By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
Now it’s out of the bag. The one and a half year delay in the English beginning reading timetable in the K to 12 Curriculum violates the program of the Lubuagan Experiment which happens to be one of the two local empirical studies cited in DepEd Order No. 74, series of 2009, as having validated the claims of multilingual education. The issuance institutionalized the Mother Tongue-based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) as a fundamental education policy program of the Department of Education (DepEd).
During the session of the House Committee on Basic Education and Culture on House Bill No. 6405 which sought the abolition of the MTB-MLE on January 28, 2021, Dr. Ricardo Ma. Nolasco recalled that the Lubuagan Experiment was one of the evidences which influenced the most the approval of the bill seeking the institutionalization of new language policy.
This letter writer would later learn from Dr. Diane Dekker, the lead researcher in the Lubuagan Experiment, that the experimental classes were taught to read in the mother tongue, Filipino and English in Grade 1. According to the report on the study, the Grade 1 experimental classes outperformed the control classes by 22.7 percent in Reading.
By rejecting the beginning reading program of the Lubuagan Experiment, the DepEd effectively put the following promises of the language policy contained in DepEd Order No. 74, series of 2009, beyond reach as their realization is dependent on the early teaching of reading in English: quicker learning of reading and usage of new languages; better overall academic performance; and improved performance in international assessments.
The DepEd decision made the appalling performance of our students in the 2018 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study – last of 58 countries – and the 2019 Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics – close to the bottom of six countries – foregone conclusions as our students were reading in their test language one and a half years behind their counterparts from other countries were reading in their respective test languages.
And that is for the pupils who learned to read because, according to the findings of the SEA-PLM, 27 percent of the Filipino Grade 5 pupils could not read based on the SEA-PLM definition.
Since naturally, the illiteracy rate in a lower grade is higher, there were more non-readers among our takers in the TIMSS than there were in the SEA-PLM.
If the DepEd were making our children read in English in Grade 1 like they did in the Lubuagan Experiment, the TIMSS and SEA-PLM fiascos would not have happened because their average scores would not have been dragged down by the performance of the more than a quarter among them who could not read.
The importance of reading in education cannot be overemphasized. Secretary Leonor Briones herself had highlighted the correlation between reading proficiency and performance in other subjects and likewise the current state of literacy in our basic education when she said this after the release of the results of the Programme for International Student Assessment: “Reading in English is clearly a weakness of our learners and this may also affect the performance of our learners in Science and Math, as the language of instruction and testing in higher grades is English.” Consequently, Briones directed the conduct of further study on the issue.
Almost two years later, the DepEd has not yet bared the results of the study although the causes specially the tampering of the Lubuagan program are so obvious and need no digging up. Needless to say, the blunder would have been corrected a long time ago if the people leading the DepEd but possess a modicum of concern for the proper education of our school children. Only morons could not see that children who read in the assessment language one and half years later than children of other countries do can never compete globally as envisioned by the Basic Education Act of 2013.
The DepEd owes the country specially its children an apology for ensuring the complete failure of the MTB-MLE even while foisting it as superior to all our previous language policies and also for covering up the blunder until now by shamelessly passing it off as “early challenges.” **
