What is ALS?

(Part I)  

Last week DepEd Secretary Leonor Briones announced the partnership of DepEd with UNESCO and the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) to set up the quality Alternative Learning System (ALS) at the Girls Education Center (GEC) for out-of-school females in the Philippines. It seems that the passing rate of the out-of-school women who take the DepEd’s ALS program is weak and needs reinforcement. The $6-million project hopes to improve the quality of instructional knowledge and skills of ALS mobile teachers, as well as the use of the K to 12 ALS learning materials.

The 1990 Edcom Survey of schools in the Philippines

In 1990 both our Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) delegation’s report in Geneva and the Senate-Congressional Education Commission (EDCOM) survey of Philippine schools revealed the substandard quality of our school system. EDCOM Head Senator Ed Angara recounted this in the book, “A Nation In Crisis”. I was very active then in major educational projects since I became a UNESCO Executive Board member in Paris in 1986 and stayed on as the Secretary General of the Philippine Commission until 2010. During the international conferences, my animated interventions were well received regarding the following turning points in Philippine education:

First, 40% of Grade 1 students would drop out in the middle of the school year due to boredom and oppressive teachers, increasing the number of adult illiterates. Second, ECE was not available to the majority of children. Third, teacher training was inadequate and the curriculum, irrelevant. Fourth, weakened principalship due to the burdensome dual task of administration and academic supervision imposed on the school head, resulting in inefficient school management. Fifth, regular evaluation and monitoring of the school was not done.

To eradicate poverty, eliminate illiteracy

Illiteracy exposes people to being cheated and defrauded. Illiteracy prevents people from understanding basic processes like buying and selling. It prevents people from learning livelihood courses or simply filling out an application form. Illiteracy prevents people from reading contracts and agreements, understanding legal proceedings, or exercising the right to vote. Being literate does not guarantee the protection of human rights, but it gives one a fighting chance.

In spite of the mobile literacy teachers fielded by the Bureau of Non- Formal Education, the 2013 FLEMM functional literacy surveyed that 4-million Filipino children and youth were still out of school. The ECE advisory body CONCEP (Council for Coordinating Early Childhood) for DepEd started by DECS Sec. Lourdes Quisumbing in 1986 assisted her successors Sec. Carino, Fabella, Roco, Andrew and Lapus until 2010. Yet ECE was institutionalized only last January, 2012 with RA 10157. The problems revealed by EDCOM still existed.

The Pagsasarili mothercraft functional literacy manual

Rural folks have a very strong inferiority complex. They feel that their lifestyle lacks dignity. Most social workers will admit that housewives refuse to go back to training “school” because they feel they are too old or they have nothing to wear. How can these housewives be attracted to further schooling, become enthusiastic about learning, and improve themselves?

In 1984, I tried the Montessori Pagsasarili Literacy program for village mothers with sugar planter Punay Kabayao-Fernandez, supported by the local government led by the Guanzons and the Marañons, and friends in Cadiz and Sagay, Negros Occidental. “Pagsasarili” is a Filipino word, meaning “the capacity to be self-sufficient or independent”.

“The Pagsasarili Mothercraft Literacy Course For Local And Overseas Filipino Working Women – A Complete Illustrated English-Tagalog Guide for Good Grooming and Hygiene, Housekeeping, Child Care, Cooking and Food Service Convertible to Business” was written to provide basic guidelines on how to become better persons and housekeepers with self-confidence and self-respect.

My daughter Sara Soliven-de Guzman, O.B. Montessori Center’s Chief Operating Officer and Concepcion Suarez, OBMC Child and Community Foundation Directress helped polish this book, which took three years to finish.

Teach the mother, teach the nation

Using the Montessori practical and academic curriculum, I prepared a special household environment where village mothers and their children together learn of Personal Grooming, Housekeeping, Child Care and Cooking. The classroom simulates an ideal one-room village house where the living room – dining room is converted into the bedroom at night, while cooking, washing and toileting are done in an outside shed. The course lasts for approximately eight to ten days and includes the Montessori preschool materials for Language, Math, Geography, History, Botany and Science. Between the ages of three to six our Pagsasarili preschoolers acquire the competencies of third graders. 

Given the Mothercraft training certificate, a mother is eligible to establish a small business ranging from ambulant beautician, piggery, carinderia (food stall), or garment business depending on community needs. This may be funded by a loan from the local government, bilateral country agency, or the World Bank.

Two years after the establishment of the program in 1984, four hundred mothers in fourteen O.B. Montessori Mothercraft Centers in Cadiz and Sagay   readily learned what traditional schooling has failed to teach: order, love for work, obedience, self-confidence, independence and joy.

Mothercraft Functional Literacy Program receives International Unesco Award 1993, New Delhi

In 1986 when I sat at the UNESCO Executive Board, UNESCO Director General Amathar M’Bow and the Secretariat accepted my invitation to witness the Mothercraft Twin project for Village Mothers and Children. Philippine Ambassador Philip Mabilangan sat proudly with them at the UNESCO lobby in Rue Miollis, the think-tank building close to the headquarters at Place des Fontenoy, as I demonstrated it with the UNESCO preschoolers. The grooming, housekeeping, child-care and cooking activities were worked together by parents and their children. Unlike the usual paper, pencil, book literacy courses, this was found to be more effective since it was relevant to women’s day-to-day experiences as surveyed among the UNESCO member states. Matching the UNESCO framework for Literacy Initiative for Empowerment (LIFE), the project won the 1993 International UNESCO Literacy Award in New Delhi, India.

(Part II: Is EDCOM II possible Sen. Escudero and Cong. Durano?)