Filipino is perhaps one of the most misunderstood and underappreciated core subjects in the Ateneo. For some, the point of nine units of the language will never be clear—all they derive is misery and contempt. Many will leave Panitikan ng Pilipinas (Fil 14), the last core Filipino subject, having only engaged with the language in the shallowest of ways.

A bevy of issues—the Tagalog roots of the language, its being secondary to English—have hounded Filipino ever since its adoption in the 1930s. Recent happenings in Filipino education, however, have highlighted—and hampered—one in particular: Intellectualization.

An othered language

Essentially, an intellectualized language is one that can regularly be used to write research, legislation and other highly intellectual output. The National Commission for the Culture and Arts puts it this way: A language that can be used in “giving and obtaining a complete education in any field of knowledge from kindergarten to the university and beyond” is an intellectualized one.

Intellectualization, however, is not only about translating foreign terms. Rather, it is also a matter of being able to create new terms unique to the language and likewise create a unique body of knowledge.

In the Ateneo, this idea is expressed in the core Filipino curriculum. ­­­In Sining ng Pakikipagtalastasan I and II (Fil 11 and 12) and Fil 14, professors focus less on nouns and verbs, and more on appreciating the distinctiveness of our linguistic and literary traditions. By studying native works and critically analyzing them, students understand better the local perspective of the world, as well as the social and physical realities they live in.

The successful intellectualization of the language represents the dream to completely Filipinize thought. Not to do so, argues De La Salle University professor Antonio Contreras, in a GMA News Online opinion piece, would be to surrender back to colonial tendencies. “English is no longer the language of the colonial ‘other,’” he writes. “In fact, it is speaking Filipino that is now the unfamiliar ‘other.’”

As tantalizing as this prospect is to them, however, Filipino in its current state is not as intellectualized as it can be. Fields like chemistry and physics are especially difficult to study using Filipino alone and even more impossible to write research in.

Needless to say, many have been frustrated by the slow, haphazard intellectualization of the language. In schools, Filipino subjects are often taught without proper teacher training or materials.

Efforts against

Many were elated when the government first announced in 2010 that basic education would be expanded from 10 to 12 years. With this announcement came the hope that the contradictory role of Filipino—it is a national language, yet only grammar and shallow literary engagement are taught of it—in education would finally be addressed once and for all.

These hopes were dashed, however, as plans for basic education were fleshed out. One of these was what the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) proposed in response to the Kindergarten to Grade 12 program. In CHED Memorandum Order No. 20, series of 2013, the commission outlined a new General Education Curriculum (GEC) that erased Filipino as a basic, mandated subject of its own.

The plan was widely criticized for being counterproductive to intellectualization efforts. “What decent curriculum—after teaching the classics, exploring the possibilities of feminist and postcolonial ideology, discusses nationalism—ends a student’s language and literature training with a course on Purposive Communication?” points out Joseph Salazar, chairman of the Filipino Department and who has a doctorate in sociology. For him, the new policy is “ill-conceived.”

To the ire of many, CHED responded by saying that they were conducting talks with universities to require some of the new units—Art Appreciation, Purposive Communication—to be taught in Filipino. “Conceding nine units to be taught in Filipino will not intellectualize the language,” insisted Filipino Department Assistant Professor Alvin Yapan, who has a doctorate in Philippine studies, in a Facebook post. He goes on to explain that the issue goes beyond the language that the subjects would be taught. The issue, rather, was the treatment of the language itself.

For Salazar and Yapan, the restructuring of the GEC only reinforced the notion that languages—both English and Filipino—were only useful for being means unto ends, a mere medium of instruction. However, what was really being contested was that Filipino would no longer be taught as a subject.

Removing Filipino subjects from basic tertiary education subjects, Yapan further argues, would remove the use undergraduate and graduate degrees in Filipino. “Studying a college, graduate, post-graduate degree in Filipino will not provide a student with a job outside of teaching the subject in elementary or high school, [so] why specialize in Filipino when you can instead get a degree in Education?” he contends.

An end in itself

Salazar describes the idea of language as a discipline as “an end in itself and is concerned with the inalienable role language plays in different facets of social life.” In particular, studying a language as a discipline in itself entails examining how it “is also conditioned by the social, political, economic and cultural rules.”

“Language is a tool of the thinking process,” wrote historian Renato Constantino in his essay, “The Miseducation of the Filipino” (1966). “Through language, thought develops, and the development of thought leads to further development of language.”

In fact, language was, in his opinion, “the main problem” in education. Because of how English was being imposed on the majority of Filipinos who did not speak it, Philippine society had grown accustomed to only half-understanding everything, content with the vaguest understanding of impressive-sounding English words. This, in turn, hampered their ability to act on social issues.

“Filipino [as a discipline] provides a space for excavating and highlighting issues which are peculiar to the Philippine experience,” wrote Yapan. For him, Filipino is a necessarily interdisciplinary field and it also articulates the unique cultural aspects inexpressible by other fields—words like kilig and pikon, for example, express a deep emotional understanding that cannot be completely be described by the other sciences.

Filipino as a discipline, then, represents an irreplaceable one. “Removing the teaching of Filipino, as a discipline, in college is tantamount to cultural euthanasia,” warns Yapan. Without the continued study of Filipino as a discipline, many aspects of the language—the philosophy embodied by the vocabulary, the art embedded within native poetic forms—would be left unexamined and unappreciated.

