Lawmaker calls for learning of Mandarin in English-centric Philippine schools

Congress Minority Leader Marcelino Libanan said learning Mandarin at an early age would double the edge Filipino workers have from their fluency in English. - AFP

MANILA, Feb 12 (The Straits Times/ANN): A lawmaker in the Philippines is pushing for measures that will promote the learning of Mandarin among Filipino students to make them more attractive to employers abroad.

“We already have the edge because our workers can speak English. We should now aspire to double that advantage by encouraging more Filipinos to learn Mandarin at an early age,” said Representative Marcelino Libanan in a Facebook post on Sunday.

Libanan, the minority leader in Congress, said primary and secondary schools should form Mandarin-language student clubs.

“We already have many young learners from Filipino-Chinese families who speak Mandarin. They can help put up Mandarin clubs in their schools,” he said.

State-run schools, meanwhile, can offer Mandarin as part of their foreign language programmes, he said.

Libanan is pushing the learning of Mandarin in Filipino schools, even as Congress is tackling a Bill that seeks to drop the use of Filipino – the mother tongue – as a medium of instruction for Filipino students in kindergarten till Grade 3 in favour of English.

Wilson Lee Flores, a writer and businessman who has been curating the experiences of Chinese migrants in the Philippines, told The Straits Times: “The idea is long overdue. We are actually already late in Asia.”

He said South Koreans now make up the largest number of foreign students learning Mandarin in Beijing and Shanghai.

“It’s very important for international business. China, whether we like it or not, is on its way to becoming the largest economy in the world... We should benefit from the rise of China and learn Mandarin so we can do a lot of business with the Chinese,” he said.

Mr Flores added that the Philippines would have an edge over other tourist destinations like Thailand if its service workers are fluent in Mandarin.

The tourism ministry expects some five million Chinese to visit the Philippines in 2023.

Surveys, though, continue to reflect a continuing distrust among Filipinos towards China. Three in five Filipinos said in a poll in mid-2022 that they have “not too much trust” or “no trust at all” in China.

Most Filipinos still lean towards the United States, which colonised the Philippines for close to five decades, and side with the Americans over issues involving conflicts between Washington and Beijing.

Tensions between the Philippines and China over border conflicts in the South China Sea have also made Filipinos wary of Beijing’s interests.

But Mr Flores believes learning Mandarin would give Filipinos a “balanced perspective”.

“We are too Americanised,” he said. “We fear what we don’t understand.” - The Straits Times/ANN