CAROL GRACE S. CASULLA
T-III at Padre Burgos Central School

Let MTB Be Heard

“Her voice is world class thus her voice deserves to be heard all over the world.” states Sarah Geronimo as they recently concluded the successful second season of the Voice Kids Philippines which garnered a 34.5 % rating in the television viewership (AGB Nielsen 2015) .The show features three coaches that will judge a singing hopeful with only their vocal talent without prejudice to their physical bearing in the so called blind audition round. Then the battles, sing-offs and the live shows will follow where a grand winner is determined.

Certainly, the way up takes a lot of talent and determination in order for a voice kid contestant to go home triumphant which can be the same hurdles that the Mother Tongue Based (MTB) had undergone. In its first year of institutionalization, resistance from the parents, teachers and stakeholders sector rises due to the confusion of its content and purpose in the educative process. Different interpretation of the process in MTB implementation brought chaos and arguments in school in claiming what is right and wrong.

Presently, we could say that we are still groping in the dark but let us give MTB implementation a chance because according to research the research of Jim Cummins,who is a professor in the University of , children who are exposed to mother tongues tend to develop better thinking skills. It is this push for MTB as language of education which has passed a new challenge to existing configuration in the educational platform which supported Nelson Mandela’s, first president of South Africa, claims that ”If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”