Pedro is jumping...

One day, in our linguistics class, one of our classmates was sharing to us her experience being an English teacher in public school. Well, being a teacher elsewhere is never easy, but a true educator will only taste just what virtue there is in the teaching profession if he/she gets to encounter students whose academic performance seems to be beyond salvation.

My classmate went on sharing addressing it to our lady professor. “Ma’am, what happened to the English grammar of our students today? It seems like instead of improving, I feel like, it goes on deteriorating? When I tried once to handle grammar to the grade schoolers and asked them to construct even a simple sentence out of the given verb, the sentence went like this - “Pedro is jumping”. Now I have been handling grammar still but this time, I handle high schoolers and when I would ask them to write a sentence, I still read the same sentence as “Pedro is jumping”. And then here’s the funny one, out my desperation I asked them,”Class, wala ba na gikapoy si Pedro ug ambak? Murag elementary pa man mo ana nga sentence hangtud karon high school na mo gaambak-ambak gihapon si Pedro?!!(Class, is Pedro not yet tired of jumping? Ever since you were in elementary I read the same sentence from you. And now you’re in high school, you think Pedro never gets tired of jumping?!!!).

Everybody in our class laughed. We all laughed over the reality..and its sad.The poor English performance of the students especially in the remote or public schools is truly happening. Until now, we have been trying to figure out just what is really wrong with our educational system nowadays. We made research and assumption on the possible causes of the students’ poor performance esp. in English, like maybe the teacher is ineffective, or maybe its poverty when the student would go to school and yet could hardly concentrate or comprehend with the lesson because he/she must have gone to school while her/his stomach is empty, or maybe they lack vitamins, lack support from their families or maybe the school facilities are insufficient. There are many factors to consider but we still cannot find a definite fact or bases to finally put conclusion on this issue.

Now, I advice not only the schooled ones but even the out of school to make reading a habit because it will really help. Not all who can speak English well have finished college, because not everyone of us can afford to finish education, knowing how commercialized education has become at present. And so I suggest that let learning be in our inner selves’ motivation. Learning doesn’t end in school. True that sometimes we need encouragement and motivations from any concern people, but still ours is the last option. We are ourselves’ own great teachers. We are born with “free will” and not having time or busyness is never an excuse.

Well, we don't have to be grammar expert in a sense, I am not! English is not our native tongue. But somehow its good that we have knowledge about today's medium of instruction which is the English language.