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Pedro Orata1971  Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service

BIOGRAPHY of  Pedro Tamesis Orata

Public education was introduced into the Philippines by the Americans soon after their annexation of the island archipelago from the Spanish in 1898. The first teachers were soldiers who mustered out and began, often with limited education themselves and always with few supplies, to teach eager pupils who previously had no access to the few private schools. A contingent of 600 volunteers from the United States followed in 1901 and others came later to staff, and train Filipinos to take over, the schools which were proliferating rapidly in the provinces. Education continued to be a major concern of the government throughout the American period, and after independence in 1946. PEDRO TAMESIS ORATA’s mission has been further to extend educational opportunity, particularly in the rural Philippines where over 80 percent of his countrymen live.

ORATA was born in Bangar, a remote sitio (section) of Barrio (village) Bactad, Urdaneta, in northern Pangasinan Province of the Philippines, on February 27, 1899. Like many of their neighbors, both his father, Candido Arata, and his mother, Numeriana Tamesis, were immigrants from the arid, crowded Ilocos coast. He had a younger sister, Victoriana; an older and a younger brother both died young.

ORATA says his eventual success in school was due to sheer hard work: "My IQ is barely average," he asserts. He learned to work hard at home. As a little boy he walked each day from the small family farm carrying on his head a basket of vegetables, snails and fish from the rice field to sell at the village market.

His schooling began in the Bactad three-year elementary school under a Filipino teacher "who taught us in the morning what he had not learned from a barely literate American ex-soldier teacher the afternoon before." His interest was not captured and he barely passed the third grade.

While an indifferent student, ORATA was ingenious. Because teachers in his school called upon pupils in alphabetical order he changed his name from ARATA to URATA. He thus avoided sitting in the front row and gained more time to prepare for recitation, but his ruse worked so well that the bell frequently rang before his name was reached. Not wanting to be left out entirely, he finally settled upon ORATA, which placed him in a middle position.

For fourth grade he had to go to the town of Urdaneta, which in the rainy season from July through September meant a four-kilometer walk through mud and water. When he failed fourth grade his father put him to work on the farm. His chores were to cook breakfast at five a.m.; help harrow the rice field, plant the seedbed, transplant the seedlings, and raise vegetables, chickens and pigs; pasture and cut grass for the one old carabao (water buffalo), and wash the dishes and kitchen utensils before he went to bed.

After one year of this drudgery he was glad to go back to school where he repeated the fourth grade. His teacher—and principal—was only a Grade IV graduate himself but a strict disciplinarian. "My fear of him and my recollection of the hard work on the farm made me study very hard," ORATA recalls.

For Grade V he had to go to Binalonan, the next town 11 kilometers away. He and two others from Bactad walked to Binalonan on Sunday afternoons, returning on Friday afternoons. They roomed with a family in the town and brought from home their weekly supply of rice, beans and other vegetables. Along the way they gathered snails, crabs and sometimes fished to supplement their provisions.

The following year Grades V and VI were offered in Urdaneta and the next year Grade VII. After completing Grade VI in Urdaneta ORATA went to Los Baņos in Laguna Province to enroll in Grade VII at the secondary school of the new University of the Philippines College of Agriculture. He was homesick and, after failing in botany returned home to complete Grade VII in Urdaneta.

His sister Victoriana made it possible for him to attend the only high school in the province, located 50 kilometers away in Lingayen, the capital. She had completed the fourth grade and, though only 12 years old, volunteered to stop school and take in boarders in Lingayen while he continued his studies. They found a small house and had four boarders from Urdaneta for whom his sister cooked and washed. He helped each afternoon by joining adults in pulling a fish net in from Lingayen Gulf. His share of the catch was enough fish for their supper and breakfast, and sometimes for lunch. Their father kept them supplied with rice and wood which he laboriously transported from the family farm in a two-wheeled bamboo cart drawn by their old carabao.

ORATA now became so interested in his lessons that he spent most of his time studying. After classes, which were held only in the mornings, he took his mat and books to the beach and studied under the coconut trees. His American teacher gave him highest marks in physics and he finished as the valedictorian of his class of 99 students. He recalls that he prepared for weeks for his commencement speech, "choosing from the dictionary so many difficult synonyms for important words that neither I nor my classmates could understand what I said."

When he was about to accept one of the many teaching offers that came to him, his sister again intervened and suggested he continue his studies in the United States. She had heard that many Filipinos were succeeding there as working-students. When he protested that he could not walk to America she surprised the family by breaking her bamboo bank in which she had saved enough nickels and dimes from extra laundry work during the four years in Lingayen to buy her brother a steerage-class steamship ticket. He remembers that she beamed with pride as she said: "Now you do not have to go to teaching which, after a few years of hard labor, you may have to give up as others better qualified than you will be employed in your place."

Journeying to America with 79 other Filipino students, he arrived in mid-June 1920 in Seattle, Washington, where his tropical clothing was not adequate for the temperate summer. He invested the only money he had left—US$5—on a secondhand coat and pants that did not match. The students were now divided into two groups and his unit of 40 was sent to Montana to work as a gang fixing rails and making other repairs on the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway. After eight hours of hard labor, plus an additional two hours for extra pay, he could hardly bend his fingers, but he and his companions were able to take instant naps which they regularly did during the lunch hour. His companions had learned during the sea voyage that ORATA was "tight with money"—a trait associated with Ilocanos—so they chose him as manager of their mess. By feeding them beans and salmon for breakfast, lunch and supper, and encouraging them to fish on weekends he spent only 25 U.S. cents a day per man. His economy enabled every one in his unit to save enough in that one summer to enter the university in September.

