'What can a preschool child do?'

(Part 1 of a series)

“What can a little baby do, clap his hands and coo and coo,” so goes a nursery rhyme. What can a preschool child do, play and play or work and work? Last Tuesday Fr. Tito Caluag, ABS-CBN Integrated Public Service head, announced the raising of 1.9 million toys all over the country “to lure five-year-olds to kindergarten”. This is supposed to be the company’s contribution to DepEd’s effort to implement the K-12 Basic Education Curriculum (BEC) plan.

The Century of the Child

The last century was hailed by the UN as the Century of the Child so as to reverse the old adult attitude that infants and children during the first six years are not of economic value until they enter formal education in the first grade. Perceived as mere objects to entertain and amuse the family, the pre-schoolers were deluged with toys. Governments all over the world started the educational ladder with Grade 1, failing to make provisions for early childhood education. Instead day care play centers for baby sitting while parents went to work were set up. Preschools were private enterprises which could only be afforded by middle to upper class families.

The first 6 years

From birth to six children exhibit an Absorbent Mind. Acting like a camera, this mind enables the child to absorb any language or even multiple languages spontaneously, that is, without any teacher, in the land of his birth. Note how the children of our Filipino workers in Italy, France or England speak perfect Italian, French or British English better than adult Filipino scholars. From the age of three to six they can be scholastically directed in a preschool using materials other than toys.

There are three schools of thought with regards to the preschool curriculum: the playschool, work-oriented or grade school format. UP and Silliman University advocate the “creative” play discipline making use of dollhouse play, counting and alphabet blocks, puzzle, dough play, freehand drawing, easel board painting with story-telling and music. The grade school format is advocated by religious kindergarten schools which generally accept the fives. They are made to fill up workbooks in Language, Math and Social Science to prepare them for grade school. The work-oriented preschool system was discovered before the 20th century when psychology was on its experimental stage.

Dr. Maria Montessori’s discovery of the ‘new teacher’ and the ‘new child’

In 1906 Dr. Montessori set up a preschool in the slum district of San Lorenzo quarter in Rome, for the building society Institutio Romano dei Beni Stabili. Backed by the principal banks in Italy, two large blocks of flats were constructed for the poorest of society. Left to themselves when their parents left for work, the young children freely played along the corridors and defaced the walls and staircases generally creating disorder as little vandals.

These 60 tearful bewildered children, generally malnourished, dejected and uncared for, had never had anything to stimulate their minds. After a successful experiment with handicapped children who passed a public examination with success together with normal children, Dr. Montessori longed to work with normal children. The San Lorenzo youngsters were a welcome sight.

Since she could not look after the children continuously, Dr. Montessori trained the porter’s daughter and later a better educated seamstress to assist her. This she found a fortunate limitation for a traditional teacher would resist another system for she has to be taught the use of the special apparata.

Dr. Montessori describes how she toiled for two years, “I set to work like a peasant woman who, having set aside a good store of seed has found a fertile field...I had hardly turned over the clods of my field when I found gold instead of wheat. Like foolish Aladdin who, without knowing it had in his hand the key that would open hidden treasures.”

The hidden treasures

What were the hidden treasures? They are the normal characteristics of childhood concealed under a mask of “deviations.” Montessori discovered that children possess different and higher qualities than those we usually attribute to them. Given a Prepared Environment of Practical Grooming and Housekeeping tools, Sensorial Materials, hands on Language, Math and Science materials, and a specially trained teacher the three- to five-year old children revealed amazing characteristics.

For the past 27 years that we have shared a more affordable Montessori preschool identified as Pagsasarili Preschool, for underprivileged children of Metro Manila, Ifugao, 20 public preschools all over Luzon up to MIMAROPA and courtesy of Governor Vilma Santos converted 100 DSWD Day Care Centers all over Batangas, the following attributes of children have been replicated.

AMAZING MENTAL CONCENTRATION. Unlike toys which over stimulate children, Montessori work has always an intelligent purpose. Using the principle of analysis of movement, the four steps of sweeping or the 13 steps of laundering usually catch the attention of the threes and fours.

LOVE FOR ORDER. Each material is kept in a box or tray. It is one of a kind conditioning the child to finish his cycle of work or wait for his turn. Parents are usually frustrated when their children’s toys are scattered around and almost never returned in place.

LOVE OF REPETITION. This happens usually among the threes like sweeping the same spot on the floor six to eight times (so long as the teacher provides enough scraps of paper). When this occurs “normalization” will take place. Both mental and physical energy synthesize and the Montessori teacher will happily expect the other virtues of OBEDIENCE, FRIENDLINESS, SELF CONFIDENCE AND JOY to follow.

FREEDOM OF CHOICE. Some people prejudiced against the system refer to it as letting children do anything they want not realizing that this freedom is regulated since all the materials to choose from are all good. The shelves are open and not locked so the children may choose any material. Usually the threes and fours start with Practical Life with dressing frames, folding hankies, opening and closing bottles, shoe polishing, etc. Then they shift to the seven piece Puzzle Map of the World. The older ones choose the Word Composition with Moveable Alphabets or laying out the Decimal Golden beads for numeration from units, tens, hundreds to thousands.

The explosion to writing and reading

When she began, Montessori had no intention of teaching the problem of reading and writing with children as young as three to five. She even shared the general prejudice that it was necessary to begin writing as late as possible. But the children themselves came to her and asked to be taught to read and write.

She applied the sand paper letters in cursive style mounted on boards she used for the defective children. Traced with the “writing fingers, the pointed and middle finger, each child was taught the sound and not the name. One day she overheard a five-year-old girl saying to herself, “To make “Sofia” you need s, o, f, I, and a”. She had discovered that words are made of component sounds. From this Montessori developed the Object Box material by which a child could put together moveable alphabet cut-outs beside the drawing of “man,” “hat,” “eat,” “banana” etc. Eventually this led to spontaneous reading.

Preschoolers’ acquisition of third grade competence

What is generally perceived of three- to five-year-olds as disorderly, disobedient, timid and unfriendly has been disproved by the Montessori Pagsasarili System. About 150 Pagsasarili preschools all over Luzon have been witnessed by teachers, parents and grandparents producing the self-confident and high achieving five- and six-year-olds, who generally acquire third grade competence. A grandma in Calapan, Mindoro remarked, “Ang galing ng apo ko. Ayos na ayos ang pagdadamit at matalino. Nag-iingles pa. Parang anak mayaman” ( I am so proud of my grandchild. Not only is he neat and studious but speaks English like a child from a rich family).

It is urgent to re-engineer and transform the traditional educational system to succeed in developing the K-12 Basic Education Curriculum.

(Next week: Revolutionizing ECE - a challenge to DepEd and CHED)