Gullas' English Bill
On Page 2 of your issue (December 22) I read that the House of Representatives will soon pass a bill that seeks to restore English as the principal medium of instruction in public schools. Interesting!
Eduardo Gullas is the pilot of this bill, and his family are educators (University of The Visayas) and the proprietors of the Freeman Newspaper. For me it is anachronistic that someone who is is prominent in public life, is associated with institutions of learning and the dissemination of news, should not use his influence to clean up the English used in the newspaper of which Jose R. Gullas is chairman.
However, I must compliment you on the standard of the English in this article as it is quite good, unlike some of the rest of the news items. But then I see that it was not written by staff of The FREEMAN but is lifted from the Philippine Star News Service. Anything written by staff writers is, however, full of the "Taglish" of which Gullas is critical.
A question not dealt with in the article is, "Who will teach the teachers to speak English?" Is it not true that a policy of the Philippines is that only Filipinos are allowed to teach in public schools? Will this change? Unless it does then Gullas' efforts to improve English will come to naught as "Taglish", or a blend of English (his words), will prevail. Another joke from the land of falsity?
As one example of "practising what he preaches" Gullas should lead from the front and clean up The FREEMAN. A newspaper, apart from disseminating news, should also set an example to its readers by using good English, not the stilted, old fashioned, ungrammatical, incorrect Taglish written by its house writers it passes off as the real thing.
Paul de la Cerna
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