Purposive

In 1977, my mentor, the poet and National Artist for Literature and Theater Rolando S.
Tinio, said: “It is too

simple-minded to suppose that enthusiasm for Filipino as lingua franca and national language of the country
involves the elimination of English usage or training for it in schools. Proficiency in English provides us with all
the advantages that champions of English say it does. It gives us access to the vast fund of culture expressed
in it and mobility in various spheres of the international scene. This is especially true in those spheres
dominated by the English-speaking Americans. It also helps us to participate in a quality of modern life of
which some features may be assimilated with great advantage.”
Professor Tinio continues: “Linguistic nationalism does not imply cultural chauvinism. Nobody wants to go
back to the mountains. The essential Filipino is not the center of an onion one gets at by peeling off layer after
layer of vegetable skin. One’s experience with onions is quite telling: Peel off everything and you end up with a
pinch of air.”
English enrollment rising
Written 40 years ago, these words still echo especially now. By some quirk of history and economics,
enrollment in English courses are rising. This is so because there are many vacant positions for teachers of
English and literature in private and public schools. Moreover, there are many vacancies, still, for jobs in call
centers with entry-level pay of P18,000 plus a signing bonus. It is also a career that will make you earn twice
your present salary in just a few years. With the opening of the doors of the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN), more Filipinos are being hired to teach English in the region.
Why? First, Filipino teachers will accept a pay scale lower than their Western counterparts, a pay scale that is
still higher than what they would get in the Philippines. Second, they are conversant with American popular
culture, a happy (or unhappy) result of colonialism and neo-colonialism. Third, they are still Southeast Asians
beneath their skin and are thus familiar with Asian cultural practices, whether said or unsaid. One is the
importance of saving face.
The meaning of “maybe” or “I will try” to an invitation means the invited does not want to hurt you by giving a
vague answer. Another is the primacy given to family. Already in his 50s, one is still called Totoy or Baby or
Blue Boy, and still lives with one’s parents and extended family in the warm cocoon of home. Meals are
shared, stories swapped, Netflix passwords given away, to kin who live just an arms’ length away from you.
You can see that, as well, in the other Southeast Asian countries. In these places, families are nuclear and
not split. Food is communal and not eaten in siloed cubicles. I have lived in Singapore and Malaysia, and food
is one good way of keeping friends.
Mastery of two languages
Three long decades of teaching English and Filipino to students have shown me that the best students in
English are also the best students in Filipino. And how did they master the two languages?
One, they had good teachers in both languages in their early years. Two, they have inhabited the worlds of
both languages—English in school; They spoke English in social media, Tagalog at home, and Taglish with
friends. Three, they have gone beyond the false either-or mentality that hobbled their parents’ generation. This
either-or mentality was a product of weak critical thinking.
Let me explain.
My best students in English and Filipino were taught by the crème de la crème, many of them teaching in the
private schools in Metro Manila and the regions. At the Ateneo de Manila University, we used to have classes
in Remedial English, since renamed Basic English or English 1. These were six units of non-credit subjects.
These were intelligent students from the public schools and the provinces. Lack of books and untrained
teachers hindered them from having a level playing field with the other freshmen. A year of catching up was
necessary for them to have the skills to put them at par with the other students.
Moreover, I introduced them to the worlds of the language they were studying. This can be in the formal realm
of the textbook. It can also be found in films, documentaries, graphic novels, YouTube video clips or animes. I
encourage them to keep a journal as well, which was not a diary where you wrote what time you woke up and
why. A journal, or its cyberspace cousin, the Web log or blog, aims to capture vivid impressions or moods on
the wing. If at the same time it sharpens the students’ knowledge of English, then the English teacher is ready
to sing hallelujah.
Bilingual students
Tthe third is that today’s generation is no longer burdened by the guilt of learning English – and mastering it. I
still remember the writing workshops I took in the 1980s, when I was asked why I wrote “petit-bourgeois”
poems and stories in the colonizer’s language. The panelists said I should write about workers and peasants –
and that I should write in Filipino. Without batting a false eyelash, I answered that unfortunately, I grew up in a
military base and knew nothing about the lives of workers and peasants. I added that to write about
something I don’t know would be to misrepresent them. I could write about the lives of young soldiers and
retirees fading into the sunset. I could write about the lives of the brave soldiers’ wives and their children. That
I know only too well.
To the charge that I write only in English, I showed them my poems in Filipino. The modern Filipino writer is not
only a writer in either English or Filipino. He or she writes in both languages, or in Cebuano or Bikolano or
Ilocano or Waray. These languages are like colorful balls he juggles with the dexterity of a seasoned circus
performer.
So it’s no longer choice between English and Filipino. Rather, it is now English and Filipino, plus the language
of one’s grandmother, be it Bikolano, Waray, or Tausug. And in college, another language of one’s choice, be it
Bahasa Malaysia, German, or French. Learning other languages is good. It gives you a better way to view the
world from many windows. To learn a new language is to see the world from another angle of vision. In short,
one no longer has to live between two languages, but to live in a mansion of many languages.
To end in a full circle, we must return to Professor Tinio, who said: “Only the mastery of a first language
enables one to master a second and a third. For one can think and feel only in one’s first language, then
encode those thoughts and feelings into a second and a third.” This, then, is the gist of the mother-tongue
approach to language learning, which the Department of Education has finally adopted for our elementary
schools nationwide.
In short, as Dr. Isabel Pefianco Martin, my friend and fellow professor at the Ateneo de Manila University has
put it: “The Philippines is a multi-lingual paradise.” The earlier we know that we live in a paradise of many
languages, the better we can savor its fruits ripened by the sun.

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In 1977, my mentor, the poet and National Artist for Literature and Theater Rolando S.

Tinio, said: “It is too

English enrollment rising

Mastery of two languages

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