Unwittingly following the "pattern" method of learning a language, ORATA bought a notebook and carefully recorded every word he heard spoken by the big, profane, tobacco-chewing Irish immigrant "boss," complete with markings for accent, intonation and gesture and practiced on his companions. At the University of Illinois in Urbana he proudly used in his public speaking class this new language he had laboriously acquired and was sent by his horrified professor to the Dean of Men. "A very understanding man," ORATA recalls, the dean asked why he had used such terrible language and reminded him that he was at a university not a penitentiary. ORATA explained that he had learned from his American high school teachers to diagram and speak well constructed sentences, but he did not understand them as well as the phrases used by the railway gang boss, so he thought he had been taught the wrong English. The dean had a good laugh and invited him home for chicken dinner the following Sunday.

The first letter from home brought news of his father's death. Feeling duty bound, and lonely as well, his immediate reaction was to return to help support his mother and sister. Kindly couples, who acted as surrogate parents to many of the Filipino students at Illinois, dissuaded him. Among these were Dr. and Mrs. Ernest E. Leisy, in whose home he stayed most of the time hew was Urbana.

In return for his room at the Leisy’s he rose at four a.m. to tend their coal furnace. Before five he set out for the Women’s Residence Hall—a dormitory of some 455 girls—where he earned his board and some money. He opened the kitchen, made coffee, and poured it in cups for the waiters to take to the dining room. Learning to conserve his time, he studied physics and algebra during lulls. At 8:30 he left to reach his 9 o’clock class. He worked in the dormitory again from 12 until 2, attended class from 2:30 to 4:30, and returned to duty at the dormitory from 5 until the kitchen closed at 8:30 p.m. Reaching his room at 9 p.m. he studied until 11 and banked the furnace before going wearily to bed. He had intended to major in engineering but with his work schedule he could not attend the required 8 o’clock class so he changed to education—"a choice I have never regretted," he says positively.

In summers he worked in a country club in Danville, Illinois, or in the Montgomery Ward store in Chicago where, after an eight hour day, he walked to the Harmony Cafeteria downtown to earn his dinner and a little cash washing dishes from 5 to 8 each evening. At this cafeteria he learned about "democracy and pragmatic philosophy—it is how you do your job that matters." The other Filipino dishwasher did not like the way the manager, "who was only a high school graduate," treated them and told her she must understand that they were college students and their fathers were senators and governors. She said she didn't care who or what their fathers or they were, they were there to wash dishes and do it right.

ORATA still wonders how he managed to handle all his jobs, and do well enough in his studies to receive his Bachelor of Science in Education "with final honors" (1924).

With his scholastic record financial help was forthcoming for his graduate work. The University of Illinois gave him a scholarship which included free tuition and $300 a year, and the Philippine Government gave him a partial pensionado (government scholar) allowance of $50 per month. He, however, continued to work at the Women's Residence Hall and at odd jobs on weekends so that he could send money home to his mother and sister. He had majored in mathematics as an education undergraduate and now chose educational research for his master's program, achieving a Master of Science degree in 1925, again "with honors."

For the following summer term ORATA enrolled at the University of Chicago to study educational psychology under the head of the Department of Education who was an eminent scholar in the field. He scored so low in the entrance test that the professor suggested he not enroll, but yielded to his promise to withdraw after three weeks if he could not keep pace. At the end of the term the professor gave him an "A"—"a grade I seldom give," and apologized for discouraging him initially. ORATA thanked the professor for giving him the chance. "Since that time," he writes, "I have made every effort to do more than what was required of me."

In the fall of 1925 he enrolled at Ohio State University where he had been given a two-year student assistantship enabling him to pursue studies in the philosophy of education and educational research. The partial pension from he Philippine Government was also continued. He was awarded his Ph.D. (Honors) in 1927. His dissertation on transfer of training, published by Ohio State University Press, documented fallacies of the prevailing Thorndike "theory of identical elements" and received wide attention among educators in the United States and abroad.

Entitled as a pensionado to a first-class cabin on his return to the Philippines in summer 1927, he requested approval to travel by third class and to use the savings to buy books he would need as a teacher. After being twice refused, he appealed to the Director of Education, Dr. Luther B. Bawled, who approved his request.

When ORATA left the Philippines in 1920 the girl to whom he was engaged had reluctantly agreed to postponing their marriage for four years until he had his bachelor's degree; when he asked for a one year extension to work on his master’s she married someone else. He salved his loss by marrying in 1925 a fellow student, Vinda Atkins. His rebound marriage endured the opposition of his wife's parents and the lack of harmony between his wife and his mother but after 1927 the ORATAS were separated most of the time; "she lived in my country as a public school teacher and later I in hers, also as teacher," he writes matter of factly.

