Better yet, develop Philippine indigenous culture. Take away sombrero and use salakot. Get from indigenous Philippine ethnic groups and make clothes based on their style to remove traces of Spanish and American colonization!

Spanish must never be a primary language. Malay should be the primary language instead of Tagalog so that these Tagalogs and Cebuanos will not have linguistic issues anymore. English will also be a co-official.

We were a colony of Spain. What the Americans did was what later was known as neocolonialism. They took control of our land by force. They purposefully made the Maine blow up while anchored at Havana as they desperately needed to imitate the European countries and their colonial system.

Tagalog and Spanish, not English, were the first official languages of our country. Filipinas es hispana 100%.4 000 000 de filipinos hablan español como lengua materna. Ningún filipino habla inglés como lengua materna sino como lengua extranjera. In order for us to understand our history we need Spanish. Our first constitution and national anthem were written in Spanish. José Rizal and the Ilustrados used Spanish. There are millions of documents and books on the Philippines written in Spanish.

We have been immersed in the Spanish language since 1521, English made an appearance 360 years later! Let’s be realistic, for heaven’s sake! All of our teachers speak English as a foreign language not as a native one. Therefore, we use English as a foreign language. However, we can find filipinos who speak Spanish natively. Last but not least, our dialects contain thousands of Spanish borrowings or Hispanismos.

Spanish must be, by its own right, an official language of the Philippines!

1. Spanish is spoken by 15% of US citizens and GROWING.
2. Brazil, with close to 200 000 000 inhabitants, introduced Spanish into their educational system a couple of years back. In no time Brazilians will be fluent in the language, as Portuguese and Spanish are almost identical. Thus the world’s Spanish population will go from 500 000 000 to 700 000 000 by 2050.
3. Trinidad and Tobago saw clearly the trend and created a Secretariat for the Implementation of Spanish. By 2020 Spanish will be official, alongside English.
4. Filipinos can learn the language faster than English. All filipino dialects possess a dosage of Spanish borrowings; making Spanish the natural interconeccting language, not English. Believe it or not 2% of filipinos use Spanish at home natively. English is not a mother tongue in the Philippines, Spanish is and has been for four hundred centuries.

2. In the primary level of education, the state of literacy is currently WAY BELOW AVERAGE (from figures released by the Department of Education; and incidentally, you just need to go to any local primary school and observe a class for half an hour to agree) for the average Filipino child because of several factors which include an over-loaded curriculum and a dismal competency rating for majority of teachers. This with just two offerings of language mastery: Tagalog and English.

3. This state of illiteracy is carried over to the secondary level because there exists a social phenomenon wherein “concerned” parents in a local community have exerted enough of a political influence that it is an unspoken practice among primary school principals to maintain an almost 100% passing rate in the local primary school level; effectively making the primary school little more than a daycare center that turns over responsibility to the secondary school system once the child is of age.

4. Introducing a THIRD language mastery requirement is likely to exacerbate the decline of literacy; in as much as it contributes to the factor of an over-loaded curriculum.

5. There is nothing BASICALLY problematic with introducing Spanish as a required third language of mastery in primary and secondary schools; well, other than possible problems with implementation of a change as drastic as this will create and the GREAT PROBLEM OF FUNDING in terms of teacher training and production of textbooks, as well as other learning programs; of which FUNDING any Philippine legislator will tell you, we don’t currently have.

6. There is a need to address the overwhelming and more debilitating issue of increasing FUNCTIONAL LITERACY RATES with TWO language masteries before introducing a THIRD.

7. As to the issue of whether or not the general population will accept the cultural or historical significance of this proposal, I doubt if most people will see this anything more than a trivial point. Most will see it as nothing more than learning a new language, which is basically what it really is. To read more into the matter is overreaction. But the overwhelming fact of the matter is people will still oppose it because majority of decisions concerning national agenda still leans toward a essentialist meter; and introducing a third language mastery requirement is simply not one of things the Filipino child needs to be burdened with at the current state of affairs. We are a third world nation, striving to keep afloat, never forget this essential piece of information because Filipino decision makers certainly won’t.

Estoy Filipino Americano, tomé clases de español en secundaria y aprendió español con bastante facilidad. Ni siquiera sabía que existían palabras en español en tagalo, cuando yo era un niño.

Hindi ko talagang alam na ang tagalog pala ay mayrong salitang kastila. Nalaman ko lang, yun nag aral ako ng Spanish class sa America.

@Al: Your experience is very common these days. The United States -whether the people like it or not – has many job opportunities that require English-Spanish bilingual speakers. In addition, from my understanding, Brazil (the only Portuguese speaking nation in the Latin American region) is experiencing a similar situation. I just hope the Philippines and the Filipino people start understanding the importance of the Spanish language, and to separate the language from its negative “colonial” stigma to unlimited doors of opportunity.