A Montessori-style course of preparing OFWs to work and live abroad

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( Part 3 of a series on August Agenda: Celebrating Maria Montessori’s legacy to mankind )

In the mid-sixties, my Italian borsa di studio (scholarship) of US$200 monthly from the Minstero degli Far Esteri (Foreign Affairs Department) allowed me to board comfortably with a young Italian couple, the Berellinis. Their fourth floor villa (apartment) is across the Centro Montessori Internazionale in Perugia, a well-known university town complete with facilities of medicine, agriculture, fine arts and Italian language. For lunch, I would go to the university mensa or the trattoria by the cathedral. Barely anyone drove around this top of the hill fortress town since destination is normally a ten-minute walk away.

Signora Rosanna who used to model for Spagnoli was a full-time housewife who would clean the house, keep my room meticulously clean, inclusive of a weekly change of linen as well as cook lunch and dinner for husband, Sandro, and her elderly father.

Batangueños in Perugia

Two years ago, the Montessori World Congress was held here in Perugia. I accepted readily the invitation of Signorina Antonietta Paolini, my former mentor in Perugia, who was one of the close friends of Dottoressa Maria Montessori herself. For this "homecoming" I did not expect to find many changes except that our former Italian preschoolers, like our first Filipino Montessori preschoolers, were already successful professionals, now in their forties.

The train from Rome stops at the Perugia railway station at the bottom of this hill town. I had to take a bus to the Centro. As I descended at the piazza Vittorio Emmanuele where my hotel was, I was surprised to see more than a dozen Filipinos in casual jackets clustered at the small park nearby. I felt the strong impulse to interview them. Wearing a black wide-brimmed felt hat and dark suit, I greeted them, "Buona sera." Startled, they answered in chorus, "Buona sera, Signora." Then, I asked, "Filipino kayo, ano?" (You must be Filipinos, right?) Surprised, they responded with a strong Batangas accent, "Ala e, Pinay pala si Ma’am, akala naming ‘straniera’." (Look, the lady is a Filipina! She looks like a foreigner.)

I switched back to Italian, a second language I can speak almost like a native. "Che lavoro fate cui? Da cuando avete abitate nella citta? Guadagna bene, vero?" What kind of work do you do here? The responses varied: "...housekeeper for the owner of Spagnoli." "... butler-gardener for a retired businessman." "...nursemaid for the children of a leather shop owner." How long have you been here? "Fifteen years." "Ten years." "Our bosses have even hired our relatives from a barrio of Tanauan." You must be earning well? A man in his fifties proudly said, "Something like US$1,500 monthly. Italians are very kind and most appreciative of the Filipino-style of service."

Bicolanos in Paris

I estimated that the period when Filipinos began working in Italy would have been in the mid-eighties (1985-1987) when I would attend spring and autumn sessions as a member of the UNESCO Executive Board in Paris. During those times I got acquainted with OFWs who also worked as domestic helpers to various ambassadors, important businessmen or theater people who resided in the elite Avenue Fochs and the other avenues which radiate from Champs Elysee. Most of the time, I met several Bicolanos who were attending mass near Champs Elysee. Their favorite pastime is to buy Filipino delicacies like balut, itlog na maalat, tinapa, suman and even fried lumpia or chicharon with packets of vinegar and garlic.

Like in Italy, half of them prefer to share an apartment so they could schedule freely part-time jobs during the day or early evening hours.

Earning as much as US$3,000 monthly, one would be puzzled why our seamen, domestic helpers or Middle East OFWs never learn to wear suits. Whether in Paris, Milan, Athens or London they keep on wearing somber gray, crumpled jackets. Practically every year, many of them travel by air. Suits are regular wear of the jet age group.

Casually-attired Filipinos are typed as lowly laborers

Indonesians and Thais look similar to Filipinos. However, they have a certain aura that makes them stand out as Filipinos. They are more open and friendly since they can speak English. I often wish they would learn to wear suits, instead of looking so shabby, even though they earn as much as P70,000 a month. It seems that our countrymen has such low self-esteem because they consider manual or technical jobs as inferior. It was only in Frankfurt, Germany and Australia where I encountered the well-dressed Filipino workers. These are the nurses, accountants and computer programmers.

The standard clothing of Europeans, whether they are simple factory workers or househelps, is a tailored suit since it is cold most of the time from winter, autumn and spring. These garments are very affordable in small department stores. The average Italians keep a limited wardrobe of only two to three woolen suits throughout the cold season. Daily change of shirts and inner garments is the usual order of the day.

European porters, cooks, drivers consider themselves "professionals". Dale Carnegie defines professionals as people who undergo training for special skills and get paid well for services rendered. Even our Italian Montessori school porters and cooks in their neat uniforms have poise and self-confidence.

Usually the last two years of the six-year European high school is devoted to learning a skill. These are the so-called scuola professionale. A variety of skills may be learned such as the use of farm and automotive machines, office computers, jewelcraft, kennel raising, food service, butchery or cosmetology. To enter the professional field, they must first pass a licensing examination so that they can rise in the ranks with appropriate compensation.

During the American governance of the Philippines, there was a bureau for licensing skilled workers. It stopped functioning when we were declared a republic. Now, we are at the mercy of unlicensed electricians, plumbers and masons who invariably damage our homes.

Helping condition the OFWs in the barrio

The domestic helpers and overseas Filipino working women from the various provinces of the Philippines have become an important part of the family support system of many career women and housewives in the Philippines, Singapore, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Italy, Spain, France, USA, etc. They have low aspiration and lifestyle in the simple barrio home and sub-standard schools were they are reared.

With a complete set of tools and step by step procedure, village mothers and their children can learn together a very disciplined way of Personal Grooming, Housekeeping, Child Care and Cooking. Our Operation Brotherhood Pagsasarili Mothercraft Literacy school simulates a one-room village house where the living-dining room is converted into the bedroom at night, while cooking and washing are done in an outside shed. The course lasts for approximately one month with an intense daily training followed by a two-week re-organization of their own household environment and an "on-the-job" training.

Given the Mothercraft training certificate, the mother is eligible to establish a small business ranging from ambulant beautician, piggery, carinderia (food stall) or garment business, usually depending on the community’s need. The OB Montessori Child and Community Foundation can help Congressmen or Governors use this technology for their constituents with the help of counterpart funding from other countries or the World Bank.

The social revolution the Filipinos must wage to combat poverty

Just before I worked in Paris, we were already applying the UNESCO motto, "Teach a Mother, Teach the Nation", when Punay Kabayao-Fernandez invited me to improvise a Montessori literacy program that would upgrade the standards of living in the village. Punay and her cousins own an average of seven sugar farms where 250 families live. Here I launched the first OB Montessori Pagsasarili Mothercraft Literacy Training Center in Hacienda Faraon and Hacienda Tamsi. I used the same Montessori materials of Practical Life, Language, Math and Science as in the Pagsasarili preschools in eight laborer districts in Metro Manila I put up three years earlier.

A government official observed that a one-day EDSA revolution won’t work, what we need is the Pagsasarili Mothercraft Literacy program for a daily regiment of excellence in Personal Grooming, Housekeeping, Child Care and Cooking.

(Errata: In last week’s column, the following errors were noted – under the subtitle The Filipino Exodus, the second paragraph should state "In 1966..." not 1996. The third sub-title should be Impoverishment of the Sugar Hacienderos)

(For more information please e-mail at exec@obmontessori.edu.ph)