It is simplistic cerebration to concur with the language parochialism inference that the 1925 Monroe Report (Report for brevity) supports categorically the decision of the US Bureau of Education to use the English language, which is foreign to 99% of homes in the Philippines then, as a medium of instruction to teach Big Bill Taft’s little brown brothers, also referred to as Pacific Negroes. By applying higher order thinking, the Report actually explicates in veritable manner that the English language is the pathogen scourging Philippine education for decades and prescribes remedies for it.

Ambeth Ocampo said that, “it is tragic that the findings of the 1925 Monroe Report are still relevant today,” since not much has changed in the education system for the past 98 years (https://opinion.inquirer.net/142035/philippine-education-1925-vs-2021#ixzz86gfxUhSY).

We invite readers to mine the 677-page Monroe Report at https://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/philamer/ahk8495.0001.001?view=toc

The Report respects the exertions of the Bureau of Education but does not kowtow to its decision to use English as a medium of instruction based on the uniqueness of the Philippines having too many local languages but with no existing common language. The Report said that no other single difficulty has been so great as that of overcoming the foreign language handicap. “Whether rightly or wrongly, they decided against the widespread use of any one or several of the dialects and began to organize instruction in English. FROM THAT DAY TO THIS, ALL EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS IN THE PHILIPPINES HAVE BEEN FOREIGN LANGUAGE PROBLEMS” [all uppercase ours for emphasis] (p 127 of the report).

Filipino children enter school confronted with the double necessity of mastering a strange tongue and of carrying on school work in it. The Report said that the Filipino child is compelled to master the complicated refinement of an unphonetic language in which rhythm, stress, and syllabication play a dominant role in conveying the subtler shadings of meaning. It is important to note that local languages like Tagalog, Iloko, and Binisaya, are “almost totally unlike the language in which the children must learn to do their school work” (p.127 of the report).

English is a difficult language to learn. The Report points out that, “English is a highly staccato and accented language, stress being continually employed in the refined shades of meaning.” The Filipino child has to gain command of over 6,000 homonyms broken into homophones (words that sound the same but have different spelling and meanings: there, their, they’re) and homographs (words with the same spelling and sound, but with different meanings: bow of a ship, a bow and arrow; bass the fish and bass the instrument; fair that is equitable and fair as in carnival). In addition, there are numerous irregular verbs and words with silent letters like b, t, h, k, and w, which should appear on paper but not pronounced by the mouth such as comb, debt, fasten, hour, knee, and answer.

The Report elucidates that the cure lies with having highly trained teachers to remedy the English language malady. Unfortunately, the teaching personnel are inadequately trained for “the enormous and almost superhuman task” (p. 128,Report). “Not only must the Filipino child learn to read, write and speak this difficult foreign language but he must accomplish it under untrained and partially-educated teachers who themselves have never developed an adequate command of the language.” The learning of a foreign language proceeds by imitation. Teachers with poor command of English, conducting instruction in that language, cannot produce English-proficient learners out of non-native English speakers.

Table 7 on page 128 of the Report presents in “a perfectly concise manner the hampering effect of English.” Except for arithmetic computation which do not require reading to acquire numeracy skills, Filipino children’s attainment is atrociously behind American median attainments in arithmetic reasoning by half a year, vocabulary and sentence reading by 1 and ½ years, and paragraph reading by 2 and ½ years.

Ocampo wonders if scores of today’s students in international assessments would be higher if tests were taken in Filipino. On page 181, the Report panegyrizes the mother tongue,” All school work is done in a foreign language. Filipino scores on the tests so far discussed, are lower, therefore, than they would be if the instruction had been in the native language, and if the tests had been given in that language.”

Atty. Magi Gunigundo is a former lawmaker, civil law instructor, and author of law books. He is also an education reformer and an advocate of anticipatory governance.