On his return, ORATA taught briefly in two normal schools (teachers' training colleges) in Bayambang, Pangasinan and in Manila and served as Assistant Chief, Measurements and Research Division, in the Bureau of Education, before Dr. Bawled asked him to change places with he Division Superintendent of Schools in Isabela Province in northeastern Luzon. By this exchange ORATA became the youngest division superintendent and replaced the oldest. He soon gained the respect of his peers by achieving he highest rating in he 1930 division superintendent’s civil service examination.

In 1931 ORATA was transferred to Sorsogon Province in southern Luzon, where he stayed for three years. In spice of his high examination rating he was painfully aware of his limitations as a division superintendent. His only teaching experience had been a few weeks of practice teaching in an Urbana, Illinois high school and one semester each at the two Philippine normal schools, where he taught students how to teach subjects he had not taught. He instituted in Sorsogon, as he had in Isabela, a demonstration school where he and others observed "master teachers." From one of these models—Dr. Clodualdo Leocadio, then a fourth grade teacher and now Assistant Director of Public Schools—ORATA says he "learned much of what I know about teaching." He also learned how to supervise by observing the academic supervisor, district supervisors and principals at work, "while they all thought I was there to supervise them." However, ORATA was unable to develop a meaningful dialogue with the teaching staff and administrators under him which he felt he needed to stimulate his own thinking.

Anxious also to broaden his experience, ORATA and his wife returned in 1934 to Ohio State University where he had been offered an instructorship in the College of Education. In 1936 he accepted a one-year appointment with the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs as curriculum consultant on fundamental education for the Sioux Indians on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. His job was to convert the experimental Kyle Day School, where he served as principal, into a community school following John Dewey's philosophy of education.

In 1937 ORATA was appointed to the Office of Education in Washington, D.C. as a Technical Assistant in the Home Economics Education Service—the only male among five females, he humorously recalls—and after one year was transferred as Special Consultant to the Occupational Information and Guidance Service. These assignments were based on his work in community education with the Indian Service where he emphasized in preschool and home economics education preparing boys and girls for their adult roles as family heads. As a specialist in a field then just beginning ORATA traveled to different states to advise parents on the care and education of their children, using as examples practices developed at the Indian school’s home economics practice cottage.

In 1941 Dr. Camilo Osias persuaded ORATA to return to the Philippines and join the National Council of Education which he headed. Caught in Manila at the outbreak of the Pacific War ORATA spent the next two years as a technical assistant with the council but became increasingly restless; opportunities for improving public education were severely restricted and shortages of food and other necessities were causing many Manilans to seek less precarious lives in their home provinces. After his wife died he persuaded Osias, who had become Deputy Secretary of Education, to terminate his services so that he could go home. He spent the last year of World War II at the family farm in Bactad with his mother and sister.

ORATA knew the Japanese were watching him, as they did others who stood out in their rural communities, so to avoid their suspicion, he played mahjong every day with friends in neighboring Barrio Casantaan. Among the players was Pilar del Prado Ramos, who had evacuated with her family to Casantaan. To the small children of the barrio, many of whom were her nieces and nephews, he was soon bringing bananas, mangoes and other treats as part of his campaign to win the affection of Pilar and the approval of her father. Ultimately ORATA, whom the children called the "scholar from Bactad," married their Tita (aunt) Pilar.

ORATA was in bed with malaria when an American army captain called for him in early 1945 and requested him "to reestablish the schools of the City of Urdaneta. " After nearly a year of doing nothing—for the first time in his life—he was delighted to go back to work.

As he was reorganizing the elementary schools in Urdaneta he remembered that in the United States every city had a high school, and often one or more colleges. He thereupon opened a high school—the first in the Philippine outside a provincial capital—in a church that had been bombed during the war and had no roof. For instructors he canvassed a few college graduates and undergraduates, and found 15 doctors, dentists, pharmacists, engineers and lawyers who volunteered, but "not one was fully qualified to teach in a high school." For the 350 students who quickly enrolled there were no books, paper, pencils, chalk or blackboards. Perpendicular lines were drawn on the floor to designate four "rooms" for first to fourth year classes. Instructors and students alike sat on the floor until each one brought something to sit on. The instructors lectured on any subjects they could think of. After three months every student was passed. The 35 seniors were given handwritten diplomas. It was ORATA’s task, when the Philippine Commonwealth Government was reestablished, to convince Secretary of Public Instruction and Information Francisco Benitez to recognize the unconventional high school and its graduates. Benitez reluctantly agreed after ORATA pointed out that he had done his duty to help students whose education had been interrupted for three and a half years by war, and asked: "Will you set them further back?"

One of Urdaneta High School's first graduates went on to take a degree in education at Columbia University Teachers College in New York and become Vice-President and Dean of Graduate Studies of Central Luzon Teachers College. Another became Director of Urdaneta Emergency Hospital. Many others in those first classes attended colleges and universities and entered the professions. The high school today is one of 20 in Pangasinan and more than 300 throughout the country which have opened in cities and larger towns following the Urdaneta example. Of these it has the largest enrollment—2,200 students out of a total enrollment of some 330,000.

