170+ TALAYTAYAN MLE’s STATEMENT OF SUPPORT FOR THE THREE DISMISSED ILOKANO SPEAKING STUDENTS This statement is being issued in support of Kleinee Bautista, Carl Andrew Abadilla, and Samuel Respicio, three Ilocano students expelled from their school, Saviour’s Christian Academy, by the school president, Reverend Dr Brian Shah, for speaking in Ilocano. We wish to express here our position on the matter. First, the prohibition of a Philippine language and the over-privileging of a foreign tongue in this school, and in any school in the Philippines under the supervision of the Department of Education, violates not only the students’ language rights but also their education and human rights. Punishment by expulsion for speaking in one’s own language criminalizes the punisher’s act. Second, due process remains a bastion of a decent interpretation of justice; when we deny due process to those perceived violators of a school regulation, then we deny them justice. Third, in the holistic education of students, the use of their native language follows the basic rule in education of starting every student from what that student knows. What the student knows in the beginning, a knowledge that needs expansion, elaboration, and integration, is what his first, native, or mother language mediates. Fourth, this act of depriving the students of their native language particularly in their school community where learning ought to happen is contradictory to the very principles of the Philippine government’s educational directive on mother tongue based multilingual education. In all four counts, we find Rev Shah’s actuation completely unacceptable, and thus, we call for his unconditional resignation as president of that school, and, if he is a foreigner, for his immediate deportation. RICARDO MA. DURAN NOLASCO, PhD Associate Professor, UP Department of Linguistics President, 170+ TALAYTAYAN MLE INC.
Posted on: Thu, 08 Aug 2013 04:20:57 +0000
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