Another Look At Languages In The Philippines (Updated)
English Remains The Only Hope Of The Philippines
This refers to Isabel Pefianco Martin's commentary titled "Myths about languages in the Philippines." (Inquirer, 3/1/08) It is an example of why I fear the Philippines will never be a successful country. Her denial of the scandal and tragedy of education in the Philippines is profound and pathetic.
According to the education secretary, 80 percent of secondary school teachers in the Philippines failed an English proficiency test last year. I closed my call center here. Filipinos have much worse English than their Indian counterparts. Not even 3 percent of the students who graduate college here are employable in call centers. Trust me, all of us are leaving for China.
The Philippines has a terrible talent shortage, and the government and the press are in denial. Martin does not get it. English is the only thing that can save the country, and no one here cares or even understands that the Filipinos have a crisis. For now, English is the dominant language in business, not Ilocano, Visayan or Tagalog. The poor English, coupled with the ala mañana work ethic here, bodes poorly for any bright future for the Philippines.
When Marcos was kicked out, so was English, and you have not brought it back yet. You must, or you will never have more than 250,000 call center seats, and you will lose all BPO and call center business and all these jobs to China within five years.
It is sad that the Philippine Daily Inquirer published such a terrible article.
I love the Philippines, but as an American and a businessman, I am one of the thousands leaving here.
Good luck to the Inquirer. It needs to reevaluate its writers, unless it supports such a misguided set of ideas.
God save the Philippines. I hate to see the country falling ever deeper into an English-deprived abyss.--RUSS SANDLIN, via e-mail
Update: The Bibliophile Stalker weighs in with this essay, and this one.
posted by pgenrestories at 10:43 AM
9 Comments:
Sorry po, this kind of ran on. The subject is near and dear to me.
I hope I'll also be allowed to wonder about this Russ Sandlin fellow - is this really an American businessman writing about the failure of his business in the Philippines? To be honest, it sounds a lot like a Filipino who's hiding behind a false identity (albeit that of a real person who appeared to have been happy with the philippine workforce) just to seem more authoritative. This may be the same man, of course, but considering this video was posted just three months ago, and now he's off talking about "talent shortage" in his letter... I'm inclined to doubt it.
I personally think it's time we stopped blaming the language of instruction and turned a more critical eye on the quality of education our children are receiving. I believe that even if you use Filipino/Cebuano/Ilocano/another native language as the medium of instruction in your school, you CAN have children who are eager to study, and consequently an intelligent and globally competitive workforce. Instill a sense of community, respect for cultural differences, and open-mindedness in your children, and you've pretty much done your job as educators.
Not all Filipinos need to learn english, but we all need to be able to communicate with each other, and easily parse complex ideas and theories. And how exactly do we do that? I say it's by translating complicated ideas into easily understandable terms, in local languages.
If Taglish or any other hybrid language is necessary to interpret ideas that cannot be easily translated, then by all means employ them. But see, if you, as an educator, don't put emphasis on the need to communicate effectively in one language or another, you're perpetuating the view that a child doesn't need to understand anything intimately. Why worry about the local setting, why waste time trying to understand how a concept like perfect grammar is significant to you and the ones around you, when your ultimate goal is to endear yourself to an international market anyway?
If you are an educator, or even a parent, who believes in this, ask yourself: what kind of children are you bringing to the global workforce? You have students with a half-baked understanding of complicated concepts, filled with ideas that are routinely memorized without being thoroughly understood. You are contributing to the creation of a workforce that is unoriginal and uncreative. And just by looking at our textbooks and our assessment exams, it is obvious that this sort of half-assed training starts as early as grade school!
We don't have good call center workers because we don't have good workers, PERIOD. We're too focused on mass-producing people to fill a variety of demands, without caring about the quality of training they receive. I'm sorry for the businesspeople who believe any country is a gold mine of outsourcing services, without being willing to invest time and money in intensive training. In addition to having a good grasp of the treacherous nature of offshore outsourcing, they should also have a realistic idea of the environment their workers have to operate in.
For the record, the Indians are steadily moving on to KPO (knowledge process outsourcing, which deals in services like aerodynamic engineering, legal consultancy, and high-end animation) while we Filipinos are still struggling with BPO (business process outsourcing - call center positions, low-end coding jobs, data conversion, indexing, and storage, etc). However, even the Indians went through - and are still in a way struggling with - the BPO phase. It takes time and lots of crucial mistakes for a nation's workforce to become established in the global English-speaking market.
The real question is: what are we Filipinos doing with our experience? Are we improving our workforce? Are we making smarter, more creative, more ambitious workers? India sure is. And they're sure not doing it by telling their workers it's uncompetitive to be Indian.
If people need to learn how to speak proper English (honestly just one of the many core skills we need to develop in order to be true "global" workers) we need to be able to provide them first and foremost with proper learning materials. We don't just foist our grade school teachers and prospective employees onto call center training outfits and expect them to hurry up and become experts, because mastering a language - and developing a fast learning curve, for that matter - starts at a very young age.