In 1946, after order was restored and independence granted (July 4), ORATA was called to Manila to join the Department of Public Instruction as Chief of the new Curriculum and Research Division. He served concurrently as educational consultant and lecturer in charge of graduate courses in education at Centro Escolar University for women (1946) and professorial lecturer at the coeducational Cosmopolitan Colleges (1947). In 1947 he was made Technical Assistant—and in 1948 Acting Executive Officer—of the newly organized Philippine National Commission of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the successor to the National Council of Education which he had joined in a similar capacity in 1941. In 1947 he was also named head of a group of educators to serve as technical staff of the Joint Congressional Committee on Education, whose report and recommendations served as the bases for the reorganization of the educational system in 1950.

A fruitful and direct association with UNESCO began in 1948 when ORATA was asked to serve as an expert in education to study and prepare a report—together with an English educator—on the educational system of Thailand. The following year he accepted appointment as a program specialist in teacher training and curriculum development with UNESCO headquarters in Paris where he was one of the small regular staff and the first Filipino to receive a contract with no termination date.

ORATA’s work with UNESCO required "much traveling to different countries" where he observed many institutions and learned many things which he has since striven to put into practice in the Philippines. He retired from UNESCO in 1960 and in April of that year accepted the invitation of his old friend and former associate Emiliano C. Ramirez, President of the Philippine Normal College (PNC), to become Dean of the Graduate School and Director of Research and Evaluation. With the example in mind of the Swiss watch school where students must fabricate the tools with which they make their watches, he instituted at PNC a course entitled Science for Better Living, which taught the practical applications of science by having students improvise their own equipment. He also introduced Social Studies for Better Citizenship: "to humanize the teaching of science" students were given social problems and asked to propose practical technical or scientific solutions taking into account human needs. In 1962 he started in Urdaneta a classroom program to discuss concrete situations that required pupils "to think, weigh their social values and act accordingly": why they came late or were absent, ways to avoid stopping to talk to other children on the way to school, and problems they were encountering in their studies.

At the age of 65 ORATA says—in a play on words—that he "re-tired and started again." With Ramirez' approval he left before completion of his five-year appointment to accept an invitation from the Center for Cultural and Technical interchange between East and West (the East-West Center) in Hawaii. He spent the next 10 months as one of three Filipinos among 35 senior specialists in education from nine countries, exchanging ideas, reading and writing. ORATA wrote eight treatises on: making maximum use of foreign experience; training for educational leadership through demonstrations; social studies for better citizenship; education for living in a developing society; teaching English as a second language in the Philippines; action research in teaching and supervision; vitalizing health education in the Philippines; and research for better living, learning and teaching.

Returning to the Philippines in July 1965 ORATA applied himself with "single-minded and dogged determination" to promoting his barrio high school (BHS) movement. He had introduced the BHS concept in 1964, taking his ideas from schools he had seen on his travels. From crowded Hong Kong which used schoolrooms for morning, afternoon and evening classes, he took the idea of using barrio elementary schools after regular hours for high school classes. Borrowing from the Fiji pattern of a self-supporting elementary school—where students working on a coffee plantation used half their earnings to pay for a teacher the government could not afford to hire, and from the double purpose earning-and-learning high school of Hawaii, he determined to charge a nominal tuition which would be paid from earnings of students and their parents. From Burma's Adult Education University—where government civil servants are given the opportunity to earn a small honorarium by teaching—came thc idea of staffing the BHS by giving teachers in or out of service a similar opportunity. As in the Swiss watch school, students would improvise science equipment from readily available scrap materials.

ORATA related prosperity to education. The Philippines has enormous wealth in natural resources yet poverty remained one of its most pressing problems; the annual per capita income in 1960 was about US$130. The country ranked high in educational provisions yet was low in economic development. The number of college graduates was disproportionately large for a society where the 1960 census found the average educational attainment in the Philippines to be Grade V, or two grades short of functional literacy according to international standards. Since the 1948 census had shown the average educational attainment to be Grade IV, a projection of these findings indicated to ORATA that an average of functional literacy would not be achieved until 1984. The Philippine Government was spending less than P7 million on secondary schools—which were both variable and unstable—compared to P700 million on elementary schools. Only 18 of every 100 children between the ages of 13 and 16 were in school. Moreover more than 80 percent of the people lived in rural areas and secondary schools, both public and private, were concentrated in towns and cities. These harsh facts, his observations abroad of alternative patterns of education using private initiative and funding, and his discovery that many barrio youths would go to high school if they could "afford the luxury" of going into town, impelled ORATA to find a way to bring secondary education to the rural areas.

In the school year 1964-1965 ORATA launched experimental BHSs in three barrios of Urdaneta and one of Bautista, Pangasinan. It had taken two years to convince school authorities to allow the experiment and approval was conditional for one year. Arrangements were kept as simple as possible. The barrio councils and teachers of elementary schools with sixth grade classes made a survey of potential enrollment; local students attending high school in the neighboring towns were counted with the barrio dropouts. Parents then met and an agreement was signed by the students, their parents, the school authorities and lay leaders of the community. In the agreement the parents promised to increase the productivity of their farm, orchards or pastures by the following the instructions and guidance of school authorities and lay leaders pledged to provide good teachers and books. Only first and second year high school classes were offered the first year. Most students taking advantage of those first BHSs could not aford to wear shoes, and many were in their late 20s.