Our understanding of pre-Hispanic Tagalog society is partly based on the Tagalog language, from which Filipino is mostly derived. If Filipino ceases to be treated as an academic subject of its own right, this understanding would be lost. In turn, a framework in understanding other Philippine cultures and languages would also be lost. In a way, Filipino culture and society would become more alien to Filipinos. Its loss would represent the denial of, in Salazar’s words, “untapped resources in framing discourses for our development and progress.”

On campus

“Ateneo used to be more vigilant before in promoting and developing bilingualism,” Salazar says. Nowadays, he claims, students place a premium on English over Filipino.

For Ateneans, the entire issue takes on another character. Given the privileged backgrounds of many Ateneans, the role of Filipino in the Atenean education also becomes a matter of class relations.

“If the CHED curriculum is implemented in Ateneo, we will only be contributing to the development of a more arrogant and out-of-touch middle class,” claims Salazar. “[Ateneans] will make many decisions for the Philippines,” he continues, “but when it comes to language, they don’t know anything apart from the affectations they use to reinforce their social positions.” In Salazar’s opinion, this apathy towards Filipino only becomes more relevant considering that many students already enter the university without any care for society at large at all.

Salazar’s sentiments reflect that of Constantino’s. Constantino argues the English-based education system not only makes relating to the masses harder, but hinders students from developing “proper regards for things Philippine, the selfish concern over the national fate.” For him, an education given primarily in the English language is a colonial education; thus, a nationally relevant education is one that favors Filipino.

The lack of a Filipino component in the Ateneo College Entrance Test is another cause for concern. For Salazar, the omission might represent “a lip service to the constitution and [a] fostering a false sense of nationalism.” Apart from this, it also testifies to the dominance of English in the Ateneo bureaucracy.

However, Salazar is confident in that Ateneo will not follow the footsteps of CHED. “Thankfully, Ateneo has different plans and took CHED’s curriculum changes as a challenge to strengthen our own curriculum.” In fact, the recent special school forum on the issue held last July 25 saw an outpouring of support for the Filipino Department’s own initial suggestions for restructuring the Filipino curricula of both the Ateneo and other colleges.

In the same forum, however, there were also more radical opinions. As has always been with Filipino, the issue of Tagalog dominance came to light, with one professor terming it as “symbolic violence.” Some suggested a more inclusive language policy. There was an idea to expand the Filipino Department into a Philippine Languages Department. Another professor even suggested the creation of a completely new Filipino language based on another language. (In response, the Filipino Department assured them of efforts to be inclusive going forward.)

These sentiments show that the fight for Filipino continues. Generation after generation of Filipino scholars have fought for the language, but intellectualization seems to be the last thing on the minds of those in power.

Long after Manuel Quezon first dreamed of creating a common Philippine tongue, Filipino is still a work in progress. Today, it seems like that progress is being put to a stop.

By Nicolo A. Fortuna and Eugene G. Ong

Contrary to popular belief, the study of subjects in Filipino does not entail the mere translation of works and ideas. A number of fields have developed into disciplines of their own in Filipino, distinct from their Western counterparts. These Filipino fields of study aim to be more reflective of local nuances.

Literature

Because several countries conquered the Philippines in the past, Filipino literary thought has paid particular attention to postcolonial frameworks. In particular, the questions of national identity and colonial mentality have figured heavily in Filipino literary history. During the American period, for example, there were frequent clashes between those who wrote for the sake of advancing the artform and those who wrote to pinpoint social wrongs.

These are also carried on to the study of pre-colonial literature, as Filipino scholars usually highlight the suppression of native culture and language, which Western scholars tend to ignore.

Psychology

Filipino studies in psychology are heavily influenced by culture, producing concepts and theories distinct to society. While it also incorporates Western scientific approaches such as biological psychology and cognitive psychology, Filipino psychology is a discipline that is heavily rooted in the Filipino language itself—believing that words like pikon, saling-pusa and balikbayan reveal an understanding of the self and social relationships.

Apart from studying the psychological concepts embedded in native vocabulary, Filipino psychology also touches on how imported psychological terms—such as “impression formation”—are translated, and therefore assume different meanings in Filipino. Filipino psychology also carries postcolonial undertones: Much emphasis is given to viewing characterizations of Filipinos—like their laziness—in a Filipino rather than a Western perspective in order to better understand them.

Philosophy

The tradition of philosophy in Filipino has its roots in the Loyola Schools. Recently retired Fr. Roque Ferriols, SJ pioneered the field’s early development. He worked hard to bring the phenomenological tradition to the Philippines—in Filipino. According to the article “The language of truth” by Nadine Y. Ramos from The GUIDON’s December 2013 issue, Ferriols chose phenomenology because of its roots in everyday life, as phenomenology looks at and begins with lived experiences. His writings are taught in philosophy classes alongside the works of big names in the field like Martin Heidegger and Immanuel Kant. Ferriols famously asserts that his concept of meron is not a mere translation of the concept of being, saying that a Filipino’s experience of meron is different from the Western experience of being. Meron, as he explains it in Ramos’ article, springs from the Filipino experience by utilizing the Filipino language, and is unique in that way.

Cinema

The previous decade saw a rise in the Philippine film industry’s prestige. Directors like Brillante Mendoza and Assistant Professor Alvin Yapan, PhD from the Filipino Department, among others, garnered awards at film festivals both domestically and abroad, even reaching the Cannes Film Festival, for films shot with Filipino dialogue. The films use the Filipino language, along with regional languages, to augment efforts to show Philippine society and its harsh realities. The 2006 film Kubrador, for example, told the story of an aging bet collector for the distinctly Filipino game of jueteng.