Clearly, it IS possible to master English and one's native language at the same time. The "trick" is in having easy access to good learning materials. And in reforming the educational system in order to develop not just export-quality labor, but world-class workers.
Above all, it's in not giving up on who you are and what you have to offer.
(Sir Kenneth, if I may - I'd just like to share for posterity some links on the ROD blog that may be relevant to this discussion. I've also commented on some of these entries:
• “Nagbabasa Ka Ba?” (Virgilio Almario: Keynote Speech at RodCon 1, February 3 2007)
• Re: Nagbabasa Ka Ba?
• The Republic of One Hundred Languages (1/2)
• The republic of one hundred languages (2/2)
• React or Die (1))
Hi, Bhex. How are you?
No problem with your long comment. I understand your need to express what you think and feel for this subject that is close to your heart. You raise your points quite strongly.
I encourage all PGS blog readers to go through Bhex's comment (as well as those of Ms. Martin and Mr. Sandlin), to think about it, to make up their own minds, and most importantly, to take action and do something positive, productive, and constructive for yourselves, your families, and for the community, within the small spheres that you live in and have control of.
That's really the process we all should take in our everyday decisions, don't you think?
it seems "strong phrasing" is something i'm starting to be known for XD;
ah! and, thanks for posting "russ sandlin"'s comment, sir kenneth. i missed it in today's inquirer. it's quite informative.
You're welcome, Bhex. And thanks for posting your ideas and opinions. No matter what other people say about your "strong phrasing", I assure you I like it. It's the same way I like my coffee sometimes. :) It's nice to know there's someone saying things definitively.
You know, the more I read, and re-read what's been written, the more I go through the links, including the video, the more I encourage PGS readers to do the same.
Si Bhex talaga, magaling mag-raise ng suspicions. The letter doesn't feel like the way the American talks on the video, not completely. I'm beginning to feel like Bhexabout the veracity of the email...but, since there's no concrete evidence, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and that this is the real Russ Sandlin writing.
I also encourage PGS readers to visit ground zero of this whole thing, Dogberry's blogpost, The Philippines Is A Multilingual Paradise (the link is in the first paragraph of the post). There are points raised there by a number of his site's visitors.
And as I wrote in the PGS mirror site on multiply (pgenrestories.multiply.com), in the comments section:
"It just struck me, just right now as I'm typing this, that the Japanese and Koreans don't use English as their medium of instruction, and yet, their countries have strong, industrial economies."
hi sir kenneth. i just reread my comment now and uh, holy crap XD; i tend to go on and on so i don't notice when i make mistakes like this:
We don't have good call center workers because we don't have good workers, PERIOD.
i don't know how this sentence got in there. as a matter of fact, most filipino call center agents are already world-class and prized by offshore investors. a lot of applicants may fail to make the cut, but the ones who do are really good at their jobs.
one of the reasons i can't really trust this "sandlin" guy is that i'm confident the philippines is still an especially desirable location for contact center services. heck, when i was overseas i heard about telecom new zealand's plans to outsource their directory services to the philippines. it was a big thing there, for obvious reasons, but it's still going to happen this year.
the real problem is that only 5-10 out of 100 applicants are hired. however, this condition is not unique to the philippines. india and china suffer it too. cultural differences make it extremely difficult for people who are not native english speakers to be suited for call center work - it's the nature of the beast. intensive training for qualified people is a must.
Bhex, the ratio might be the same with other call center outsourcing countries but the problem is that said countries are supposedly getting more applicants because they have a larger population. (i.e. 1,000 Filipinos apply but in China, 10,000 Chinese apply; you end up with 50-100 agents in the former and 500-1000 agents in the latter; this is a fabricated statistic).
Hi Bhex, Charles.
Though I'm still giving this Russ Sandlin the benefit of the doubt, the suspicions you raised make me wonder if it was really him writing those things. If it wasn't him, then it really shoots that letter down.
Thanks again for sharing more of your insights. To repeat what I said above, I invite the both of you, and everyone else, to also visit and comment on the PGS mirror site at Multiply (pgenrestories.multiply.com) because there are active commenters there too, with strong opinions of their own.
Hmm...maybe I should make an announcement in a blogpost.
TY again!
I still think English is important. The Pinoy agent is the best in the world for sure, as measured in Customer Satisfaction. The people I have worked with here are so awesome. The only problem is finding them... only 2 or 3 out of every 100 have the English needed. The wages are spiraling upward also, as the Dollar is in free fall. I love the Philippines, and I think it will continue to be a great destination, but I pray the education system improves so more can find jobs and so the Philippines can get more ITO and KPO work and move away from the low end, low wage BPO Contact Center work. Thanks for all the comments, and sorry for my earlier provocative tone. -Russ Sandlin... and yes I am American.
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