Filipino must stay in college curriculum, Supreme Court told anew

A group of university professors asked the Supreme Court on Monday to reconsider its decision upholding a higher education memorandum excluding the Filipino language and literature from core college subjects.

Tanggol Wika filed a motion for reconsideration asking the justices to reinstate a now-lifted temporary restraining order against Commission on Higher Education Memorandum Order (CMO) No. 20, which they say must be declared unconstitutional.

CMO No. 20, which prescribes the college general education curriculum after the implementation of the K-12 program and excludes Filipino, Panitikan, and the Constitution from the general education (GE) core courses, was upheld by a unanimous High Court vote last month.

The ruling also declared that the institutionalizing law of the K-12 program, which requires students to undergo one year of kindergarten and adds two years to high school, was constitutional.

The justices decided, among others, that the 1987 Constitution's provisions on Filipino being the medium of official communication and language of instruction are "non-self-executing" and are "still subject to provisions of law."

However, Tanggol Wika, the petitioners, contended that the whole Constitution "is still presumed to be self-executory," and exceptions must be "limited and strictly construed against government and more favorably interpreted in favor of the rights denigrated."

"A contrary position will leave the constitutionally declared rights of the people, such as the right to education and labor rights, vulnerable to being diminished or defeated at the hands of a government or any part thereof which fails, whether deliberately or otherwise, to act on the mandates of the Constitution," they said in the 19-page filing.

The SC had also justified its decision by saying that the changes in the GE curriculum were meant to avoid a duplication of subjects already taught in Grade 1 to 10 and senior high school.

But the petitioners reasoned that tertiary level Filipino covers topics that are not taught in basic education Filipino, including issues on Filipino language, Filipino identity outside the Philippines, the intellectualization of the Filipino language, and even thesis writing.

They also noted that subjects on mathematics and the natural and social sciences remain in the college-level GE curriculum despite already being "'part of the basic education curriculum' -- granting that it is correct."

"Petitioners note that students cannot be left with just basic bokabularyo and balarila. Mandated Filipino units in college aim to develop and enrich our national language, propagate it by instilling in the youth higher order mastery and practice of the Filipino language," they wrote.

"...The use of Filipino cannot be sustained by leaving it to the whims of higher educational institutions, whether public or private," they said.

Tanggol Wika also said the exclusion of Filipino in the college curriculum "reverses the decades of efforts of trying to put Filipino in higher education."

Finally, the petitioners told the Court that the 1987 Constitution mandates that the study of the Constitution must included in the curricula of "all educational institutions," contrary to the ruling that its inclusion in basic education satisfies the constitutional requirement.

"The Constitution does not provide any distinction as to which level. Where the Constitution does not distinguish, we must do the same," they said. —LDF, GMA News