(Part 1 of a series on the Montessori Movement)
Last year, the Montessori Association of Taiwan whose 25 members are school owners trained in either the Association Montessori Internationale (AMI) or American Montessori Society (AMS) held an international conference in the auditorium of the University of Taiwan. Led by their Chairman Jimmy Poe, Montessori school owners and teachers of Korea, Japan, India, and Russia took part in the three-day meeting in preparation for establishing the Montessori Association of Asia in Korea this year.
The Operation Brotherhood Montessori Child and Community Foundation set up one of the interactive exhibits of Montessori for the disadvantaged – the Pagsasarili Mothercraft Literacy and Preschool Non Formal Program. This has been the major outreach project of the OB Montessori Center since 27 years ago. Today with the linkage with local mayors and the Department of Education, 150 Pagsasarili Preschools have spread out all over Luzon charging P200 to P800 monthly.
To conclude the Taiwan Montessori conference, about two dozen conference participants joined Jimmy Poe’s tour to the OB Montessori headquarters in Greenhills, San Juan. Jimmy, a well-traveled Filipino-Chinese businessman who owns a beautiful Montessori school in Taipei, knows that the 44-year old OB Montessori schools have successfully implemented the Montessori system – complete from preschool to the tertiary level – with its OB Montessori Teacher College and its Culinary Institute. To them, putting up such a comprehensive Montessori school is an incredible feat.
As founder of the Operation Brotherhood Montessori schools and UNESCO NatCom Secretary General, let me recount how the Montessori system became “Education for All” or EFA, the UNESCO term for literacy.
The Saigon and Manila experience
In 1959, two years after Max V. Soliven and I got married, we moved to Saigon where he worked with the Vietnam Presse. Meantime, I taught small children in the Khai Minh Primary School. Thrice a week, I gave lessons at the Jesuit Chinese district of Saigon and two evenings a week to Vietnamese businessmen.
When we returned to Manila, the next year, Max became publisher of The Evening News, while I worked at Telly Albert’s San Lorenzo Preschool. Here, I was terribly frustrated by a 5-year old Australian boy, Patrick Fenton, who daily would distract the whole class and extended their recess time in the playground. I requested that he be transferred. I was surprised to see him transformed into a docile student working on geography puzzle maps and addition memorization charts. I thought our Montessori Swiss guest teacher, Elzbeth Graemigher, was bribing him. “Oh no,” Ms. Graemigher said, “He just likes Montessori work.”
Telly Albert Zulueta encouraged me to familiarize myself with the system and allowed me to assist them so I could take over when Elzbeth leaves. Everything went well as I did Practical Life and Sensorial exercises. Then, after a semester I could no longer hold the children’s attention. When I trained in Italy, I realized that Elzbeth did not have the Montessori Language, Math and Cultural Arts apparata.
The first decade, 1966-1976
By 1964, Oscar Arellano, president of Operation Brotherhood International (OBI) was relocating 3,000 squatters from the Intramuros ghettoes to Sapang Palay, he convinced me to set up the OB Sapang Palay preschool. This interested then Italian Ambassador Rubino to give me a grant to train at the famous Montessori teacher training center for preschoolers in Perugia, founded by Dottoressa Maria Montessori herself. Later, I received a British Council grant to specialize in Montessori Language Arts in London, England as arranged by Mario Montessori (Maria Montessori’s son) with Muriel Dwyer, head of the Montessori Center at Lyndhurst Gardens. Upon my return in 1966, I started the Operation Brotherhood Montessori preschool at the headquarters of OBI, which has been sending Filipino medical team since 1959 to war-torn Vietnam and Laos.
In 1968-69, prodded by parents to continue Montessori schools to the grade school level, I received another Italian scholarship in Bergamo to take part in the International Montessori course for seven to 12-year olds. Meantime, I got acquainted with Mario Montessori with whom I corresponded until his death in 1983.