To insure against a downgrading of standards, the Bureau of Public Schools sent two general office supervisors to monitor the experiment closely. They visited the three BHSs in Urdaneta every month during the school year, attending classes, conferring with teachers and going to homes to talk with parents and observe students at work on their money-making projects. A supervisor from the office of the Division Superintendent for Pangasinan also visited the schools. At the end of the year achievement tests on the basic subjects were administered by both the general and division offices. The BHS students did better than their counterparts in the Urdaneta high school in reading, and the record of the BHSs in students "staying the course" was 25 percent higher. In the three barrios not a single act of juvenile delinquency was reported during the year; instead of roaming the streets most former dropouts were studying and working under the close supervision of their parents and teachers. The BHSs also benefited the economic life of the three barrios; 112 families earned enough to pay tuition fees merely by following improved agricultural procedures such as selecting seed, making compost, weeding and practicing crop rotation.

As a result of ORATA’s initial success 16 more BHSs were established in the 1966-1967 school year (another 12 in Pangasinan, 3 in Camarines Norte and 1 in Albay). Of the 1,625 BHS students in the 16 Pangasinan BHSs, only 300 said they would have enrolled in municipal or provincial high schools had there been no BHS, and none would have been able to attend private schools. Financial assistance for the BHS teachers came in late 1966 when ORATA secured authorization from the General Auditing Office to pay honoraria to elementary school teachers willing and qualified to assist after hours with high school subjects.

In December 1966 President Ferdinand Marcos officially endorsed the barrio high school movement. Confirming an appointment already extended by the Secretary of Education, he designated ORATA—its author and prime mover—as special consultant without compensation "to assist in the planning and organization of barrio high schools. . .and in coordinating these schools."

After the BHSs had met the conditions for their continuation they gained outside assistance. From 1966 through 1971 the Asia Foundation (AF) provided US$37,344 in grant funds. The initial gift enabled the movement to operate a small office in Urdaneta, publish and mail to other provinces mimeographed copies of the Barrio High Schools Bulletin and pay part of ORATA’s travel expenses. The 1967 AF grant paid for establishing five centers—in northern, central and southern Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao—to coordinate, supervise and improve standards. The AF gave 500 science kits enabling third and fourth year classes to meet requirements of "adequate laboratory equipment." The National Media Production Center gave visual aids. Silliman University helped improvise science equipment from tin cans, alcohol lamps, simple spring balances, pieces of glass, etc., and conducted training on the preparation of visual aids and devices for teaching modern mathematics. The AF and the U.S. Agency for International Development provided financing and 1,000 UNESCO "how to" manuals for a national workshop and for 21 "echo" workshops in the five regional centers on teaching general science, biology and physics. The AF funded and the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement provided leadership training in cooperative credit union work in barrios to help pupils in elementary grades learn to earn and save for their high school education.

In May 1967 Secretary of Education Carlos P. Romulo and ORATA were the chief sponsors of the Barrio Book Foundation, Inc. (BFFI) organized to raise a revolving fund to enable barrio councils to procure a steady supply of textbooks for resale to BHS students at reasonable rates, extend credit for book rentals and provide other services "deemed timely and feasible." The fund drive was headed by Central Bank Governor Andres Castillo.

Encyclopedia Britannica (Phil) Inc. donated to the BFFI 200 sets of its junior edition in celebration of their parent company's 200th anniversary, which were sold to BHSs at cost. The Cooperative for American Relief Everywhere (CARE) turned over 9,400 volumes made available by the Collier Publishing Company and the U.S. Information Service Library donated books. San Miguel Corporation, together with Coca Cola Export Corporation, gave P1.5 million in grant funds. By early 1968 another P600,000 had been received from individuals and organizations.

Despite this response, the lack of books remains a major problem for not all barrio councils can afford to buy even low cost books to resell or rent to BHSs. However ORATA insists "where there is a will there are 20 ways." He cites the example he found in Leyte in 1969. Forty-five BHS students were studying in the home economics building of the elementary school under one teacher—whose major was home economics, with one textbook, and not enough chairs. The instructor was teaching science, social studies and mathematics by writing on the blackboard material taken from her own and borrowed books. The students copied the text, studied it at night, and recited the next day in good English.

In other moves to help, the Eva Estrada Kalaw Scholarship Foundation offered loans to BHS and community college students, repayable with interest after the students graduated and were employed. A municipal councilor in Bindoy, Negros Oriental, paid the tuition fees of the top two BHS students in Bindoy for every grading period, and the mayor of Luzong, Abra, paid tuition and other costs for all students who passed the scholarship test. Promising BHS students were also assured of college scholarships by the University of the Philippines and the National Board of Education.

