From Kabataan Partylist: As the country celebrates “Buwan ng Wika” this month, Kabataan Party-list Rep. Raymond “Mong” Palatino today filed House Resolution no. 1567 which seeks to investigate the various means and modes employed by schools to promote the use of English by penalizing students for speaking in Filipino and other native languages.

“Our country has a rich collection of languages that should be preserved. We recognize the use of English in today’s world. But our country’s attempt to integrate in this globalized community of English tongues should not be done at the expense of our vernaculars. Penalizing students for speaking their native language in schools is a crime to our culture and it should be stopped,” Palatino said.

Palatino said that the country has around 150 languages that are suppressed by the “misdirected valorization” of the English language.