The language of corruption

By David Michael San Juan

No. My English teachers didn’t corrupt me. My English teachers were actually patriots. They never forced us to speak English. They never told us to abandon our mother tongue—the national language Filipino—in favor of English. Hence, we learned English as a second language. We read a lot of good stuff in English. Civil Rights-era short stories by African-American writers, Asian epics, George Orwell’s novels, social realist poems and many more…

Nevertheless, English is indeed the language of corruption in the Philippines. It is the language of corrupt “leaders,” corrupt socio-economic agendas, corrupt “intellectuals” and corrupt consciousness. Most of our middle class and elite citizens have been holistically corrupted by the English language. Goodness, these citizens think their mother tongue is English! Fortunately, most of our poor citizens are still insulated from the corruption brought by the English language.

English has been the dominant language in most Philippine schools since 1906. With the successful imposition of English as the main medium of instruction, the Americans were able to impose their own economic system too in the country. Hence, fast forward to 2012, as most Philippine schools mouth their undying allegiance to the supremacy of English as the alleged “language of leaders” and as the language of “globalization,” the Philippine government aided by mostly West(ern)-educated “intellectuals” still churn out socio-economic plans in English despite the fact that few Filipinos can rightfully claim that English is their mother tongue.

It must be noted that, at least in recent decades, from the Marcos dictatorship to the second Aquino administration, ALL OFFICIAL ECONOMIC PLANS were/are written in English! The Philippine government is guilty of deliberately excluding the masses from engaging in meaningful debates on socio-economic policies. Even the current Philippine Constitution (1986) was originally written in English. In fact, past constitutions were also written in English, except for the pre-Commonwealth constitutions (like the Biak-na-Bato Constitution and the Malolos Constitution). The schools and “intellectuals” aid the state in this humungous crime by insisting on the hegemony of English in most subjects.

This crime is the worst form of corrupting democracy. We call our country democratic but our government speaks an alien tongue, our laws are written in an alien tongue, our economic plans are written in an alien tongue, our courts issue rulings in an alien tongue, our schools primarily teach in the alien tongue, our broadsheets are in an alien tongue, our researchers write their theses and dissertations in an alien tongue, our university websites are in an alien tongue.

For the past century, both our English-dominated education system and our borrowed socio-economic framework failed to significantly ameliorate the lives of our people. It’s about time we shift paradigms. Let us junk the English-dominated education system by developing our own education system rooted in our people’s needs and reflective of their collective aspirations, an education system where English will be taught as a subject and will never be used as a medium of instruction. Let us junk our borrowed socio-economic framework and craft a new development model that suits our country’s needs—a development agenda that would wipe out poverty through debt repudiation and renegotiation, genuine land reform, agricultural modernization, national(ist) industrialization and other sweeping reforms and pro-people schemes—away from American-style neoliberalism, capitalism, feudalism, neocolonialism and imperialism—a development agenda discussed, debated upon, and written in our national language.

We citizens of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao should speak the same tongue. We should use the national language as we communicate with our fellow Filipinos. Filipinos who think that English is their mother tongue should have their heads examined, and they should learn Filipino as we poorer citizens have learned English—that is, as a second language at the very least. United in language, we could easily engage in meaningful discussions on other reforms that must be implemented for our people to achieve lasting peace, progress and prosperity.

Obviously, I wrote this for our country’s English-speaking middle class and elite, hoping (perhaps in vain) that they’ll start becoming genuine geniuses by learning the Philippine national language (Filipino) which millions of foreigners learn without much difficulty. If we Filipinos whose mother tongue is Filipino do learn English, why should Filipinos whose alleged mother tongue is English be unable to learn Filipino? Are they idiots? I don’t think so: they have been monopolizing wealth and political power for the past centuries; they’re not morons, at the very least. But that’s another story. National Language Month was celebrates in August. We’re the only country that celebrates such a grandiose month.

David Michael M. San Juan is from the Filipino Department of De La Salle University-Man