Republic Act 6054 of August 4, 1969, known as the Barrio High School Charter, gave legal existence to BHSs. The legislation was sponsored by Senator Eva Kalaw on her own initiative. ORATA had not sought political assistance or government expenditure, except for the supervisory teams in the experimental period, believing as he still does that barrio people should provide the greater part of the support. The Charter regulated organizational arrangements such as the minimum number of students (40); the responsibilities of barrio councils, parents, and school administrators; operation and maintenance of school buildings used; preparation and approval of budget, and collection of the annual ,80 tuition fee. Under Republic Act 5447, P5 million was appropriated by the national government as a BHS special trust to be administered by the Secretary of Education. BHSs are now supervised and administered under the same rules and regulations as regular schools. At least one qualified teacher appointed by the Superintendent of Schools is required for each BHS, although part-time teachers can be hired from elementary schools or public high schools to serve after hours; they need not be approved by the Civil Service Commission. Exceptionally qualified persons not employed by government can also teach on a part-time basis with approval of the Secretary of Education. Full-time teachers receive salary rates equal to their rank in public schools and are entitled to the same benefits. The one or two part-time teachers are given honoraria of P20 to P50 per month per classroom period, depending upon their qualifications, and none teach more than two periods a day. A full-time teacher's salary (P180 per month for 12 months) can be increased if barrio people pay, as has occasionally been done.

Pressure from private high schools which feared competition resulted in a charter provision prohibiting establishment of a BHS in a town or within a three-kilometer radius of an existing public or private high school. Subsequent court cases have made exceptions "when public interest so requires." Though private interests have become more tolerant, cutting through red tape to establish a BHS has been most difficult where school administrators or other government officials are owners or stockholders of a private school in the locality. On the other hand, some private schools have been forced by BHS competition to improve their standards and lower their fees (and profits).

BHSs must follow the integrated curriculum of academic college preparatory and vocational courses prescribed for four-year public high schools by the Bureau of Public Schools. ORATA, however, believes "teaching should be made more functional and relevant to the problems of the learners; there should be more application than theory, more work than talk. " This is partially achieved in BHSs by relating vocational courses to the problems , needs and resources of the community and by introducing in science courses such practical subjects as seed selection under discussion of heredity. "Application is the goal," ORATA emphasizes, "but the theoretical part is there so that, book-wise, students are qualified to go on to college and, practical-wise, they can apply what they learn."

By 1970-1971 some 160,000 students were attending 1,514 BHSs located in 80 provinces and the rural environs of 20 chartered cities. Problems of financing still result in meager and irregular payment of teachers, inadequate books, equipment and tools, and an inability to offer scholarships. These negatives must be weighed against the positives: better motivation among students who pay and intend to get the most out of their education, the generally smaller classes and the proximity of schools to homes, affording students closer parental supervision and more time to study. ORATA has also noted a new social awareness and competency among BHS pupils, as evidenced by those who helped check a 1967 outbreak of rinderpest in Urdaneta, and others who have assisted in reforestation and extension services. BHSs have given employment to thousands of education graduates for whom there were no jobs in the regular school system, and they have contributed to a marked economic improvement on communities as parents and pupils seek to improve their farming methods to pay for schooling.

While high schools in cities and towns other than provincial capitals and in barrios were proliferating, ORATA’s third scheme for "making education accessible to all Filipinos" was tested in 1966 when the people of Urdaneta decided to use the proceeds of the town's annual fiesta—some P25,000—to establish the country's first community college; the municipal council allocated an additional P2,000. ORATA conceived of the community college as a sequel to the BHS, a college geared to the needs of high school graduates whose aptitudes best fitted them for middle-grade occupations and located within easy commuting distance of their homes. One hundred and twenty-five students enrolled the first year, all of whom were required to be employed or self-employed earning their own tuition fees. At first students balked at finding jobs as maids or tricycle drivers or at raising pigs "until we thought of a way of dignifying labor by calling it practicum—applied science," ORATA reports. "The students like this and we give them college credit for the work." He views learning how to work, earn and appreciate money as the most important "course" in an "education for life . . . .They learn that work is honorable, whether it be a white collar or a farming job."

The community college was to have its own classrooms and grounds but was temporarily housed on the Community High School campus. To solve the problem of a lack of books ORATA first donated his own library, then turned to his alma mater, Ohio State University, whose Student Education Association in 1966 contributed 900 books collected from students and faculty. In February 1968 the new Urdaneta Community College was formally inaugurated in a building donated by the Office of the Presidential Assistant on Community Development. The five-room building today houses the college, the central offices of the BHS and the mushrooming community college programs.

Community colleges have grown from one in 1966 to 27 in 1970 with a total of 2,600 students. All are existing on their own resources except one in Rizal Province which is heavily subsidized by the provincial government; 13 more are approved to open in 1971-1972.

Recognizing that less than one percent of the population of preschool age children in the Philippines could afford or had access to preschool, ORATA in September 1969 introduced community preschools in Barrio Nancayasan, Urdaneta, his fourth innovation for broadening educational opportunity. He had been invited earlier that year by the World Education Fellowship to deliver a series of lectures at Australian universities, together with an English psychologist and an American preschool specialist. While there he observed preschool classes which were partly supported by parents. The same concept applies to preschools as to BHSs—of using existing facilities, resources and teachers during hours when they are idle. In making his case that "preschool education is a must in the 1970s for children everywhere," ORATA cites recent psychological research showing that the outcome of education from Grade I to university is determined largely by what the child sees, hears and learns before he starts formal schooling. Encouraged by the mounting interest in preschools, the Director of Public Schools has issued a memorandum urging division superintendents to open at least one preschool in every school in their jurisdiction. There are now 23 barrio and 10 city preschools with a total enrollment of 10,742 children, whose parents pay a tuition fee of P1.50 to P3 per five months per child.

