Wowowee...eek.

While I was visiting my sister and her family in Seattle, Washington a few months ago, I got to play with the baby and princess of the house, little Tam Tam a lot.

Then I watched children's shows that she watched (Dora Dora, and a thousand other baby shows featuring songs and the alphabets, not just Sesame Street stuff anymore).

Then I saw Wowowee. Then, I saw thousands of girls (babes) dancing and doing the "giling giling." And I asked my sister, Tam Tam's Lola, "why do you have TFC?" To which she replied, " so she could learn Tagalog."

My three nephews, all born and raised in the U.S.A, understand Tagalog. Their parents spoke to them in Tagalog so they could learn the Philippine national language. So you speak in Tagalog and they answer in English.

Whenever they visited the Philippines, their cousins spoke to them in both Tagalog and English and they understood and no merchant in Escolta or Santa Cruz could sell the Jones Bridge to them.

There was even a time in their pre-adult years that they enrolled in formal Tagalog classes back home to improve their facility in the language of their parents.

Second generation Pinoys in the US and Canada often do not speak Tagalog or the dialect of their old folks anymore. Unlike the Chinese or the Spanish people. Chinese and Spanish kids speak fluent Mandarin or Cantonese and Espanol.

So now, Tam Tam's parents would want to change that. They want her to understand and to speak beautiful Tagalog. Funny, because in Manila, parents pay a lot of money and enroll their kids in private schools so they could learn flawless Philippine English.

Back to Wowowee. " What is that? " was my next question to little Tam Tam who could unfortunately not yet answer me back.

How could a show devote six hours (??) in intro to gyrations and laughter? And to singing and theatrical segments and contests that seem to insult not just the contestants themselves, but the viewers.

I hope the TFC channel and now, GMA cable, would have included sane children's educational shows in their programming. First generation Pinoy immigrants want their children to speak their native language, but because of limited time with the kids at home, the learning process is not simple; so they need additional resources to reinforce the learning process.

The children in North America get exposed to the school system and mass media earlier and since the pre-school kids are often left in day care centres (and not maids nor Lolo and Lola back home), there simply is not much time for them to absorb and learn Tagalog.