Howie Severino documentary airing Monday night, August 31, 2009, on GMA7 after Saksi.
While riding around on his bike Bughaw, Howie Severino assesses the quality of English in the streets of Manila – noting numerous misspellings on signs, the ignorance of students, and even grammatical mistakes engraved in the monument to a journalism icon.
He later learns that this sordid state of communication reflects a general decline in education, exemplified by an elementary school student named Jayson who managed to reach grade six without learning how to read despite parents who sell books and magazines for a living.
Howie delves into the debate about the causes of this decline, dwelling on the role of language. He meets a legislator who blames the use of Filipino as a medium of instruction and wants a new emphasis on the use of English.
Language experts at the University of the Philippines believe that learning is most effective using a student’s mother tongue.
Howie’s documentary team travels in search of multi-language education in action and finds an example in remote Lubuagan, Kalinga province, where students are taught in their native tongue and score much higher in standardized tests than their counterparts in more traditional schools.
Join this journey through a multi-language society on “DONT ENGLISH ME!,” Howie Severino’s I-Witness documentary this Monday midnight after the late night newscast Saksi.
NOTE: Watch the following YouTube videos of “Don’t English Me!” as it aired:
My friend, Clifton Pascua, posted the following link to another video of “Don’t English Me!” at Ilocano Online: