The protesters said they trooped to the CHED office to show their objection against CHED Memorandum No. Series of 2013 (CMO 20), which removes Filipino as subject in the collegiate level.
A statement by the alliance quoted Charlotte Velasco, League of Filipino Students (LFS) national spokesperson and R4E alliance co-convenor, as saying that CHED’s resolution “will worsen the clash between the English and Filipino language.”
The youth alliance also hit CHED chairperson Patricia Licunan for saying schools may opt to use the Filipino language as medium for teaching.
“Saying the Filipino language can be used as a medium for teaching isn’t tantamount to teaching definite Filipino courses. Teaching disciplines in Filipino is insufficient in developing the youth’s knowledge on the Filipino language and culture,” she said.
According to CMO 20, Filipino will no longer be part of the general education curriculum by 2016 and the teaching of Filipino at the college level will be limited to Filipino majors and Education in Filipino majors.
The CHED justified the removal by saying that the subject would be covered in Grades 11 and 12 under the new K-12 curriculum.
Affected professors
Meanwhile, the youth alliance agreed with the National Commission for Culture and the Arts’ National Committee on Language and Translation’s (NCCA-NCLT) that removing Filipino as subject in the collegiate level could lead to possible retrenchment of thousands of professors.
According to the NCCA-NCLT, the excision of Filipino subject could lead to the possible layoff of 10,000 fulltime and 20,000 part-time college professors.
“This is just an initial estimate,” Velasco said. “Since other disciplines apart from Filipino will be removed from the old GEC, more teachers will be left jobless by 2016.”
Velasco also condemned CHED “for providing incompetent solutions to the matter.” —Amanda Fernandez/KBK, GMA News
