A visibly irked Pasig City lone district Rep. Roman Romulo lectured a resource person who cut him mid-sentence during a hearing a committee hearing on the proposed suspension of the implementation of the use of the mother tongue in teaching Filipino children.

Romulo, the chairperson of the House Committee on Basic Education and Culture, did not try to hide his disappointment at being cut off by retired University of the Philippines (UP) linguistics professor Dr. Ricardo Nolasco.

“Ayaw mong pumayag, ayaw mong makinig (You don’t want to agree, you don’t want to listen), Dr. Nolasco,” the lawmaker said.

Romula berated Nolasco for not listening to the lawmakers while they “have no problem” hearing him out.

“Wag naman habang nagsasalita kami ay biglang ika-cut mo kami. Hindi naman po tama yan . . . Okay lang po ba magresputahan tayo? Nagsasalita kami, makikinig ka, ikaw naman makikinig din kami (Don’t cut us off while we are talking. That’s not right . . . Is it okay if we respect each other? When we talk, you listen. When you talk, we will listen),” the lawmaker told him.

Romulo’s House Bill (HB) 2188 and Baguio City Rep. Mark Go’s HB 3925 aimed to suspend the implementation of the mother tongue as the medium of instruction for students in Kindergarten to Grade 3.

This is in line with the Department of Education’s (DepEd) Mother Tongue Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) policy.

During the House panel’s 5th regular committee meeting, Nolasco argued that the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), an international assessment exam, showed that non-English speakers at home did better in tests than those who spoke English at home.

Nolasco, lead proponent of MTB-MLE, even pointed out that the country needs to study why the data showed that non-English speakers at home are at an advantage in international exams.

But Romulo noted that he did not see the same result Nolasco cited and that he has to ask DepEd for confirmation.

At the start of the hearing, the lawmaker explained why he filed HB 2188.

“The reason why I filed HB 2188 is that I value our dialects, our mother tongue but my point is unless the DepEd is prepared to implement mother tongue it may not be of good service to our students,” he said.

“My reason under bill is first, the school mapping must be done by the Department of Education to be able to identify all the dialects spoken in the different schools and to make sure that all the teachers are properly upscaled with the different dialects and for learning materials to be present,” Romulo added.

Go, for his part, questioned Nolasco’s claim that his assessment of the use of English at home and its effects on international test results is historical.

He argued that the Philippines had not regularly joined the PISA exam.

“In my bill, I proposed to suspend the implementaton of the mother tongue policy while the Edcom 2 (Second Congressional Commission on Education) conducts a comprehensive devaluation and assessment of said policy,” Go said of HB 3925.

The two lawmakers also stated that President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. had emphasized his stand on the use of English language as the country’s medium of instruction.