Yahoo reports that more Filipinos have a chance to learn the language of sharp thinking, elegant expression and casual sophistication. And even to dress better.

The DepEd has renewed a partnership with the French embassy to teach French for 4 years as a second foreign language and an elective in high schools. So far 1,500 students in public high schools have benefitted. Brother Armin Luistro correctly observes that French will give Filipinos the language facility to access European civilization, which is French, and Europeans access to Asia through French-speaking Filipinos who are American if short. This can only be mutually enriching.

This exchange will not only enrich our culture but finally give us one. It will renew our contact with the civilization in which our heroes were raised, preeminently Jose Rizal. The 100th anniversary of Rizal's reburial in Luneta will be reenacted on Dec 30. No one knows who will play the role of his remains. I have someone in mind who is inert but i won't give his name.

While we rightly look to America for guidance in our democracy, both what to adopt and what to reject, French will open a whole other way of looking at the world, not in black and white, but in some 50 shades of gray. And the French do it better anyway.

Keep well.