The vital task of LGUs - Teach a mother, teach the nation

Literacy will not eradicate poverty, but it will give one a fighting chance.

Illiteracy exposes people to being cheated and defrauded.

Illiteracy prevents people from understanding basic processes like buying and selling, prevents people from learning livelihood courses or simply filling out an employment application form.

Illiteracy prevents people from reading contracts and agreements, from understanding legal proceedings or exercising the right to vote.

Barrio Mother’s Literacy Program of Cadiz and Sagay demonstrated in Paris

I was elected member of the UNESCO Executive Board in Paris in 1986-1987. By this time, the OB Montessori Child and Community Foundation had already established six OB Montessori Pagsasarili preschools in the improved slum areas of San Martin de Porres in Cubao, Tramo Lines in Pasay City, West Crame in San Juan, Bagong Barrio and Bagong Silang in Caloocan and CAA in Las Pinas. Today, there are nearly 150 Pagsasarili preschools all over Luzon.

As a member of the Executive Council of UNESCO, I demonstrated the unique Montessori Literacy program for the barrio family at Rue Miollis, the think-tank building at Place des Fontenoy where the headquarters is located.

UNESCO observed that reading and writing are not enough. There must be realistic lessons. UNESCO concluded that the traditional literacy book, paper and pencil method to re-learn the three R’s is a failure. Not only is this due to the lack of post-literacy materials and experiences but due to the invasion of city life into barrio life.

Raising the barrio mother’s self-esteem

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

Before I left for Paris in 1986, I already designed a literacy program for Punay Kabayao-Fernandez in Hacienda Faraon in Negros Occidental. Our family friend, Punay, was very troubled by the losses sugar crop made in the world market making it impossible for her family to plant and harvest good crops. The income from this could barely support her farm workers who had always depended on her great grandparents, parents and now her family for their livelihood.

There I saw closely that the typical rural mother generally marry at the early age of 16 to 18 with only an elementary school education. She would bear a child almost every year and have four to six children so that at the age of 25 she would look so aged. She knows it is her bitter fate that her wife-mother role would confine her all her life to the barrio. Her husband’s meager income as a fisherman, farmer or laborer would be insufficient specially when the children would get sick or would have to go to school.

At this point, her literacy rate would have dropped down to Grade I. If only she can be re-educated and given the skills and discipline to put up a backyard business to supplement the family income.

The best defense for the barrio: A literate mother

I believe that the village mother is the best defense of the family, especially when it concerns the protection of her young ones. It would be too expensive to put up a Montessori pre-school in any barrio, but I could shoot two birds with one stone. If I can set up an ideal rural home environment where I can teach this mother another way of learning that would remove from her all fears of her traditional school, I could succeed in giving her an effective literacy program which in turn would make her teach her young child more proficiently.

Mothercraft Literacy Training is done on an eight Saturday period for the Mother Coordinators representing a province, a town or barrio at the three Training Centers. Otherwise, a two-week schedule will do if it is more convenient. Mothercraft trainees undergo a series of written and practical exams before they graduate from the course. After graduation, such Mother Coordinators are now ready to train mothers in their respective towns, barrios or haciendas.

Livelihood Loan programs are granted to deserving Mothercraft Coordinators to augment family income. They are given P1,500 as seed capital for a piggery or carinderia project. Such amount is payable within six months to one year, so that the seed capital can be rolled over for other Mothercraft Coordinators. I replicated this in six other haciendas in Cadiz and seven in Sagay with the help of Mayor Guanzon and Mayor Maranon.

As a result of a two-year experiment in Cadiz and Sagay, I put up the following literacy programs which I strongly recommend to all provincial governors and mayors.

The big nipa hut school for literacy trainors

In the middle of our Montessori school buildings at Greenhills is a very large nipa house occupying 85.25 sq.m. which was completed in March, 1996. This serves as a training school for provincial Mothercraft Literacy Trainors of the Bureau of Alternative Learning System (BALS) or as an elective for high school and college students to train as literacy workers. The latter can enable them to set up a Mothercraft school in their respective provinces.

The initial lesson before Good Housekeeping, Child Care and Cooking was the fun lesson – Personal Grooming and Hygiene. With a tray of cheap lipstick, eyebrow pencils and baby powder, comb and plastic hairbrush, the ladies were taught how to emphasize the most beautiful features of a Filipina face – the eyes. Then with baby powder as the base, they were taught to add “blush on” by making a lipstick stroke on the highest part of their cheekbones, while smiling, with one side of their closed fist, each cheek is rubbed until it gets a rosy hue.

The lips are outlined with lipstick using the fingertip afterwards to even the color and make it colorfast throughout the day. With a simple brushing of long hair into buns or braids or a simple haircut of short hair all the ladies underwent a surprising transformation looking much younger and happier. We identified it as the OB Montessori Pagsasarili Literacy program whose objective was to elevate the status of the barrio mother to respectability and develop her potential to the fullest.

The living-dining room of the nipa house, which serves as lecture and practice room, is surrounded by cabinets. Table setting materials include placemats, mono-colored plastic plates, rice and viand platters, soup bowls, drinking glasses, as well as stainless spoons, forks, and knives. The bedroom is furnished with a banig, mosquito net, pillows and bedsheets and a baby’s crib.

Outside is a tiled kitchen with cooking pots for rice or soup, a clay pot for paksiw (vinegar-based food) and a kawali (wok) for frying, as well as a kapitera (coffee pot). The laundry and bath area is also outside with laundry basins, pails, cloth brush, palu-palo (paddle), and clothesline with pins.

The urgency of literacy programs

The above program is the ideal ESD model in the non-formal system for adult illiterates. This is part of the OB Montessori outreach literacy project for urban and rural families. Officially labeled OB Montessori Mothercraft Pagsasarili Literacy Twin Projects, it also provides the counterpart program for three- to six-year old children – the Pagsasarili Preschool. Since UNESCO gives importance to “gender equity”, the “Mothercraft” shall be changed to “parentcraft”.

Hopelessness was a major reason for the rapid growth of the NPA in the ’70s and early ’80s. This fueled a steady stream of rural families migrating to the cities compounding the already critical urban problems – overcrowding, lack of housing and mass transport, uncollected garbage, water shortage, and pollution. In spite of the multi-million pesos poured into infrastructure projects to establish services in the rural areas, the past administrations failed to improve the lifestyle in the countryside.

The poverty Metro Manilans see around in many squatter areas is really the spill-over from rural poverty. Our househelp, drivers, gardeners, janitors, factory workers all come from the Visayas or Mindanao and they crowd the perimeters of our residences.

Before politics could completely ruin us, we must buckle down on a timetable to establish functional literacy nationwide. If we don’t conquer ignorance, the simple folk won’t have a chance to establish their economic independence.

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