(Part 4)
As we have seen in specific cases of private initiatives, organized by both secular and religious associations, programs that foster the right attitudes to marriage as an inviolable, lifetime institution can begin as early as the teenage years of the Filipino youth.
For this reason, the lecturers, case discussion leaders, and other resource persons are ordinarily taken from parents and educators, following the principle that in the inculcation of values and virtues, the first responsibility rests on the parents, then the teachers and only in the third place the students themselves.
A leading source of speakers for these programs is the Educhild Foundation which was founded by concerned parents some 50 years ago. Educhild stands for Education for the Upbringing of Children, based on the philosophical principle that the primary purpose of marriage is the procreation and education of children. The Educhild Foundation is the leading organization in the Philippines in the field of parenting. It is affiliated with the International Federation for Family Development (IFFD), a non-governmental organization that aims to provide training in parenting. IFFD has General Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council.
In the major regions of the country, parents from all walks of life volunteer, after getting the appropriate training from experts, to deliver parenting courses to fellow parents in a variety of topics. Among them are First Steps, offered to parents of children ages zero to three or those planning to have children, enabling them to maximize these years of early development. For parents with children aged four to seven years old, First Letters consists of sessions helping parents to start developing the personality of the children as they reach the age of reason. Then Middle Childhood parenting courses are for those couples with children eight to 12 years old, showing them how to build a foundational set of values that steer their children’s decisions and actions.
Much importance is given by Educhild Foundation to helping parents guide their teenage children on how to navigate the very difficult years of adolescence, especially considering the very challenging moral environment in these times of the so-called “woke” culture.
As life expectancy has significantly been prolonged, there is an increasing role of grandparents in the upbringing of their grandchildren. That is why the Educhild Foundation has started offering Grandparenting courses that help participants in the new phase of their relationship with their children and grandchildren.
In addition to these courses focusing on the appropriate upbringing of children and grandchildren, the Educhild Foundation — borrowing from the art of management to which a good number of parents belong — has been offering for some time now workshops on Family Visioning which are aimed at helping families set a desired future state for themselves and the common values and principles that will guide them toward that vision.
Other auxiliary courses aimed at strengthening the institution of marriage are Life Endeavors and Projects (LEAP), the Married Love Course, Beyond I Do and several courses in the vernacular for the families of farmers and factory workers called Pinoy Educhild and Gabay Pamilya.
LEAP is a program for single young professionals providing principles for decision making in the different areas of life, including the decision to marry. The Married Love Course is designed for married couples who want to strengthen their marriage, deepen their personal growth, enhance their knowledge of family life, and reflect upon true and everlasting love. Beyond I Do is a fun-filled weekend of rediscovery aimed at reinvigorating and enriching the marital bond.
Another foundation established almost a half century ago is called Parents for Education Foundation or PAREF. As can be read on its website, PAREF was founded in 1976 by a group of parents who gathered to address the challenge of the integral education of their children with the twin thrust of academic excellence and sound character formation.
Inspired by the teachings of St. Josemaria Escriva, Founder of Opus Dei, these founding parents had the strong belief that the proper education of their children is best realized through the integral formation first of parents, and secondly of teachers — the two most important agents of child education.
It is no surprise that PAREF found a great deal of synergy with the Educhild Foundation.
In no time at all, PAREF started to establish grade and high schools which adopted the educational philosophy of Parents First, then Teachers Second, and Pupils being the ultimate beneficiaries in the Third place. Since the first school for girls, called Woodrose, was established in 1979, today PAREF is a big family with 13 schools, having graduated more than 8,000 students, most of whom are already engaged in the world of work equipped with the values and virtues that were inculcated in them through the educational philosophy of “Parents First.”
Needless to say, the philosophy behind PAREF is that of the inviolability of marriage as a social institution and the family as the basic foundation of society, as enunciated in the Philippine Constitution of 1987.
All the schools of PAREF aim to give their students complete human, intellectual, cultural, moral, spiritual, aesthetic, and physical formation in an atmosphere of personal freedom and responsibility. All academic courses in the PAREF schools follow the curricula required by the Philippine Government. The schools profess and honor the values and ideals of the Filipino culture.
The religious instruction is based on the Teaching Authority of the Catholic Church. The formation offered by the PAREF schools consists of:
a. Demanding and whole-person academic program.
b. The mentoring system as the distinctive feature of personal formation and collaboration with the parents.
c. Imparting broad humanistic and cultural formation.
d. Encouraging the practice of human virtues towards the development of personal maturity, leading each person to achieve perfection in his work according to his or her ability.
There are also private initiatives sponsored by the business community. An example is the Riverbed Program supported by some members of the business community of Pampanga.
The program is addressed to some segments of the student body of the Pampanga High School, such as the club presidents, special classes in the physical sciences, specific student organizations, etc. The objectives of the Program are to form the youth as persons, responsible students, and patriotic citizens. It helps these students to make good and responsible day-to-day decisions in family and family life; friendships and social responsibility; love, courtship and marriage; and teenage lifestyle.
Each student has a personal mentor. In addition, there are four regular workshop forums in the year on current moral social issues (e.g., family structures, sexuality and sexuality education; social media and teenage lifestyle; faith and Filipino values; and special sessions on provincial and national history and culture.
(To be continued.)
Bernardo M. Villegas has a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard, is professor emeritus at the University of Asia and the Pacific, and a visiting professor at the IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain. He was a member of the 1986 Constitutional Commission.
