A ‘New’ Politics of Language in the Philippines: Bilingual Education and the New Challenge of the Mother Tongues

Abstract

The Bilingual Education Program of the Philippines (BEP), where English is the medium of instruction in Science and Mathematics and Pilipino or Filipino, the national language, in all other subjects, has been recognized as one of the earliest comprehensive bilingual education experiments in the world. The BEP was institutionalized in 1974 and since then, it has been the broad framework of the educational system in the country. Prior to 1974, English had been practically the sole medium of instruction in the Philippines since 1901 when the public education system was put in place by the Americans.