Problems Pilipino teachers in public and private secondary schools in the city of Baguio

Abstract

Language is primarily a phenomenon of sounds; secondarily, it is a system of written symbols. Pilipino is a language taught by hearing, speaking, reading, and writing. Grammar and literature occupy the bulk of its teaching and learning. Since language skills and habits are tremendously complex, the teaching and learning of Pilipino accrued fundamental problems needing immediate solutions. This study was undertaken to possibly determine the problems of Filipino teachers in the secondary schools of Baguio City. With the conglomeration of problems, the teacher respondents clearly indicated their desire to uplift the lagging status of Pilipino, especially in the North where a variety of dialects supersede Tagalog. This study included ten secondary schools public and private; it involved 42 teachers and ten school principal respondees. The schools were all located within the city. Inasmuch as the study called for a statistical denomination, the normative-survey method was extensively employed. For the gathering of data, the questionnaire and interview methods were used. The different school respondents were given copies of the said questionnaire for administration to teachers. The responses to the question¬naire were tabulated, analyzed and recorded in tables. These questions were sorted in order to determine what problems the teachers and the schools had and which dif¬ficulties constituted the learner’; those with direct bearing with the study were further confirmed through personal interviews, and the rest without any significance were jettisoned to delimit the study's scope. The problems encountered in the teaching-learning of Pilipino were subdivided to include the learner, the teacher and the administrator; curriculum, the availability of materials, and the community where the schools were located, were grouped as secondary problems. In the course of the investigation, the following findings were instituted: 1. Of the ten principals covered by the study, three or 30 percent were Pilipino majors while one or ten percent was minor in the subject. This proved that Pilipino was not far behind in categorical importance to that of the other disciplines. 2. Assuming that each teacher taught the minimum load, an average of 210 students per teacher was extant. Since this was a language subject, there was a need for a maximum preparation on the part of the teachers in order to cope up with school works and responsibilities, maintaining at the same time professional growth through in service training and further specialization. 3. The average size of Pilipino classes has been justified by the existence of a scarce supply of Pilipino teachers. The biggest class size was found in the Second Year in most of the school respondents. The other curri¬cular years had minimal number of class sizes. 4. The ten schools responded quite well in the uniformity of books used in the teaching of Pilipino gram¬mar and literature. There prevailed somehow a variety of use of the approved texts. The common materials employed were variously considered as textbook, supplementary, and reference. As seen from the figures, a continuity of curricular offerings was observed by the school respondees. 5. As to the number of compositions, formal and informal, all schools complied with the required number of six themes and a number of others as formal and informal respectively. 6. Most of the schools had supplementary or addi¬tional curriculum materials available in their libraries and reading rooms.7. The school respondees were in substantial agree¬ment on the necessity of evaluating students' performance through examinations recitations, and other evaluative tools or tests and measurements. 8. The presence of a Pilipino section in some school papers and the participation in Pilipino sponsored contests afforded students and teachers alike an opportunity to pool their store of common knowledge in the upliftment of Pilipino. 9. Most of the schools commented on the non-popular¬ity of Pilipino in the region. This was due to the great influence of regional dialects which directly hampered a progressive development of Pilipino. 10. One apparent cause of the setback in the teach¬ing and learning of Pilipino was the administrator's side. Some of the schools were administered by foreigners who just gave a nodding interest on supervision of Pilipino classes; they were more interested in the intensification of the arts and sciences. 11. On the socio-physical aspect of the study, the foremost problem encountered was the indifference of students who were mostly non-Tagalog. Many students considered Filipino only as an additional subject to the secondary curriculum. The teaching aids or audio-visual materials employed by the different schools were few and below modern standards compared with those of other subjects, particularly those dealing with scientific researches, Hence Pilipino was always obstructed by multiple problems each one permissive enough to require a full scare solution.