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At the same time, counter-claims are made regarding convergence between traditional
‘Asian’ values and those associated with ESD/GCED. Amartya Sen’s work constitutes one
instance of this. Another is the cultural theory of Virgilio Enriquez (1992), which may be
used to explain how ESD/GCED aligns with traditional Filipino perspectives. Enriquez
pointed to the connectedness between the self and others which shapes a humanistic,
accommodational Filipino worldview and an action-oriented form of global citizenship.
A number of traditional terms may be linked to ESD/GCED, namely kapwa (the unity of
self and others), pakikipagkapwa (treating people as equals), pakikiramdam (sensitivity to
others’ feelings), and pakikibaka (joining a struggle). However, it should also be noted that
these are mostly terms derived from Tagalog culture and language — the biggest ethnolinguistic
group at 25 per cent of the Philippine population (PSA, 2012 cited in McEachern,
2013, p. 50) — which risks ignoring the socio-cultural diversity in Filipino society. This
should be taken into account when applying Enriquez’s value structure to other Asian
countries that are also characterized by a broad spectrum of differences, diversity and
ethnic and cultural pluralism.
The situation in Singapore and Malaysia is rather different. Here, instruction
in ‘mother tongue languages’ (MTLs) — those of key minorities included — is
widespread, at least at primary level. The Ministry of Education in Singapore
espouses the aim of providing greater flexibility in the teaching and learning
of MTLs in order to ‘help students with different abilities to go as far as they
can.’ However, the practice of effectively segregating the population into
discrete ethnic silos, already noted in the case of Singapore, extends to language
education, with few students of the majority ethnic group studying languages of
other ethnic groups. Instead, the typical pattern in these countries is for most
students to study their mother tongue plus English. Minority students in Malaysia
and Indonesia typically also study Malay or Bahasa Indonesia, but this places an
additional academic burden on such students which their counterparts from the
majority or ‘core‘ linguistic community do not share.
The cases of Malaysia and Singapore also highlight the complex linguistic legacies
of colonialism, particularly with respect to the role of English not just as a foreign
language, but as a domestic lingua franca. 66 In the Philippines, an Anglophone
former colony with around 170 indigenous languages, medium of instruction in
schools has been a focus of prolonged and intense controversy. A 2003 decree
mandating English as the medium of instruction at all levels of education (a move
favoured by many business groups) was overturned in 2012, to be replaced by a
law requiring schools to offer instruction in multiple indigenous mother tongues,
as well as Tagalog and English. As a result, the Philippines curriculum now tasks
schools with offering ‘mother tongue-based multilingual education’ (MTB-MLE) 67
65 See http://www.internationalhumanrightslexicon.org/hrdoc/docs/bangkokNGO.pdf.
66 The case of Indonesia is rather different, since Dutch-medium schooling for indigenous
children during the colonial era was almost non-existent; the role of Dutch in Indonesian
public life (and education) therefore extended little beyond the end of formal colonisation (on
Sukarno’s experience, see Rush, 2014).
67 See Republic Act No. 10533 or Enhanced Basic Education Act.
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