Talk of the Town: Rethinking creative thinking

Comment on “Rethinking creative thinking,” (Question The Box by Inez Ponce de leon, 6/26/24) via https://opinion.inquirer.net:

Let’s make it simpler, how do we think? Our thought process, thinking, is through language and “cultural tools” such as music and math symbols, arts and science images. This is “inner speech,” the brain’s equivalent of spoken language.

The Pisa 2018 test results already suggested the problem with Filipinos; 94 percent of the students who took the tests speak Filipino, the national language, and/or a local language or mother tongue. But they took the tests in English, a foreign language they don’t fully understand, it’s not their “inner speech” which is Filipino.

To illustrate the problem, reminds me of when I worked in Thailand (early ‘90s) and an Australian colleague asked me: “How come when I ask you, you answer right away but Thais take some time, there is a significant lag?” Without missing a beat, I told him, because my thought process is in English; the Thais’ thought process is in their language—they translate English to Thai first to understand it, then the “inner speech” is re-translated to spoken English. Of course, if I am talking to a fellow Filipino, my inner speech is in Filipino.

It is first and foremost a language problem that is why Filipinos do not learn science, math, creativity/critical thinking, and have low reading comprehension, failing local and international tests miserably. A SWS survey proves that most Filipino students, 88 percent, prefer Filipino as the medium of instruction.