AS SEEN ON TV
Lost in translation
He was barely a year and a half when he learned to recite the entire English alphabet and master his letters. Soon thereafter, my son could identify the first letters of simple English words like dog, chair or rain.
My son who sits in at a play school in the neighborhood (too young for Nursery at barely 3) must have been so confused when his teacher pointed to a picture of a house for the class to guess the first letter of the word “house”. While he knew the answer to be the letter “H”, the entire class chorused, “B!” which stands for “bahay”.
Worse, the teacher acknowledged the answer as “perfect”.
My son was so confused being the only one in class with a different, though correct answer. I’m now having second thoughts about letting him proceed with play school even as “salimpusa”. Being an only child, we enrolled him there not so much for the lessons but to enable him to interact with other kids and ease his restlessness over having no other playmates at home.
But with the kind of education kids get from play school, I would now rather send him to Gymboree, Dave’s Fun House or Kid’s Republic in the mall if all we want for him at this time is to socialize with other kids. Continuing with play school will only wipe out the gains of my son’s conquest of English, which is his first language.
Disclaimer: I have nothing against Tagalog or any other local dialect which my son can learn eventually and inevitably as he blends with the rest of this Tagalog speaking nation. It is just hard to teach kids English unless they learn it as a first language. The Philippines is disappearing from the global radar of English speaking countries and no less than the government has acknowledged that something must be done to arrest our dive into the abyss of non English speaking countries.
Our Bicolana yaya who observes play school classes like a hawk reported to us that teachers use Tagalog words more often and their medium of instruction is always Taglish (like reluctant colehiyalas) which they say is the easier way to teach children who speak Tagalog at home in the first place. They reason that English (as a second language) can be learned later.
If this is how teachers think in “decent enough” private play schools in Metro Manila, I can just imagine their counterparts in far flung communities getting lost in translation with dialects as bountiful as the nation’s islands. I bet “house” is spelled with a “C” (for “casa”) in some play school in Zamboanga.
Sure I can enroll my son in International Schools or Brent or Benilde. But I risk starving the entire household to death, even if these pricey, English-fortified, guaranteed non Tagalog-speaking schools accept Visa or Mastercard for 12 months, Paylite at zero interest.
Young Filipino kids these days get very little help with learning English.
I counted on television to be substitute teacher the way it did for me during my Sesame Street, Looney Tune years. But TV today uses Tagalog heavily whether with news, local entertainment, or even the Korean and Mexican soaps whose stars lose luster during live appearances in the Philippines because they don’t seem like their “Tagalog selves” sa totoong buhay.
There isn’t a show on free TV that can teach kids English these days. I was almost happy when one TV network filled its entire morning block with Nickelodeon cartoons such as “Dora the Explorer” and “Sponge Bob” only to be disappointed to see these loosely translated to Tagalog. Even TV commercials that my son likes to watch are in Tagalog. Sadly they don’t even use correct Tagalog but the colloquial-showbiz version where kids learn using the word “chuva” faster than they learn the meaning of “chivalry”.
That’s why it pays to get cable where a couple of English cartoon networks help reinforce my son’s conquest of English, lest Yaya switches channels for her daily dose of “Wowowee” or tear jerker “May Bukas Pa” when we’re not around.
We hope for the best that by speaking English at home our kids somehow get a head start in school and even in life. That’s why even Yaya is required to talk to him in English.
When sweating during play our yaya would get a small towel and tell my son, “Put this TO your back!”
At least she is trying with the best English she could muster from all of the 5 elementary years she completed. Yaya could use some help with prepositions and we come to her rescue whenever we can. The good news is, her F’s are not P’s and neither are her E’s, I’s nor her O’s, U’s. For short, her accent is sanitized of regional flavor which is really a rarity in yaya land.
By taking the English speaking policy seriously at home, everyone learns to think in English and speak in English including Yaya whom I believe is now a better English speaker since she started working for us.
One morning my son asked for his soiled nappies to be changed. Upon seeing poo on his diaper, Yaya promptly and candidly exclaimed, “Eeeewww!”… a clear sign that she was thinking in English.
She could have said “Kadiri”.
