The school angel upholds the motto ‘Ad Dolore, Ad Gloriam’

Every project or art creation in Operation Brotherhood Montessori Center (OBMC) school headquarters in Greenhills has a story to tell: hard work, frustration, patience, and deep faith. In the end, this becomes a spiritual achievement addressed “ad dolore, ad gloriam” (from pains to gains).

 On the façade of the eight-story college the giant mural of the school angel mystically named Angelique Victoria was painted on the 30th anniversary of the school.  According to mystic-artist Punay Kabayao-Fernandez, Angelique Victoria has been gifted to the school to symbolize all the pains and gains she has experienced in almost three decades. “Ad dolore, ad gloriam” is inscribed beneath the Angel who carries the golden Holy Grail crossed by a sword.

Helping the poor to help themselves

The O.B. Montessori schools trace their roots back to 1964 when the mother organization Operation Brotherhood International (OBI) helped relocate 3,000 squatter families from the walls of Intramuros to Sapang Palay. It was the first immense transfer of illegal settlers from old Manila. The project director, OBI President Oscar Arellano had helped in the difficult task of settling down dislocated families from war-torn Vietnam and Laos from 1956 to 1973.  

When OBI’s projects in Vietnam and Laos ceased due to the war, Operation Brotherhood Montessori Center (OBMC) was incorporated in 1975. The OBI board headed by Oscar Arellano, with Fr. Fritz Araneta, S.J., Angel Limjoco, SEC Chairman, Jobo and Vic Fernandez (Far East Bank) as members, appointed me as president of this non-stock, non-profit school corporation. My board members were Securities and Exchange Commissioner (SEC) Angel Limjoco, then Sen. Salvador Laurel (who later became Vice President of the Philippines), Greek Consul General Alexander Adamson, Sony Philippines President Elena Lim and my husband Max V. Soliven, publisher of The Philippine STAR. It continued its mission to spread the Montessori way of life to everyone.

Learning the international system of education for independence

From 1964 to 1969 four Italian borsa di studio (study grants) were given to me to train and help set up the whole basic education program using the Montessori system for preschools, elementary school and professional high schools. Ambassadors Rubino, Solera, Fedele and Colesanti made possible my studies in Perugia, the training site of Dottoressa Maria Montessori herself, in Bergamo near Milano and several travel grants to observe scuola professionale (senior technical high schools) in Florence, Venice and Milan. 

In 1968-69, when I trained at the Centro Montessori per la Scuola Elementare, I met Mario Montessori and his wife Ada, with whom I corresponded until Mario passed away in 1983. World renowned Montessori experts with whom I have worked were Antonietta Paolini, Elnora Honegger, Camillo Grazzini and Sofia Cavalletti of AMI Italy; Muriel Dwyer and Hilla Pattel of AMI England; and the Lanterniers, Jacqueline Oudin from Rennes, Britanny. My classmates in Perugia and Bergamo, Italy were Hisako Matsumoto, Sr. Jacinta, Jim Roy, Jean Miller, Liz Hall, Sanford and Martha Jones, now running schools of their own.

Growing pains

 The Ministero degli Far Esteri (Foreign Affairs Ministry) in Rome gave me additional grants for my assistants in teacher training. Each training course would have cost half a million pesos then. Unfortunately, most of them committed a breach of contract. Max, my husband, decided that I should do my own teacher training. 

We resorted to recruiting teachers as early as October and subject them to a battery of tests. Out of 250 college graduate applicants only 35 would make it. Several passed the IQ and Teaching Aptitude tests but most failed in the Maturity Tests interviews conducted in English.

Acquainting the public with the revolution in education

Between 1966 and 1972, I sought the media to make the public understand the true meaning of the Montessori system. Leading female journalists like Nang Sevilla, Doris Nuyda, Betty Belmonte and Gelly Mendoza wrote complementary columns about the “preschoolers who preferred to work on puzzle maps of the world, lay out the Golden Decimal beads as well as set the table with breakable plates, without thought of playing.” They also discovered that preschoolers could fully concentrate. Not a single child was curious about the visitors. No one was distracted by the photographers.

Just before Martial Law was declared, Geny Lopez, ABS-CBN TV president gave me a thrice a week TV slot (1970-1972) to show the Montessori classroom at work. It rated 17th among 400 weekly shows catching the A, B and C class, for I spoke English and Filipino simultaneously as the host and scriptwriter of “Montessori for Everyone.” This enabled the whole country from Luzon, Visayas to Mindanao to discover the “new children” who love work and order and together with them, the “new teacher.” Unfortunately the enthusiasm created led to the mushrooming of false Montessori preschools, where teachers had no training and the Montessori materials were missing. Years later the Ministry of Education Secretary Gloria together with SEC Chairman Yasay helped us put up the Federation of Montessori Schools to help train Montessori Teachers properly and accredit the authentic ones.

The angel upholding perfection – the end of Martial Law

On Aug. 31, 1986, Dr. Maria Montessori’s birthday, we celebrated the 30th anniversary of the school. It was also the year the Marcos dictatorship ended. In celebration, Punay received the mystical request to have the grotto of Our Lord of Sacrifice and the World Mother placed in the OBMC schoolyard. Soon after, a giant angel of The Pointing Hand was placed above the grotto.

According to author Geoffrey Hodson, this angel, who reminds us to be perfect as the Heavenly Father is given this admonition: “Let this be the motto for you all, THE HIGHEST – and let all who join our ranks pledge themselves to that motto. We, too, will pledge ourselves, and every time this inward pledge is uttered by a man, an angel shall repeat his pledge like a torch to add to the great reservoir of power apportioned.”