TABUK CITY, Kalinga– Noblito Barcellano, 74, a retired government executive and a former board chairman of the Tabuk Farmers’ Multi-purpose Cooperative, cannot understand why the Department of Education (DepEd) has introduced changes in the curriculum which he claims delay learning of reading and development in English.
He is referring to the usage of the Mother Tongue as a medium of instruction from Kindergarten to 3 except in Filipino and English and likewise the scheduling of the teaching of reading in English in Grade 3.
Barcellano alleges that the Mother Tongue policy deliberately delays the learning of English which he says is absurd since previous generations including his generation learned to read in English in Grade 1 adding that in their case, it was through the simple reading the book “Pepe and Pilar.”
He said that as a product of the traditional curriculum which he described as tested, he was more proficient in English than the school children of today in the same grade.
“We were definitely better than today’s grade school children so why the need to alter the basic curriculum when it was working effectively?” he asked.
He said that the aptitude of Filipinos to learn English at a young age has not changed as could be proven by the fact that there are preschool children who learn to speak in English by just watching cartoons on television naming his grandson Hernel Noble Barcellano and their neighbor Sytthel Wandag as examples.
Barcellano claimed that the two kids could carry on conversations in English and even surprise their elders with unfamiliar English words at age 4.
Citing the experience of older Filipinos and now of children who learn English by just watching television at a very young age, Barcellano cannot see the logic in the Mother Tongue policy and in setting the learning of reading in English in Grade 3 even as he alleges that the two policies are contributory to the problem of high school non-readers.
Told of the claim of the DepEd and other advocates of the Mother Tongue policy that based on research, children who are grounded in their native language learn new languages much easier, Barcellano asked how could that be when the number of non-readers in the higher grades and in high school have been increasing during the time the Mother Tongue feature of the curriculum has been in use.
Barcellano said what the DepEd should have done was enhance the curriculum and not overhaul it including the parts that are working.
With other residents who are alarmed by the non-reader problem, Barcellano is mulling ways to reduce the number of secondary non-readers in the public schools in the city one of which is to urge high schools to shut their doors to non-readers.
The group reasons that the prospect of having graduates with no school in the city to go will exert pressure on elementary schools to see to it that their pupils learn to read adding that one factor non-readers proliferate is the absence of a policy which says high schools could reject non-readers.
They will also put up reward for the school with the least or no non-readers in Grade 6 as another strategy to compel the elementary schools do their best to teach their pupils to read.
Barcellano also informed that to ensure the reliability of the Philippine Informal Reading Inventory (Phil-IRI), the DepEd reading assessment tool, the group believes its administration should be turned over to an independent third party.
The group questions the accuracy of the publicized results of the Phil-IRI in the Cordillera which alleges there are 301 non-readers in English and 305 in Filipino in the region last school year.
“We need to do something because the reason people send children to school is for them to learn at least to read and write. If they get married without attaining these skills, how will they be able to manage their families?” Barcellano asked. **By Estanislao C. Albano, Jr.
