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MANILA, Philippines — A progressive teacher’s group on Friday urged President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. to make Filipino the language of instruction instead of English.

The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) chairperson Vladimer Quetua made the call after Marcos said in his inaugural address that English should be the medium of instruction in schools.

READ: Bongbong Marcos vows reform in PH education: Not in history but in sciences, vocational skills

“Language barrier is a basic reason why the Philippines lag behind and our students are at a disadvantage in these tests,” Quetua said, referring to international assessments like the Program for International Student Assessment (Pisa) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).

The Philippines ranked last in Pisa’s 2018 assessment and the TIMSS study conducted in 2020.

Quetua noted that the countries that usually lead on these assessments use their native language as a medium of instruction.

“That is why learning is well facilitated, and they perform better in the tests which were conducted in their own languages,” Quetua noted.

The Philippines, on the other hand, the assessment is usually done in English, which Quetua called an “impediment.”

“This is a big impediment to student learning because they have to master the English language first before they can learn science and math concepts,” he said.

“In the classroom, they also cannot freely express themselves because English is not their vernacular,” he continued. “This dilemma also clips their ability for critical thinking and in formulating arguments.”

RELATED STORY: DepEd urged to reinforce English as medium of instruction

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British Prime Minister Winston Churchill asked U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower to suppress a British royal’s desire for peace with Adolf Hitler, newly published papers reveal.

A secret memo sent from Churchill to Eisenhower in 1953, now published under British transparency rules, details the existence of documents noting that in 1936, after his abdication from the British throne, the former King Edward VIII was a supporter of a peace deal between Britain and Germany, Bloomberg reported.

Churchill wrote to Eisenhower to inform him that telegrams outlining this opinion and its outcome still existed.

“He is convinced that had he remained on throne, war would have been avoided and describes himself as [a] firm supporter of a peaceful compromise with Germany,” read one of the telegrams from July 1940 from Lisbon in neutral Portugal, where the former king, by that point known as the Duke of Windsor, was staying. “Duke believes with certainty that continued heavy bombing will make England ready for peace.”

After finding out about the duke’s views, Hitler’s foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, made plans to use the information to his advantage. He asked the Spanish government—neutral but Nazi-sympathetic—to ensure the royal couple returned to Spain. He then planned to offer “the granting of any wish,” to the Duke up to “the ascension of the English throne.”

There then followed a game of cat and mouse, as Churchill sought to extract the duke from Europe, appointing him governor of the Bahamas, while the Nazis sought to keep him in Spain, via kidnapping if necessary. In the event, the Nazis failed.

When the telegrams revealing this information were discovered after the war, Churchill and his successor as prime minister, Clement Attlee, agreed they should remain secret. But Attlee subsequently changed his mind, and Churchill learned that American historians planned to publish them.

Churchill wrote to Eisenhower to inform him of this and express his concern that the documents “might leave the impression that the duke was in close touch with German agents and was listening to suggestions that were disloyal.”

The men were unable to prevent the documents from emerging; they were eventually published in 1957.

Updated | A British teenager managed to obtain access to sensitive U.S. plans about intelligence operations in different Middle East countries by acting as former CIA Director John Brennan, a court heard on Friday.

Kane Gamble, 18, researched Brennan and used the information he gathered to speak to an internet company and persuade call handlers to give him access to the spy chief’s email inbox in 2015.

He pretended to be both a Verizon employee and Brennan to access Brennan’s internet account.

Astonishingly, Gamble managed to gain access to Brennan’s emails and his address book, as well as his iCloud storage. He even managed to remotely access the iPad of Brennan’s wife.

Initially, he could not get into Brennan’s accounts as he could not recall the name of the spy chief’s first pet. But he managed to persuade a call handler to change the pin and security questions he needed to access the email account in question, Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported .

“He accessed some extremely sensitive accounts referring to, among other things, military operations and intelligence operations in Afghanistan and Iran,” prosecutor John Lloyd-Jones QC said.

Gamble, age 15 at the time, also persuaded a help desk at the FBI that he was Mark Giuliano, who was then deputy director.

This all happened from Gamble’s bedroom in the English Midlands. It raises the question, If a teenager from Britain can breach the highest levels of U.S. intelligence, why can’t an intelligence operative of a rival power?

Gamble’s motive, the court heard, was that he hated the U.S. government for being, he perceived, “corrupt and cold-blooded.”

He also targeted the online presence of then U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson and President Barack Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

In October 2017, Gamble pleaded guilty to 10 charges, including eight charges of “performing a function with intent to secure unauthorized access” to the computers and two of “unauthorized modification of computer material.”

Correction: A previous version of this story said the plans in question were “top secret.” It’s not clear what level of classification they were.