Multilingualism in Science Education

MULTILINGUALISM IN SCIENCE EDUCATION

Language as a distinctly human tool for communication plays a pivotal role in the acquisition of basic and fundamental competencies to help a person navigate the ocean of data that defines our human environment. That is why a person born into this world deprived of the opportunity to learn a language has no way of growing up into a normal human being. Language is the instrument through which a human being acquires power over nature by naming the objects around him putting things under his control.

We have gone quite far from the primitive times when a person was confined to the life of the tribe where one belongs. At that time the only language a person knew was his own and that gave him additional tools for survival especially when the tribe was threatened by forces beyond the individual’s control. Group action was facilitated by their common understanding of things through the words they used to communicate with each other. But as migration took place with the inevitable dominance of the stronger group over the weaker ones, the language of the vanquished became one of the casualties that put them in a subjugated condition. Their language would become subsequently extinct and they eventually weresubsumed to the life and customs of the victors including the use of their language. We could therefore say that it is language that defines the identity of a people and without it they lose the right to exist as a distinct group.

Though as stated earlier we have already gone quite far from those prehistoric episodes, we still can see and palpably feel the disturbing impact whenever the language of a particular group of people is not accorded the primacy which it properly possesses. The clash between conquerors and conquered may not be physically visible but the mindset it develops in the consciousness of those who have experienced subjugation remains a potent force to reckon with.

The Philippine experience concerning this issue is a case in point. After a painfully shameful and long series of foreign dominations we were made to believe as a given fact that our mother tongue is not fit to be used as medium of instruction in the acquisition of basic and more so of highly specialized disciplines that would make one educated and acquire the prestige and privileges that goes with it. The dominant elite who are on top of the pyramid of power instinctively feel that to be educated means the ability and facility to use the language of the conquerors expressing their sub- conscious desires to stand in equal footing with these power figures by mimicking their language. This long held assumption however has been proven to be disastrous in acquiring real education. The Philippine educational scenario especially in science education stands out as a sore thumb when seen in relation to our immediate neighboring countries. While China, Korea, Singapore and the rest of our neighbors have taken off towards industrialization using their native tongues as the medium of instruction including science, here comes the Philippines whose conservative elite which still wield considerable power in the promulgation of educational policies still insist on sticking to the use of English in all levels of our educational system to bring us to our dream of becoming industrialized. The painful fact however is that we have not developed as expected but instead we have slid down in the ladder of economic development.

Although the Department of Education is bent on pushing through in implementing the Mother Tongue Multilanguage Approach in the Elementary and in the High School levels it is still besieged with problems like broader social reconstruction, teacher training and development, shift in language attitude and inaction.

I am fully convinced that using the mother tongue as the principal medium of instruction in all subject areas both in the elementary and in the high school is the best way to extricate ourselves from the quandary we have fallen into. Enough evidence can be gleaned which is upheld and validated even by UNESCO that the most effective method of learning is through the use of the mother tongue. Once the basic foundation has been solidly established it would now be the most opportune time to go into multilingualism to broaden the horizon of the individual. This is what China is doing right now. After mastering the fundamentals and laying the groundwork of a stable economy they are now in the stage of mastering English to expand further their areas of competence and thus extend their areas of influence.