Press Release
February 14, 2009

Gordon supports revival of Spanish lessons in schools

Independent Senator Richard J. Gordon today said he supports the Department of Education's (DepEd) plan to revive Spanish lessons in public high schools to enhance the linguistic capabilities of students.

Gordon said offering foreign language lessons in the school curriculum would help students become more globally competitive and would add to their qualifications once they start searching for employment.

"Teaching our students a third language would allow them to become more competitive in a global workplace. It also adds to their self-confidence because they would be able to communicate well with other nationalities," he said.

DepEd recently announced that it would revive Spanish lessons in selected public high schools to better prepare students in communicating a widely-used second language.

While Gordon supports the proposal, he said that it is better to offer other foreign languages as well, such as French and Mandarin, which are also widely used in the international community.

He added that the program should not be selective and must include all public high schools. He noted that lack of funds could be the reason that the program could not be implemented in all public schools.

According to DepEd, part of the criteria for the selection of schools that would be included in the program is the availability of substitute teachers who will take over the classes of foreign language teachers while on training.

Furthermore, the schools will be selected based on the availability of classrooms and support facilities and equipment like computer laboratory with at least ten computers and headsets to support speech lessons.

"Our current public school system lacks at least 12,000 classrooms and 39,000 teachers. It is no wonder that this program could only be available to some public schools in the country," Gordon said.

The senator said his text-for-change bill could exactly be the solution to these problems in the country's educational system if it is enacted into law.

He explained that Senate Bill 2402, the Heath and Education Acceleration Program (HEAP) Corporation, would spearhead the rehabilitation of education and health infrastructures in the country.

Aside from filling the gaps in education and health infrastructures, HEAP could fund programs such as the inclusion of foreign language lessons in public schools.

Gordon said his proposal seeks to tap at least 10 percent of the total net revenue from all mobile phone text messages sent from the networks of domestic mobile phone service providers.

"There are approximately two billion text messages sent a day. If we get 10 percent, that would be P200 million a day or P73 billion a year. That is more than enough to fill all the gaps in health and education infrastructure in just a year's time," he said.

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