We have seen Filipino parents implementing the principle that in the basic education of their children, it is unwise for them to completely delegate the whole-person education of their children to the teachers in the schools in which the children are enrolled. The parents must play the role of the first educators, then the teachers come second and very much in the third place the students. The cases we have cited, however, involve parents who belong to the high-middle income levels. The question we now want to answer is whether or not this principle can also be applied in the public schools in which more than 90 percent of elementary and high school students are enrolled.
Thanks to veteran Filipino educator, Dr. Antonio (Tonton) Torralba, I have gotten access to information about successful attempts to get parents of public school pupils actively involved in the education of their children. There is the case of the Alay sa Pamilya at Bayan (APB) Foundation, in partnership with some educators of the University of Asia and the Pacific (UA&P). Through the Mariano and Estella de Jesus Que Professional Chair on Family and Youth Education, three major activities with parents of public schools are held regularly every year. These three are face-to-face in the two regions of NCR and CALABARZON and online for several other regions outside Metro Manila, including the BARMM. Some 200 public schools have organized clubs that actively participate in these initiatives while 150 other schools without clubs yet are able to participate in the activities which comprise a parent colloquium (usapang magulang), usapang magulang-anak, family conference workshops and family games and sports festival.
Usapang magulang, usually lasting for one working day, is meant to enable those parents who attend the activity to share insights from one another and with other students and young professionals in two moderated forums, each of which holds highly interactive conversations on “What Makes Excellent Moms and Dads” and “Managing Issues Facing Today’s Adolescents.” The medium of conversation is Filipino, the approach is “extract and navigate.” The process ends up in a good collation of insights on challenges facing the Filipino family at their social level and responses to these challenges by the participating parent.
Usapang Magulang-Anak, which also lasts for one whole day, aims to, at the very least, open communication lines between mother and daughter or father and son. Given the wide variations in family compositions in the Philippines (e.g. single moms), father-daughter, mother-son, or guardian-child is also allowed. There are usually 8 segments of the day-long activity:
- Preliminaries, which include fun and mind games between cluster pairs of parents and children, with appropriate prizes to the winners.
- Anonymous metacards on questions between parents and children on the other hand:
To the children: what qualities do you like best in your dad or mom?
To the parents: What do you think would be the answer of your children?
To the children: What qualities do you like your mom or dad to strive to change?
To the parents: What do you think would be the answer of your children?
- Processing of the differences or similarities in the responses of parents and children.
- Separate sessions between parents and children for some spiels from older students or young professionals (in the case of the children) or seasoned or more mature professionals in the case of the parents.
- Maintaining the children and parents respective separate assemblies, handwriting of letters from parents to children and children to parents, incorporating respective handwritten answers to questions about the other (e.g. My most fervent prayer for you is ….My biggest wish for change in your personality is….)
- Parents read letters to children and children to parents in pairs: with a conversation on the letters and other things left unsaid.
- An oral evaluation of the exercise among the parents and children in assembly (What did you learn about your parents? What are the good points about the exercise? What are possible points for improvements?)
- If evening has set, commitments to volunteers by candlelight.
Then there are what are known as Family Conference Workshops. These last also the whole day. They are meant to help the participants to appreciate and understand more deeply and in practical terms four current issues facing the Filipino family today: a) family structures; b) human sexuality; c) faith and Filipino values (regardless of religious affiliations); and d) social media and teenage lifestyle.
The day comprises:
- Major talks from well known speakers who can address the issues mentioned above.
- Moderated youth forum on the above-mentioned four issues. These sessions usually end up overtime because of the interest generated by the insights from the high school students .
- Workshops among the participants divided into four groups, each one tackling one of the four issues mentioned above. They are asked to come out with responses, recommendations and other basic insights;
- Short reading of the highlights of the day’s activity by a Secretariat .
- Viva voce approval of an assembly position paper, crafted by the Secretariat.
To facilitate smoother communication among the participants (both parents and children), it is always useful to organize family games and sports festivals. Co-sponsored by the Henry V. Moran Foundation, these fun and sports activities can be held in the facilities of some cooperating private universities part of whose CSR program is to help improve the quality of public education in the country. These sports are the usual ones popular in the Philippines (basketball, volleyball, futsal, table tennis) and parlor games (tug-of-war, egg relay, sack relay, and two or three other family games). In the APB-organized Usapan, as many as 600 public school parents, children, and teachers (as officials) are organized into “houses” with labels like “eagles,” “bombers”, “lions”, “cardinals,” etc.). They parade around the campus, complete with cheers.
All these activities are accompanied by a) prepared set of metrics on social impact; b) follow-through; and c) deliberation on “What next?.
Because of the importance of involving parents more and more in the educational process through which their children are formed in our public schools, it is highly advisable that the Department of Education assign a full-time Assistant Secretary or Undersecretary to promote programs like those described here. I am sure Secretary of Education Sonny Angara is quite aware of the programs of Synergeia Foundation, Inc. across some 350 LGUs promoting parents-teachers collaboration through a host of activities such as reading camps, mentoring, education summits, workshops, conferences, and other means of putting parents and teachers together in the public school system.
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