SENATOR Sherwin Gatchalian on Monday questioned the use of 19 dialects as medium of instruction under the Mother-Tongue Based Multilingual Education program, saying it disregarded other dialects.

As the Committee on Basic Education held its third public hearing on the implementation of the MTB-MLE program under the K to 12 Act, Gatchalian said the “flawed” selection of the Department of Education excluded other widely used dialects and the non-disaggregation of languages.

“It’s what’s convenient for us, the government. Because we all know, that implementing the 184 languages…is impossible. It’s convenient for us, not convenient for the learners,” he said.

“But if you are going to implement a true, learner-centered approach, then we have to stay true to the mother tongue,” he added.

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel III sought clarification from the DepEd on how the program is being implemented in areas that are linguistically diverse.

Pimentel asked Rosalina Villaneza, DepEd chief Education Program Specialist, how they would address a situation in which five students could understand English while the rest of the class could not.

Villaneza told the panel that DepEd has policies that could address the situation, including the use of the lingua franca, or the language widely spoken in the community.

“We have policy options on how to do it, but the last option, in case there is really diversity, is to resort to the language of the community or ‘lingua franca.’ I think that is better than alienating the kids in the classroom,” she said.