The 50-year revolution of Philippine education from preschool to professional high school

Operation Brotherhood Montessori Center (OBMC), part of the UNESCO Category 2 – Southeast Asia Center for Lifelong Education for Sustainable Development, is made up of the Greenhills school headquarters and its four branches in Sta. Ana, Las Piñas, Fairview and Angeles, Pampanga. Its 156 outreach Pagsasarili Montessori preschools made affordable for the underprivileged urban and rural children in the past 30 years are all over Luzon but include as well the Philippine Teacher Training State Colleges of Cadiz, Negros Occidental, Tacloban, Leyte and Mati Davao. It piloted the EFA-DAKAR Montessori public school Pulung Bulu, Angeles Pampanga in 2004.

Its humble beginning started in 1963 with the first largest squatter relocation at the heart of the historical Spanish fort of Intramuros, Manila when OBI helped 3,000 families resettle at Sapang Palay, Bulacan. This was funded by three top newspapers – Manila Times, Chronicle, and Bulletin.

1966-1976 the Italian training grants, incorporation of OB as non-stock, non-profit schools

Operation Brotherhood president architect Oscar Arellano invited Mrs. Preciosa S. Soliven who had been a teacher in Saigon primary school and in a Chinese Jesuit high school to set up the Sapang Palay preschool to enable parents to train in livelihood skills. Impressed by this project, Italian Ambassadors Rubino and Solera gave Mrs. Soliven a borsa di studio grant to train at Dottoressa Maria Montessori’s Centro Montessori Internationale in Perugia for preschool children and Bergamo, northern Italy for the elementary school level (1964-1968). Additional grants to visit professional high schools of Venice, Milan and Florence as well as those in Germany, France and the USA enabled Ambassador Soliven to set up the complete O.B. Montessori schools from preschool, grade school to professional high school. Implementing annually three Teacher Training programs and three different but continuum curricula, about 400 faculty members for the complete Basic Education program and 25 newly hired college teachers for senior high school now teach at the five Operation Brotherhood Montessori schools. Committed to the complete standards of the Montessori system for preschool to “professional high school,” it has practiced “senior high school” for economic independence as defined and practiced by Dr. Maria Montessori since 1983 with both culinary service and agri-business.

OBI assisted in the fundraising that initially financed the establishment of the O.B. Montessori Center making it self-supporting until its incorporation in 1975 as a non-stock, non profit institution with Alex Adamson, Fr. Fritz Araneta S.J., Angel Limjoco, Salvador P. Lopez, and Luis Fernandez in the Board of Trustees. Ambassador Soliven did not find the need to seek for international funding in its 50 years of existence. It has been financially sustained by tuition fees.

The social revolution of Philippine education, a 50-year experience

This year as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Operation Brotherhood Montessori schools, allow me to recount the experience of discovering the new children by understanding their true nature within the three stages of development from infancy (birth to 6), grade school and high school (12 to 18). Alongside this is the discovery on how we parents and teachers have to be “retrained” to observe and respect the “inner child” since the fundamental problem of education is social “The fundamental problem of education is not an educational problem at all, it is a social one. It consists in establishing a new and better relationship between the two great sections of society – children and adults.” It is the conflict between the self-righteous and oppressive adult and the child.

People generally think that the word Montessori is a method, but the method is only a part. In reality it is a way of life. Life is first nurtured in the womb, fully embracing, nourishing, and ventilating the fetus. To love our children, is to believe in their goodness. As they grow “they will become.” Whereas, we adults have already become but we wrongly impose adult values, expecting them to behave like us, but end up scolding and punishing them.

Discovering the preschoolers’ preference for work, not play

To help the children become, we must provide a fully equipped environment for work not play. Just as the womb suited the fetus, the work environment fulfills the preschoolers’ motor activities. Thus the Montessori teacher is specially trained in a scientific way. She guides each child to the right materials and activate his “secret teacher” to work independently. Recognizing the child’s Absorbent Mind that works like a camera she demonstrates the Care of One’s Person or Care of the Environment without talking, unlike the regular kindergarten teacher who keeps talking and depending on workbooks.

Work is a recipe so teacher prepares the ingredients of laundering – small table with basin of water, soap, hand towel, clothesline with clips. Employing the practice of “analysis of movement” in the procedure – wetting the handkerchief, soaping, rinsing, squeezing until hanging to dry the hanky. The “cycle of work“ concludes with the child cleaning up the work-table. The “gradation of difficulty” is employed in learning to pour using three pairs of ceramic pitchers, with beans, with sand then colored water in a small glass pitcher poured into two glasses marked with a red line to prevent spillage while pouring.

