Hi Rene thanks for the article as for Primary schools in Singapore implement a grading system along an "Achievement Band", until the system disregarded the EM3 stream and concentrated on an "Overall Grade" scheme, for crying out loud they even have Grading system for hawker hygiene! And by making the grades public, NEA authorities hopes consumers can also pressure hawkers to strive for better standards by patronising stalls with higher grading.
The controversy regarding the addition of another two years to the basic ten-year course which is currently in place - six years in the primary/elementary school and four years in the high school - should be thoroughly studied and debated. I understand from some educators that in fact it is 13 years to include kindergarten. Let me share my ideas with my readers.
In 1941-42, I was in the sixth grade in elementary school when WWII began. After the Pearl Harbor attack on December 8, 1941, our teachers announced the suspension of classes and sent us all home. The closure lasted until sometime in 1945, if memory serves, when I enrolled at the Cebu Provincial High School where I was accepted as a first year student. Around the middle part of the school year, all of us with a minimum grade of 85 percent were accelerated to the second year. However, because of the complaints of parents, the grade was lowered to 78 percent. Mind you, after the war, we did not have any benches or desks, no blackboards, no books, and other paraphernalia which is standard in today's classrooms.
The only thing we had were notebooks and I do remember bringing with me my chair which was a wooden box of pine wood which had earlier contained evaporated milk cans. Ah! But we had good teachers who were experts in the subjects that they were teaching to about five sections of classes every day. I remember in particular Mr. Filomeno Ibañez who was our teacher in history - "Modern Times and the Living Past." Mr. Ibañez had memorized the book! The same thing could be said of the others as well as our elementary school teachers. After I finished high school in two years, I went to college to study law. What we had then was pre-law which was a two-year course. After which we enrolled in law proper which was a four-year course. Excluding myself, why is it that those who graduated with much less number of years in school are to me in general terms better trained and better educated than some of the present graduates who spent more years? Why did our group speak better English than the average present crop?
What could be the reasons? Is it because of our language of instruction which was English? Is it because we had better teachers? Is it because at least in Metro Manila and the TV channels, the "lingua franca" is "Taglish"? Frankly I have no prejudice against Tagalog or any other native language. However, I ask the question: When you speak English, can you do so without injecting any Tagalog or native word? Can you speak straight Tagalog, Visayan, Ilocano, etc., without mixing it with English? When you speak a certain specific language, do you think in the language that you are speaking? Can you imagine the confusion that goes into the young minds of students when their teacher speaks "Taglish," either in an English class or in a supposedly Filipino language class? The above reality situation in our present educational system must be looked into.
First, we must have competent well-paid, well-trained teachers. Second, we must have adequate supplies and materials, books, etc. Third, infrastructure - schools and clinics staffed by doctors and nurses, etc. As for those who say that we must have a national language in order to be loyal and patriotic countrymen... I say that love of country is more of the heart and mind rather than merely confined to language.We should have a clear set of rules governing the adoption of foreign words into our national language. I imagine, if we were to strictly use only Tagalog or any native tongue when we converse.. we will have to remove relos (relo), pantalon, sinturon, carsonsilyo, medyas, sapatos, pero, porque, mesa, tinidor, kutsilyo, etc., which is already part of our language. Rizal wrote his "Mi Ultimo Adios"(My Last Farewell) in Spanish. Need I say more? (rene.espina@hotmail.com)
