It can be recalled that in October 2024, the Philippine government, in its management of a linguistically rich and culturally diverse population, decided to make the then-existing Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) act expire. It amended the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013, also known as the Republic Act 10533, on which the MTB-MLE program was pinned. By leaving it unsigned, the passage of RA 12027 or the Act Discontinuing the Use of the Mother Tongue as Medium of Instruction from Kindergarten to Grade 3 now mandates that “the medium of instruction shall revert to Filipino and until otherwise provided by law, English.”
Such a decision has removed the mandatory use of the mother tongue in the country’s early education system. However, it was a move that can be understood to be more than just a pedagogical pivot. It was, in fact, an act that was deeply political, signaling a quiet but callous erasure of the Filipino learners’ cultural identity tied to their mother tongue. Notingly, the reversal of MTB-MLE reflects the broader systemic neglect of deaf learners excluding the usage of Filipino Sign Language (FSL) for inclusive and equitable access to education.
With the country being home to some 183 living languages, these varied linguistic identities and inclusive national sign language and their corresponding experiences are believed to carry the soul of a people and the wisdom of the different generations that continued to use them.
MTB-MLE wasn’t introduced as a policy for nothing. Considered as one of the first to have this kind of language education approach in Asia, the Philippines became a model for its Southeast Asian neighbors.
Global research from UNESCO and other institutions point out how a mother tongue-based education such as the MTB-MLE “is a tool to improve foundational skills [particularly] in a diverse society [such as the Philippines].”
It is indeed surprising why, despite the strong evidence that supports the pedagogical and cultural benefits of MTB-MLE, the current Marcos administration rolled it back.
Although almost six decades apart, Marcos Jr.’s decision to roll back MTB-MLE in 2024 was a move that tied up neatly with his own father’s labor export policy initially operated in the 1970s. Having framed overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) as “heroes” due to their crucial role in helping construct the Philippine economy via their cash remittances, both administrations leaned, and continue to heavily do so, on the Filipino migrant workers.
Fully recognizing that this economic design would largely be dependent on the Filipino learners’ — and future labor workforce — English language proficiency, the Philippine government saw to it that English language learning would be fully enshrined in the country’s curriculum.
Given as well the place of English not just as a language but also as a currency in today’s highly globalized world, allowing it to eclipse the Filipino learners’ need for their mother tongue, it is clear as day that discontinuing MTB-MLE was a political move to produce a country of workers — call center agents, nurses, seafarers, among others. By ensuring that the Filipino learners can compete with their counterparts in the global labor circuit, their very own government was very intentional in shifting the curriculum away from mother tongue education in broad daylight.
Linguistic genocide emanates from cultural genocide, the move to deprioritize mother tongue over English, a colonial language. Cultural genocide refers to a deliberate act of suppressing or eliminating a group’s language leading to a forcible assimilation into a domain culture or economy. This eventually results in language death due to an institutional decision.
It is important for the current government to realize that while it may simply seem that changing a language of instruction is but a matter of a curricular decision, language cannot and should not be simply dismissed as a medium of instruction alone. Every language is a vessel of memory, emotion, imagination and resistance — one that the Filipinos fiercely fought for against their colonial aggressors.
As such, by scrapping MTB-MLE and enacting RA 12027, the government is telling the people that their own language does not matter. That a language that once oppressed the Filipino people is coming back one more time, but its return is facilitated by the very same people that the Filipinos have entrusted to supposedly make a difference through just and inclusive governance.
It is equally important to understand that when one’s mother tongue is consistently excluded from formal institutions such as education, governance, and media, it eventually withers, it dies. Once it happens, the memories, emotions, and imaginations that came with it will also fade away, never to be recognized and spoken again by future generations.
Cultural erosion as tragic as this pointedly ignores the Philippines’ rich linguistic and cultural diversity. It is a direction that brushes aside the need for an education system that is deeply rooted in its cultural heritage, one that could have been further nurtured by being critical and inclusive, not dismissive.
The Philippines recently celebrated its 127th Independence Day, commemorating the day when it was finally freed from colonial rule and foreign domination. However, putting in place RA 12027 serves as a constant reminder that an Independence Day celebration is but a hollow act if the country continues to demonstrate colonial mentality by way of privileging English in its very own curriculum.
Couldn’t it have been wiser if the current administration, with a stroke of a pen, had instead prioritized its own country’s linguistic sovereignty?
Although RA 12027 has already been rolled out, if the current administration is indeed sincere in its effort to bring the country forward, it could still undo its earlier decision. Instead of abandoning MTB-MLE, the current administration could instead look into the challenges it had earlier met, implementation-wise, improve its monitoring and evaluation mechanism, and build a stronger multilingual exit model that is scientific, that is, evidence-based.
By having a culturally grounded education system, the country could move forward by incorporating its mother tongue without sacrificing the level of global competence it aspires to have. If other countries are able to do it, why can’t we?
Because a mother tongue helps form the foundation for a strong cultural identity and a sense of belonging, it also results in a people’s effective learning and communication. But when communication is impeded because governance decides to kill it in favor of a foreign language, it does not just erase the mother tongue in a classroom. It also makes people illiterate in their very own language.
Dr. Analiza Liezl Perez-Amurao, a recipient of the Linguistic Society of the Philippines’ Distinguished Bonifacio P. Sibayan Professorial Chair in Applied Linguistics, works as an assistant professor at Mahidol University International College, a leading state university in Thailand. She was the chair for three terms of the college’s Humanities and Language Division where she continues to publish about various language and cultural issues in the Philippines, Thailand, and Southeast Asia.
Michael Thomas Nelmida is a transnational linguistic human rights activist and an MA candidate in Human Rights and Democratization at Mahidol University (Thailand) and Gadjah Mada University (Indonesia). He has previously taught at the University of the Philippines – Mindanao and FEATI University, exploring the intersections of linguistic human rights, memory activism, and genocide studies.
