MTBMLE: far beyond the Aquino administration

By Ricardo Ma. Nolasco
Philippine Daily Inquirer, May 18th, 2012

 

I immersed myself in two major training activities on Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTBMLE) in a span of just two weeks. I joined the Training-Workshop on Bridging between Languages in St. Louis University (SLU)-Baguio City, then I moved farther up north to Lagawe, Ifugao, to speak at a training session that formed part of the regional mass roll-out training of Grade 1 teachers on the K to 12 curriculum for the Cordillera Autonomous Region. Dr. Modesta R. Bastian told me that there were to be four waves of 5-day training activities at the CAR for 1,864 Grade 1 teachers.

After four sessions at SLU, it became abundantly obvious to participants that mother tongue-based multilingual education is very different from everything they know. One former SLU professor initially believed that she already understood MLE because she assumed that it simply meant using the first language (or L1) as medium of instruction along with good teaching strategies. Now she realizes L1 literacy (or learning to read and write in your L1) is critical to teaching in her own language, and she isn’t even literate in this.

Planner’s Guide For The Introduction of African Languages and Cultures in the Education System

Assumptions:

For it to be useful to as many countries as possible, the guide is based on a general conceptual design. However, since the concern is to show that the introduction of African languages and cultures in education is feasible in Africa today, the guide draws inspiration from concrete cases of the African reality and, more specifically, from success stories in the area under consideration. To that end, the guide is based on a set of assumptions.

• A “fictitious” country: This guide does not explicitly mention any country. However, it refers to the experiment of a multilingual basic education continuum in a country of Francophone West Africa. This continuum comprises three elements: A nursery (3 years), en elementary school (5 years), post?primary education (4 years).
• The use of African languages as media of instruction?learning is a decision obtained in the framework law on education and its implementing orders now need to be issued.
• The use of African languages as a media of instruction – learning is a constituent of a more extensive programme, that of the global reform of the education system without which the use of national languages would not have a solid basis.
• The model of bilingualism adopted in this guide is additive bilingualism. Contrary to the widespread practice consisting in using African languages during the first two or three years of schooling and abandoning them immediately after to switch to a foreign language, this guide suggests the coexistence of the national African language and French throughout primary school and during the early part of the post?primary cycle, in proportions that are well defined in the contribution of each medium to learning.
• The experiment envisaged here covers a 10 year period: a primary education cycle of 6 years and 4 years of post-primary education which generally corresponds to the junior secondary level.
• Another 10 year period is spent expanding the innovation with a view to its progressive generalization.

For the complete document, click on “Planner’s Guide For The Introduction of African Languages and Cultures in the Education System”.

Creating and Sustaining Literate Environments

With the nationwide implementation of DepEd Order No. 74, s. 2009 (institutionalizing the use of the mother tongue as medium of instruction from kindergarten to grade 3) in all public schools, as well as, Republic Act 10157 or the Kindergarten Law this school year, we’re expecting a dramatic improvement in literacy among the young. It is hoped that the following UNESCO publication, “Creating and Sustaining Literate Environments“, will provide the appropriate guidance and motivation for our teachers to encourage our learners to effectively apply their acquired literacy skills in their practical daily lives.

The following is an excerpt from “Creating and Sustaining Literate Environments”:

SIL International: Partners in Language Development

MALI—Trained in an SIL- sponsored literacy program, a local teacher writes a sentence and lists the seven Minyanka vowels. Translation: “She is very beautiful!”

SIL International® is a faith-based nonprofit organization committed to serving language communities worldwide as they develop the skills and capacity necessary to preserve and revitalize their languages. As an international nongovernmental organization (INGO), SIL actively participates in networks and partnerships—with government organizations, local groups and other INGOs—which are vital to the support of minority language communities in their own language development efforts.

SIL International grew out of one man’s concern for people speaking ethnolinguistic minority languages that lacked written alphabets. William Cameron Townsend started SIL in 1934 as a small summer linguistics training program with two students. It has expanded into an organization of more than 5,500 people coming from over 60 countries. SIL has conducted linguistic analysis in more than 2,590 languages spoken by 1.7 billion people in nearly 100 countries.

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SIL’s field linguists work in partnership with minority language speakers to collect, analyze, organize and publish language and culture data. SIL workers serve as technical advisors, teachers, consultants and facilitators. As an international advocate for ethnolinguistic minority language speakers, SIL is dedicated to supporting ethnic minority peoples worldwide in their efforts to preserve their languages and cultural identities in the 21st century.

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SIL makes its services available to all without regard to religious belief, political ideology, gender, race or ethnic background.

Click here for the complete SIL International: Partners in Language Development document.