BACK TO BASIC(?)

(June 11, 2012 at 11:31am)

I am totally supportive of the Dep-Ed’s latest decision to shift medium of instruction in public schools from English to native tongue in all localities. That way, the basics could be understood immediately that someday a phone conversation between a concerned citizen and the PNP won’t be like, “Hello, Police! Police this is?” to which the PNP curtly replies, “Yes, please, police this is!”

For how can a pupil give a correct answer to a question when in the first place he could not understand instructions? Instructions are always officially a part of an examination and we all know that the mother of all stupidity is assumption. That’s why there are many kids who flunk the exams, as they just assume what the question meant and they couldn’t understand.

I am a product of a vernacular instruction as when I was in Grade One Section “Sara,” although we had a textbook in Hiligaynon, we were taught in “pure cow’s milk” Kinaray-a. And I could still recite some unforgettable dialogues from that book’s main characters Lino and Nita, such as, “Ay, pakâ, pakâ, galî, há! há! há! há!”

I could also recall such omnipresent proverb “Sa ikauunlad ng bayan, disiplina ang kailangan” dictated by the late dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos to be posted everywhere in every school particularly in a “paseo.” The country’s sole ailment then was lack of discipline among men, “sosyalismo” and “komunismo,” but I was enlightened after the Pinoys told Marcos pointblank that the real problems actually were “Misis Mo” and “Ikaw mismo.”

I’m happy that we are treading on the straight path of decency and order again. Judging from those indictment left and right of past abusers of power they now know there’s such a thing as crime and punishment.

The public in general would gradually realize that Abe Lincoln was absolutely right in describing democracy as a whole. That real power belongs to the people as it is a “government of the people, by the people, for the people…”