ORATA’s fifth major innovation—multigrade schools—stemmed again primarily from his observations in Australia where teachers in remote areas were handling Grades I to IV in one room by planning activities so that two classes worked at their desks while another did nature study outside the classroom and another recited. All classes joined in subjects like music and physical education. Brighter pupils were assigned to help slower ones and older children to act as monitors for younger classes. Also in rural areas of Switzerland and France he had observed one teacher taking charge of all classes from preschool to fourth year high school in one room and in the United States he had seen that one-room schools for elementary grades were being revived.

Beginning in Urdaneta for the 1971-1972 school year he has arranged with school authorities to complete all elementary schools (Grades I through VI). Meanwhile he has instituted one-room multigrade schools in six remote barrios of the municipality where a small BHS could be included and several courses combined under one teacher. These schools, he believes, can be staffed by transferring teachers from overstaffed central and large barrio schools.

For his work with community and barrio high schools, community colleges, preschools and multigrade schools ORATA takes no salary. As President of Urdaneta Community College he is entitled to P12,000 a year but returns it to the college. He paid his own travel expenses until the Asia Foundation in 1966 provided a grant covering a portion of these costs and President Marcos reconsidered ORATA’s contract with PNC, which had stipulated no retirement benefits, and allowed him retirement under the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS).

True to their Ilocano heritage ORATA and his wife saved a portion of his UNESCO salary and their savings plus his UNESCO pension and GSIS allotment provide a comfortable income for their modest life style. Also, at his wife's suggestion they had bought a home in Paris while serving there with UNESCO and when they sold it on leaving they found the value of the home had doubled. Back home they used this money to buy a 6,000 square meter property and build a house in Barrio Nancamaliran East, Urdaneta. Here they grow fruit trees and many kinds of vegetables and raise their own chickens. From a small field on their land they get rice grown by their hired worker.

ORATA has authored more than a dozen books and over 1,000 articles on education and related subjects which have been published in the Philippines and abroad. These writings he has grouped under five general headings:


1) Research, Measurements and Evaluation includes articles addressing the problems, shortcomings and corrections needed in evaluating teachers, students and curriculum, with such provocative titles as "The Insignificance of the Statistically Significant."

2) Educational Planning for Economic Security and World Peace includes his articles explaining UNESCO's principles of education for world understanding, an outline of principles and procedures to make geography vital to youth and to make it serve to tie the world together, seeps the teacher may follow to teach pupils to deal with personal and social problems, stressing the value of work experience and how to make students think as participating citizens of the Philippine democracy and the world community.

3) Educational Criticism writings warn of trends leading to a static society because of failure to fit curriculum to current needs and mistaking book learning for education.

4) Bibliographies were an early contribution and include bibliographies of all sources available in Manila on early postwar economic problems (some 100 items covering the period February to July 1947), of Philippine studies investigations (600 items covering the period of the American occupation up to 1946) and Philippine education (more than 6,000 items covering the pre-Spanish period to 1947).

5) Additional Articles discuss measures to make education more relevant to present-day living, teachers better prepare to teach, and the need for research in Philippine education.

In 1947 and 1948 his column entitled "What Do You Think?" was a regular feature of Women’s Home Journal, the official organ of the National Federation of Women’s Clubs.

ORATA is a member of the American Educational Research Association, the Society

For the Study of Education, the John Dewey Society and the Southeast Asia Institute. He was founder and the first president of both the Research and Curriculum Development Association of the Philippines and of the Philippine Guidance Association. He has been listed in Who's Who in American Education since 1936, Leaders in Education since 1940, Who's Who in the Philippines since 1941 and in 1970 was named in 2,000 Men of Achievement (World Who's Who). In 1959 his government gave him the Pro-Patria (Rizal) Award, its highest civilian honor.

At the age of 72 ORATA continues energetically to enlist communities to his cause of making education at all levels available to all Filipinos. "There is nothing original in what we have been doing and the way we have been doing it—to give every boy and girl a chance to go to school by bringing the school within walking or easy commuting distance from their homes and enabling them to support the school by helping them and their parents, as part of their education for life, to earn more by improving the productivity of their lots and farms and acquiring new skills," he remarks. "In every instance we have started where the people were, with what they had, with existing school facilities, equipment and personnel. We have taken one step—even half a step—forward at a time. . . solving each problem as it arose and improvising to overcome handicaps." The main thing, he says emphatically, is to start. "With will and good will, plus the necessary amount of effort to bring to actuality what one wills to do, nothing is impossible."

September 1971
Manila

REFERENCES:

Albarracin, N. N. "Private Schools: Today and Tomorrow," The Researcher. University of Eastern Philippines, Samar. August 1968.

Ballesca, Al. "Barrio Book Foundation—A Light in the Darkness," Weekly Nation. Manila. February 19, 1968.

Barrio Book Balita. Quezon City, Philippines. November-December, 1970; May 1, 1971.

Barrio High Schools Bulletin. Urdaneta, Pangasinan, Philippines. November 15, 1967; March-April 1969.

Benitez, P. M. "Education for Our Rural Population," Philippine Journal of Education. Manila. February 1968.

