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COALITION of educators, writers and students challenged
the administration’s language policy by asking the
Supreme Court to stop the Department of Education from
continuing to implement Executive Order
210—strengthening the use of English in the school
system—at the expense of Filipino and the other
Philippine languages.
The
petitioners described the policy as both
“unconstitutional and mistaken.”
The
petitioners are asking the Court to issue a writ of
preliminary injunction or a temporary restraining
order—commanding the Administration to desist from
carrying out EO 210 and any of its implementing
regulations.
They are
also asking the Supreme Court—after it has finished its
hearings—to declare EO 210 and DepEd Order 36, series of
2006 null and void as it is violative of the
Constitution.
The
educators seeking the nullification of EO 210 include
Patricia Licuanan, president of Miriam College; National
Artists Bienvenido Lumbera and Virgilio Almario;
University of the Philippines sociologist Randolf David;
Isagani Cruz, president of WIKA Inc.; and Efren Abueg,
writer-in-residence at De La Salle University.
They are
represented by Pacifico Agabin, former dean of the UP
College of Law.
The
petitioners claim that EO 210 and Department of
Education Order 36 implementing it patently violate
Article XIV of the 1987 Constitution, which declares
Filipino the national language and mandates the
government “to initiate and sustain [its] use … as a
medium of official communication and as language of
instruction in the educational system.”
The
educators claim that the implementation of EO 210 would
emaciate this constitutional provision on the
propagation and use of Filipino. They cite a 1991
Congressional study to refute both EO 210 and a House
Bill with a similar intent, written by Nacionalista
Party Rep. Eduardo Gullas of Cebu.
HB 4701
or “Strengthening and Enhancing the Use of English as
the Medium of Instruction in Philippine Schools,”
certified as urgent by President Arroyo, passed the
House but was not acted on by the Senate in the
Thirteenth Congress.
The
Gullas bill goes against the findings of a Congressional
Commission on Education (Edcom) in 1991.
The
commission—made up of ten senators and congressmen, and
chaired by Sen. Edgardo Angara—recommended that Congress
make the vernacular and Filipino the medium of
instruction for basic education.
The
Edcom Report, written after an 11-month study, became
the basis for reform laws that restructured the
Department of Education and created a separate
Commission on Higher Education (CHED) to supervise
higher education.
Edcom
also ordered the DepEd to develop instructional material
in Filipino. The commission envisioned that all subjects
in elementary and high-school education—except English
and other languages—would be taught in Filipino by the
year 2000. |
