 It Helped Filipino Grow as a Language for
Intellectual Learning

Indeed, one of the accomplishments of bilingual

education in the Philippines has been the insertion
of Tagalog-based Filipino (from hereon to be
referred simply as “Filipino”) in educational
provision across all levels of schooling.
By limiting English to the teaching of Mathematics
and Science, it helped Filipino to generate and
legitimize indigenous knowledge and worldviews,
resulting in the intellectualization of the national
language.
 It Strengthened Filipino as a Lingua Franca
(Common Language)

Bilingual education, thus, has cemented the role of

Filipino as the country’s main interethnic lingua
franca elevating it to a national symbol of unity
(which is contested even today) through which the
Filipino people’s national identity and aspirations
could allegedly be expressed.
Problems and Criticisms of
Bilingual Education
 Bilingual Education Was Used to Serve Foreign
Interests, Not Filipinos

In the 1970s and the 1980s during which bilingual

education was institutionalized and took root, the
whole Philippine society under the Marcos
dictatorship was increasingly being reconfigured
toward an export-driven liberalized economy under
the aegis of the World Bank and other global
institutions (Tupas 2008a).
Among many things, this meant deploying the
infrastructures of bilingual education to train
young Filipino bodies to become export-ready
labor commodities to help keep the fledging
economy adrift.
 English created social divisions and unequal
opportunities.

Bilingual education contributed hugely to the tiering of

English linguistic proficiencies which would then correlate
with the kinds of jobs and economic opportunities available
to different socioeconomic classes in Philippine society
(Tupas 2008a; Sibayan and Gonzalez 1996). The 1970s saw
the emergence of the discourse of English as a necessary
social and economic good in the making of what Lorente
(2012) now calls the “workers of the world.”
 Bilingual Education Benefited the Privileged but
Left Poor Communities Behind

The first and most comprehensive evaluation of the

accomplishments of bilingual education in the country
(Gonzalez and Sibayan 1988) found that more than MOI,
the most significant contributor to success in learning in
school in the country is the socioeconomic composition of
the student population which correlates with quality of
teachers, salary, and proximity to an urban environment.
In other words, bilingual education failed to
overturn “opportunities for advancement [which]
seem to be largely restricted to those who already
enjoy social and economic advantages in Philippine
society” (Bernardo 2004, p. 26).
The Challenge of the
Mother Tongues
For the past decade or so, however, several educational
and sociolinguistic trends have contributed to the
consolidation of the mother tongue position in education.

• First, as mentioned above, there has been growing

frustration over bilingual education, especially after a
series of results from Trends in International Mathematics
and Science Study (TIMMS) showed the Philippines
garnering dismally low scores in both subjects (Filipino
students still rate low in math and science 2000).
Second, a bill was filed in Philippine Congress with
the aim of making English the sole MOI, thus
practically attempting to replace bilingual
education with another type of educational
provision reminiscent of colonial education
(Lorente 2012).
And third, empirically driven local research on the
effectiveness of the mother tongues in the delivery
of educational content has shown overwhelmingly
positive results, even in the context of English
language teaching where the use of the mother
tongues to teach it yielded better results compared
with the use of English to teach English (Dekker and
Young 2005; Nolasco et al. 2010).
The Mother Tongue
Strategy
for Legitimization
Such maneuvering took the form of a discursive retreat
from emphasizing the role of local languages in
reconnecting communities with their local or regional
cultural identities and cultures to highlighting the
educational benefits of the mother tongues. The rhetorical
appeal of the mother tongue position was deceptively plain
and simple: if local and international research has
overwhelmingly shown that pupils learn best using
languages they are most familiar with, why are these
languages not the MOI in the schools?
The cultural argument continues to lurk around the debates, of
course (Gunigundo 2010; Tupas 2007), but this time the most
significant feature of the argument is the educational efficacy
of the mother tongues, effectively sidelining the unhelpful
framing of languages as global, national, and regional/local and
relocating the mother tongues in the center of education.
Thus, the emphasis of the Department of Education order,
“Institutionalizing mother tongue-based multilingual education
(MLE),” is on the teaching and learning benefits of mother
tongues as primary MOI, while the identity or cultural
argument is completely absent (DepED Order No. 74, 2009).
Filipino is not the mother tongue of a majority of Filipinos
so it cannot be that it is the language most familiar to most
Filipino pupils. Consequently, the issue of Filipino as the
national language has been decoupled from the issue of
Filipino as MOI. As mentioned earlier, several studies have
shown that resistance to Filipino as the national language
has waned, although this cannot be said about Filipino as
MOI. What this means is that a national language does not
automatically make it the most viable and appropriate
MOI.
 Work in Progress:
The Implementation of
MTB-MLE
However, the Lubuagan study also found some
negative feedback in the implementation of MTB-
MLE.

Teachers having difficulties in preparing learning

materials.
Parents also shared their anxieties about the
teaching strategy as hampering English language
teaching and learning (Dumatog and Dekker
2003).
The policy seems to have been implemented
in “a headlong rush” by the DepEd (Nolasco
2012).

Exclusion of some languages in the MTB-

MLE policy
 1. Aklanon 11. Maranao
2. Bikol 12. Pangasinense
3. Cebuano 13. Sambal
4. Chabacano 14. Surigaonon
5. Hiligaynon 15. Tagalog
6. Iloko 16. Tausug
7. Ivatan 17. Waray
8. Kapampangan 18. Yakan
9. Kinaray-a 19. Ybanag
10. Maguindanaoan
Prevailing attitudes to languages in the
Philippines, especially English.

Four bills that aim to strengthen the use of

English in education are presently pending
in the 16th Congress.
1. House Bill No. 311 (Gloria Macapagal-
Arroyo)
2. House Bill No. 366 (Raul V. del Mar)
3. House Bill No. 1339 (Gerald Anthony V.
Gullas Jr.)
4. House Bill No. 3702 (Eric D. Olivarez)
“Languages-in-education are never just about
languages alone; they are about struggles for
power and for contending visions of the
nation.”
Thank you for listening!