Somebody said that she perceived that MTB-MLE in the Philippines seems to subscribe to only one language and education framework. I am including here my reply.
The MTB-MLE movement in the Philippines is multi-stranded, and we are trying our best to be inclusive. We hope to accommodate diverging advocacies and find spaces for dialogue, critique and mutual learning. Hopefully we find convergences that can help position our stand more strategically. Since we have limited resources, we try to find ways to maximize resources offered by government bodies and INGOs. In the past, we hardly received any support for language revitalization, including the development of our supposed developing national language. Fortunately, opportunities came through the Education for All discourse and the call to address the literacy crisis.
The MTB-MLE strands include include discourses on language preservation, national language formation and language for literacy.
A group of people in the MTB-MLE movement are concerned with preserving and revitalizing our indigenous languages (including scripts and indigenous knowledge). The indigenous people groups in the Philippines suffered more (compared with the major ethnic groups) from oppressive practices (our settlement schools were based on the residential school template in North America) brought by external and internal colonization. Through activism, we've had policies for indigenous people's rights. Indigenous education supports the inclusion of indigenous knowledge (including languages and indigenous learning systems) in the curriculum. Capacitating community leaders (helping contribute to indigenous people's curriculum and engage with local district officials) is a major task.
Other members in the MTB-MLE movement are concerned with the intellectualization of Filipino as an amalgam language (so that we will not need English as a common language). And the literacy and ECCD people in the movement want to build on the home languages of young children to help them learn reading more quickly and school competencies (including citizenship and second languages). It must be noted that though the current policy privileges this orientation, it also states MTB-MLE is meant to develop higher-order thinking skills and pride in one’s identity (DepEd Order 16 s.2012, Guidelines on the Implementation of MTB-MLE). One's identity is linked to one's cultural heritage like indigenous languages and scripts.
Though we have differing orientations (which sometimes lead to tensions and broken relationships), we all vehemently oppose those who say that we should discard our L1s and just focus on prestige languages. However, based on experience, our government is prone to support programs that support English and the national language and so we have to engage with them and help them see the other aspects of MTB-MLE like identity and heritage issues. We also try to build a local community-based support system in various provinces by linking with the local writers, universities, local radio/TV, etc.
