The use of Mother Tongue as a medium of instruction is among the many facets of the K-to-12 program which makes it challenging and somehow taxing.

During the Spanish Period, Filipinos were taught in schools with the use of the Spanish language, thus making our Filipino language basically formed with Spanish origin.

During the American time, the Thomasites developed our skills in English. This is the very reason why most of our old folks who went to school during the American time could speak English fluently.

Japanese occupation taught the Filipinos how to speak Niponggo.

Only at these times are we starting to educate our schoolers with the use of the native tongue as the medium of instruction – isn’t that a little too late? I hope not.

Using the mother tongue as a medium of instruction can have its positive and negative sides,

Positively, it is simpler to teach using your own dialect at schools because you can easily make the pupils understand the lesson in a language they would easily comprehend.

Pupils, in the same effect can also freely express themselves without any fear of language barriers.

Pupils can exchange ideas more freely and more creatively.

On the other hand, using the Mother Tongue from the first to third grade and then at the fourth grades they will start to use foreign language, levels of communication and understanding may be a bit more difficult.

You can just imagine that in the old curriculum, grade 1 pupils were already developed in reading Dolch’s Basic Sight words but some would still go to the intermediate grades without actually perfecting the reading of such basic sight words.

How can we expect them to master such words now in the new curriculum when they would just start English in grade 4?

It is hoped that K-to-12 will bring positive results so that we can really produced better and more efficient graduates in the future.

By: Alma R. Reyes | Teacher II | Capitangan Elementary School | Abucay, Bataan