World-renowned Montessori experts with whom I have worked with were Antonietta Paolini (Perugia), Elnora Honegger and Camillo Grazzini (Bergamo), Sofia Cavalletti (Religion expert in Rome), Muriel Dwyer and Hilda Pattel of AMI London, as well as Lanterniers and Jacqueline Oudin from Rennes, Brittany. Out of 40 classmates in Perugia and Bergamo, only ten of us are now running our own schools: Hisako Matsumoto, Sr. Jacinta, Jim Roy, Jean Miller, Liz Hall, Sanford and Martha Jones.
Montessori for Everyone televised nationwide
In 1971, a year after I started my weekly television series, Montessori for the Home, I continued with another series Montessori for Everyone. I hosted and scripted my Montessori show for the most widely telecast television station, ABS-CBN Channel 2 where it was shown in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. Directed by Maria Montelibano (who also directed President Corazon Aquino’s TV documentary), the thrice a week demonstration of Preschool Montessori lessons and activities up to Montessori Grade School lessons featured students and teachers from our four schools. I spoke in English, simultaneously translating this into Filipino to be understood by my audiences in Baguio, Cebu, Bacolod, and Davao.
A TV survey conducted among 273,410 televiewers in their respective homes by a reputable accounting firm ranked Montessori for Everyone 17th in the listing of 400 weekly TV programs.
Television is such a powerful medium. Even young sweepstakes vendors in Caloocan, fruit sellers on the highway of Guiguinto, Bulacan to the hotel porters at the Pines Hotel in Baguio City would recognize me, usually addressing me as “Mrs. Montessori”. However, my point was to make the public aware what a genuine Montessori preschool is that can guarantee the character development of children since false Montessori preschools began sprouting up for commercial gain with a mere Montessori signboard, where teachers had neither training nor Montessori apparata.
How to distinguish the genuine from the false Montessori school?
The traditional system of teaching has a very active teacher who lectures and directs the class most of the time. The classroom is rather bare with blackboards where the teacher writes and illustrates the lesson. Common textbooks and workbooks are the major learning tools.
The Montessori system has a specially-trained teacher that enables each child in the class to teach himself with materials from the Prepared Environment. The classroom has four open shelves of apparata very colorful, neat and self-teaching: the Practical Life, the Sensorial Exercises; Language, Math, and the Cultural Arts (Geography, History, Botany and Zoology).
The specially-trained teacher is a college graduate who has passed a battery of tests. Our ads would attract 250 applicants with only 30 passing the tests. Although they have sufficient I.Q. and teaching aptitude most of them fail the maturity tests.
Being part of the Prepared Environment, the teacher is perfectly groomed from head to toe. The 70 pieces of apparata allow 300 exercises only trained teachers could possibly know. A major role of a Montessori teacher is the custodianship of the genuine Montessori teacher is the custodianship of the environment. No material may be incomplete, chipped or faded in color. Each OB Montessori teacher must be responsible for six pages of inventory list of apparata.
Several false Montessori preschools advertise themselves as “international” or “fully air-conditioned” or with “computerized classrooms”. If they truly use the Montessori system, then they do not need these “come-on” features.
Let us not use the Montessori name in vain
Short courses on Montessori training abound, specially during this summer break. Several foreign nationals may take advantage of those gullible or desperate people who intend to attend these courses as a stepping stone to find work abroad.
As a Montessori advocate, being one of the pioneers in the Montessori system, I caution all of you. Right here in our country, the OB Montessori College guarantees the quality training of Montessori teachers who can readily “normalize” or transform disorderly, restless, and unfriendly preschoolers into children who love work and order. There are legitimate courses like AMI and AMS groups who maintain and preserve the Montessori system.
For those who are using the Montes sori name in vain, let us not destroy the work that Maria Montessori has created. Let us keep the Montessori system pure.
(Next week: The Montessori Movement in the Philippines, Part 2)
(For more information or reaction, please e-mail at exec@obmontessori.edu.ph or pssoliven@yahoo.com)