Oh, My Poor Motherland....

Let's be honest: the Philippines' biggest export is the brain power and physical labor of its citizens (white and blue collar) who end up immigrating or working abroad. So reading this article from the International Herald Tribune about the state of education in Filipino public schools is a bit worrying:

IHT: English Getting Lost in Translation in Philippines
2007-08-14 10:57 (New York)

"We grow our hogs in our own farms so you're sure to get meat that is
grown."

"The city's voice is soft like solitudes."

"He found his friend clowning himself around."

"He seemed to be waiting for someone, not a blood relation, much less
a bad blood."

Such phrases, lifted from government-approved textbooks used in
Filipino public schools, are reinforcing fears that crucial language
skills are degenerating in a country that has long prided itself on
having some of the world's best English speakers. At a time when
English is widely considered an advantage in global competitiveness
for any country, many fear this former U.S. colony is slipping.

English is an official language here, along with the native Tagalog.
Yet the U.S. State Department, in its "2007 Investment Climate
Statement," released this month, concluded: "English- language
proficiency, while still better than in other Southeast Asian nations,
is declining in the Philippines."

For years now, Antonio Calipjo Go, an academic and a supervisor of the
Marian School of Quezon City, a private school here, has waged a
campaign against bad textbook English.

"I pity our children who are being fed these errors," Go said in an
interview. "This is one of the reasons why the level of education in
our country is worsening."

Go says he has notified the Philippine Department of Education of
dozens of English-language errors in all seven approved social studies
textbooks. In January, he testified at a Senate hearing on the
subject. And he has written to the World Bank, which has granted an
800 million peso, or $17.5 million, loan to the Philippines government
for textbooks.

But when the new school year opened in June, the books were unchanged.

So Go took out advertisements in newspapers detailing the errors. In
July, he paid for a full page in the country's largest- circulation
newspaper, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, enumerating errors in two
textbooks.

He titled the ad "Learnings for make benefit glorious nation of
Philippines," after the movie "Borat," whose title character has a
less-than-perfect grasp of English.

"I do not wish to pick a fight with anybody," Go declared in his ad.
"I only know that if I kept this to myself, the errors that have been
in these books all these years will continue to harm the hearts and
minds of more generations of Filipino schoolchildren. The errors must
be corrected. Now."

Go estimates that more than 75 percent of all elementary textbooks in
public schools contain errors.

"And I am being kind with that estimate," he said. Aside from the
linguistic errors, he finds other aspects problematic, pointing out a
textbook that extols the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Go has been sued for libel by two textbook authors and a publisher,
though the lawsuit of the publisher, Phoenix Publishing, has been
dismissed. He is undeterred. "I refuse to accept that we cannot do
something to solve problems like this," he said in the interview. "I
cannot accept that."

Go is far from the only person worried about textbook errors and the
deterioration of English skills in the Philippines.

Business chambers, foreign and domestic, have voiced concern that the
decreasing quality of English could hurt the country's
competitiveness. Three years ago, the European Chamber of Commerce of
the Philippines launched a campaign called "English is cool!" to
address this deterioration.

Last year, the Joint Foreign Chambers of Commerce of the Philippines,
in a workshop on how to increase foreign investment in the country,
identified "improved English proficiency" as a key area that needed
improvement.

The U.S. State Department, in its recent report, said the "the
comparative advantages the Philippines once enjoyed vis--vis its
neighbors in attracting foreign investment need to be restored in
order to attract more investment and support higher growth."

One reason English proficiency, or its lack, has received so much
attention here is because of the call-center boom and the fact that
Filipino workers with a good command of the language stand a better
chance of being recruited for jobs abroad.

For years, foreign governments, particularly the United States, and
donor agencies like the World Bank have been providing assistance to
the Philippine educational system, and some of the programs have
involved the production of textbooks. This month, Australia announced
that it was giving a $10 million loan to Manila to improve basic
education.

Educators do not deny a problem with the quality of English in
textbooks and instruction, but point out that there are other, perhaps
more pressing, problems in the schools.

Among these are poor skills in science and math; the lack of teachers,
many of whom are being recruited abroad for higher pay; a lack of
equipment; and overcrowded classrooms, with some holding nearly 100
students.

Some critics say that the Education Department itself is part of the
problem. The Senate hearings in January focused not only on the poor
quality of textbooks, but on allegations that the process of bidding
for textbook contracts is flawed, with a small cartel of publishers
controlling 75 percent of the contracts.

Last month, in response to Go's ads, Education Secretary Jesli Lapus
issued a statement saying that the department had implemented
stringent measures to improve the quality of textbooks.

He said he had banned those who evaluated the error-filled textbooks
from future book projects. An oversight committee has also been
created to address issues concerning these textbooks.

On Monday, Franklin Sunga, an under secretary of education, predicted
that the situation would improve. "There will be a new batch of
English textbooks soon and we hope that these errors will not be
repeated."

He said the department was improving its evaluation of these books,
contracting the services, for instance, of academics and evaluators
from the country's top universities and colleges.

(c) 2007 International Herald Tribune. Provided by ProQuest
Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.