REPRESENTATIVES Lord Allan Jay Velasco and John Marvin Nieto filed a measure that seeks to promote indigenous and traditional writing systems.

In filing House Bill 10469 or the proposed Philippine Indigenous and Traditional Writing Systems Act, the two lawmakers said that a strong national identity is the true mark of a nation that has established a connection to its heritage, culture, and history.

House Bill 10469 mandates the Department of Education and the Commission on Higher Education to include indigenous and traditional writing systems in the curricula in basic and higher education and to create an elective or specialized course in higher education.

The measure also seeks the creation of activities that promote awareness of writing systems.

“First-world and advanced countries have successfully built their own national identities and these identities have influenced their social structures, such as the form of their governments, their culture, their heritage, their lifestyles and their values,” the two congressmen said in their explanatory note.

They lamented that many Filipinos appear to have forgotten or lost the values and beliefs of their true national identity.

“It is time for our country to revisit our past through one of its cultural remnants, our traditional/indigenous writing systems, including the pre-colonial writing system called Baybayin,” they added.