Note 5 — Chapter XXVII · The Philippine Legislature

Assembly Bill 148 provided for the teaching of the local native dialects in the public schools. This would have had the effect of doing away with the teaching of English, or preventing its inauguration, in many places; would have emphasized and perpetuated the different native dialects; would have helped to keep the people speaking these several dialects apart, and would thus seriously have hampered progress toward national unity. One of the most important and useful things that the American government is doing is to generalize the knowledge of the English language, which not only gives the several peoples of the archipelago a common means of communication, but opens up new fields of knowledge to them and makes it easy for them to travel. Even during the days of the Filipino “republic” Mabini advocated making English the official language.5