How preschoolers get acquainted with gradeschool subjects sensorially

In a mixed age class of three to five-year-olds, the younger ones start to touch and sound sandpaper letters in cursive form, not capital. After which they trace geometric insets with colored pencils, not crayons. These are preparation for reading and writing that will lead them to work on composing words with the Moveable Alphabet and writing long hand small letters a, e, i, o, u, c, m, n, s, r, v, etc., tall letters b, d, h, k, l, t and tailed letters f, g, j, p, q, y, z, on Grade I paper. Traditional kindergartens introduce capital letters instead, believing it’s easier to write when what we read and write are mostly small letters except the beginning of sentences and proper names.

In Math the Decimal Golden beads already introduce single unit numbers, the tens, hundreds and the thousand which enables preschoolers to form three to four digit complex numbers while the Geometric Cabinet introduces the universal shapes of Geometry with the 3D Geometric Solids where the “rolling family” of ellipsoid, ovoid, spheroid or ball are easily identified by the children. Putting together the 7-piece Puzzle Map of the World, while continuing immediately after to the 27-piece Puzzle Map of Asia is easily done by the three to four-years-old even in our Pagsasarili preschool in the laborers’ districts. Classified picture cards of Botany and Zoology are easily matched in preschool but have definition cards in primary school.

Catching the enormous reasoning power and moral sensitivity of gradeschool (6 to 12 years old)

When conventional schools use Social Studies textbook, it reiterates repetitiously the 17 regions of the Philippines, their products and important people from Grade I to IV perhaps boring them to death. The Montessori learning features the illustrated Cosmic Organization chart effectively inflaming the imagination with Man in the center surrounded by the Animal, Plant and Mineral Kingdoms. Another chart the Fundamental Needs of Man show both the ‘’material” – food, clothing, shelter, transport, medicine, etc., and the “spiritual” – religion, education, entertainment through art, theatre, fashion, etc. The teacher let the children reflect on Man’s material needs supplied by the three kingdoms and their obligation to help conserve them otherwise mankind cannot survive cannot survive.

The Department of Education (DepEd) labeled its curriculum, one time continuum but was relabeled “spiral.” When our UNESCO Social and Human Science Committee gathered the major textbook publishers with members of the DepEd textbook review committee, they presented the same curriculum without any global relevance for elementary school, withholding the pertinent international aspects to the high school level. Neither was there an attempt to link the concepts for the 6 to 12 year old students to the 12 to 18 year old secondary school teenagers.

Adolescence quest for economic independence (12 to 18 years old)

To fulfill his need for economic independence, the O.B. Montessori Professional High School Curriculum provides Food Service training where students are made to run the high school cafeteria, engage in kitchen, waitering, and cashiering activities. They also engage in formal dinner and catering banquets, as well as innovative corporate events management matching the competence of college students. Even during the first ten years, it has been a profitable venture.

Nineteen years ago, O.B. Montessori signed a MOA with Kasetsart University of Bangkok. A multi-crop, fishing and animal Alfonso farm, patterned after the Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s self-sufficiency farm was designed by Prof. Charuphant. This 16-hectare upland farm lies on the border of Tagaytay and Sulsugin, Alfonso. Today, after 19 years, six new villas and a pavilion for seminars, team buildings, retreats and weddings has been opened to the public as Preziosa Botanic Park and Farm resort.

The high school program not only provides academic preparation for college but also training skills in business reinforced with leadership and civic consciousness. Accounting, Law on Persons, Cadet Training, Performing Arts, and Foreign Language were added to the State-required curriculum.

For several years UNESCO Bangkok, which promotes quality education tried hard to lighten the heavy academic load of several Asian high schools, specially the Philippines. To add more occupational skills due to Asia’s high rate of poverty the Southeast Asia Regional Center for Voc–Tech was instituted in Brunei Darussalam. In its 6th ASEAN Skills Competition held last September 2006, skills in building construction, automotive, furniture making, landscaping, food service, garment manufacture, cosmetology, etc. were on display. Thai and Vietnamese students received numerous awards, Two Filipino female competitors won the Welding and Culinary Art awards, the latter was our Muslim college student, Sittie Sacar.

Flagship educational centers for Education for All (EFA) for sustainable development

The 1996 report to UNESCO of the International Commission Education of the 21^st Century under the chairmanship of Jacques Delors entitled “Learning the Treasures Within” referred to the “Four Pillars” of Learning. These Four Pillars of Learning has been actualized by Dr. Maria Montessori a century earlier through the different stages of the child’s development – Learning to Be (Infancy), Learning to Learn (childhood), Learning to Earn (adolescence), Learning to Live in Harmony with Others (adulthood). This pillars uphold the Decade for Education for Sustainable Development which reinforces the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (UNMDG) for the world.