Bernardino, Vitaliano. "The Community College: Its Role, Goals and Curriculum." Paper presented at the First Workshop-Seminar of Officers-in-Charge and Registrars of Community Colleges held at La Carlota City, Negros Occidental, August 17-21, 1970. 5p. (Mimeographed.)

______. "Barrio High School Becoming a Status Symbol—Here to Stay." Closing Address at the 12th Conference of the Philippine Society for Curriculum Development Held at the Philippine Normal College, Manila. June 27-28, 1967. 2p. (Mimeographed.)

Bureau of Public Schools. Bulletin. Manila. No. 8, 1968.

"CARE Turns Over 9,400 Volumes to Barrio High School Group," Evening News. Manila. December 27, 1967.

Carson, A. L. Report on the Urdaneta Community College. August 14, 1967. (Mimeographed.)

______. Reports on a Visit to Dagupan Colleges. August 10, 1967. (Mimeographed.)

Castrence, P. S. "Good Education is Honest Education," Weekly Women's Magazine. Manila. September 13, 1968.

"Civic Action of the Highest Order," The Research Journal. Dagupan City, Philippines: Dagupan Colleges. Vol. 6, no. 4, May 1966.

Daily Mirror. Manila. November 2, December 1, 1967; April 1, July 29, December 16, 1968; January 31, 1969; March 1, 1971.

De la Cruz, Bobby. "A Step Up in Barrio Education," Free World. Manila: U.S. Information Service. May 1968.

Elevazo, A. D. and T. N. Boquiren, eds. Directions For Philippine Education in the Seventies. Manila: Phi Delta Kappa. 1971.

Evening News. Manila. December 27, 1967; January 8, 1968.

Manila Chronicle. November 23, 24, 1966; February 6, June 2, September 13, 14, 23, October 28, November 24, 1967; January 19, 20, February 28, June 6, July 20, 1968.

Manila Daily Bulletin. October 28, 1964; August 4, 1965; January 19, 23, March 21, September 5, 28, November 7, 1966; February 12, 15, April 5, August 2, 23, 30, September 13, October 4, 30, November 6, 23, 27, December 10, 1967; January 9, 25, February 5, May 2, June 7, 16, 17, 19, November 26, December 17, 1968; January 25, 1969.

Manila Times. June 25, October 19, December 7, 1966; May 12, August 10, October 11, November 21, December 7, 10, 1967; January 27, October 22, November 27, 1968; June 11, 1970.

Ohio State University Monthly. Columbus, Ohio. November 1966.

Orata, Pedro T. "Barrio High Schools in the Philippines, Their Philosophy and Motivations," Asia Foundation Program Quarterly. San Francisco, California: Asia Foundation. June 1967.

______. "The Beginnings and Recent Developments of Community Schools." N.d.

(Mimeographed.)

______. "Do Enrollments in Private High Schools Decrease as a Result of the Opening of Barrio High Schools?" N.d., 3p. (Mimeographed.)

______. "Education For Everyone, For Life and Throughout Life: Nine Case Studies on Self-Help Educational Innovations in the Philippines." 1971, 8p. (Mimeographed.)

______. "Educational Innovations for Community Development: Teaching Rural Folk to Help Themselves and Each Other." Paper Prepared for the 11th Annual Conference of the Society for International Development Held in New Delhi. November 14-17, 1969, 10p. (Mimeographed.)

______. Enrollments in Public Barrio High School of the Philippines. Singapore: SEAMEO Regional Innotech Center. 1971. (Mimeographed.)

______. "High School Education for All Filipinos." N.d., 9p. (Mimeographed.)

______. "The Life and Works of Pedro T. Orata." December 31, 1966, 11p. (Mimeographed.)

______. "New Horizons in Education in the 1970's." Paper Read at the Sixth Institute for Key Teacher Educators in Asia. August 21, 1970, 12p. (Mimeographed.)

______. "Pre-School Education for All Filipino Children." N.d, 6p. (Mimeographed.)

______. Presentation Made to Group Discussion. Transcript. Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, Manila. 1971.

______. "Self-Supporting Barrio High Schools in the Philippines: Retrospect and Prospect." Paper Prepared for the Annual Division Superintendents' Convention in Baguio City. May 8-12, 1967. (Mimeographed.)

______. "Urdaneta Community College: A Social Invention," Research Journal. Dagupan City, Philippines: Dagupan Colleges. Vol. 6, no. 4, May 1966.

Ortega, (Msgr.) Daniel. "Public Barrio High Schools, Menace to Private Education," Sentinel. Manila. October 9, 1968.

Patricio, Mario. "One Man's Dream." Philippine Magazine. Manila. March 15, 1969.

Philippines Herald. Manila. October 17, 1967; January 4, 18, 19, February 14, October 22, 1968; May 17, 1970.

Philippine Society for Curriculum Development. Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference. Manila. 1967. (Mimeographed.)

Soriano, Liceria B. The Barrio School and the Objectives of Education. Manila. 1967, 2p. ( Mimeographed.)

Sunday Times Magazine. Manila. December 10, 1967.

Viray, U. P. "Taking a Second Look at the Barrio High School Movement," Philippine Journal of Education. Manila. September 1967.

Interviews with Dr. Orata and persons acquainted with him and his work.

  
 
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