Not many teachers would use a farm as an educational tool for grade school children, but Preciosa Soliven, PhD, is no ordinary teacher. As the founding president of OB (Operation Brotherhood) Montessori Centre, which operates five schools in and around Manila in the Philippines, she motivates children to develop into self-dependent adults from the age of three.
“The Montessori system of education is based on the premise that children have absorbent minds, and the most receptive stage is from the age of three to six,” she explained.
“As early as three years old, children are given hundreds of exercises each year to train them in independence. These exercises are divided into practical life, such as washing their own handkerchiefs, sweeping the floor, setting the dining table, and caring for their own potted plants; sensorial exercises, or activities that use the senses to help develop the child’s mind; language and mathematics; and cultural arts that include botany, zoology, history and geography.”
During a visit to her main school in Greenhills, I watched as five-year-old children pinpointed the various continents and countries on the globe and named the different parts of a flower and a tree. By grade school they know the function of each part, and as they move up to high school they learn to propagate plants by tissue culture. I, myself did not learn botany until I was in college, and in the Philippines as in Thailand, tissue culture is taught in university, and only as part of courses for those studying to be horticulturists.
The school has a demonstration farm where children are taken on field trips or camping to learn how to mix soil and organic matter, and pot ornamental plants as part of their hands-on training. Many of the students, especially in Greenhills, are the children and grandchildren of the elite in Philippine society, but they don’t mind them dirtying their hands, potting plants and learning a meaningful lifelong hobby, if not occupation.
Set up in 1998 at Alfonso, Cavite, some two hours’ drive south of Manila, the farm is modelled on His Majesty the King of Thailand’s vision of a self-sufficient farm. Formerly the Philippine’s representative to the Paris-based United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) and a member of its executive board, Mrs Soliven visited agricultural farms in various countries including Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands and the US, but liked the Royal Project’s agricultural experimental station in Doi Ang Khang, Chiang Mai, so much that she decided to set up a farm inspired by it.
According to His Majesty’s theory, a farmer who owns 15 rai can grow enough food to feed his family by dividing his land into three parcels of 4.5 rai — for rice fields, for vegetable plots and fruit orchards, and for ponds or reservoirs. The remaining 1.5 rai of land can then be used as a residential area.
Starting with 11.5 hectares, which was later expanded to 16, the OB Montessori’s school farm has all of the above, and more. Mrs Soliven’s vision of a complete farm includes camping facilities, hiking trails and obstacle courses for students; fish and shrimp ponds; an aviary containing pheasants, guinea fowls and pigeons; a pen where American mallards lay and hatch eggs; an orchidarium; a fern spore room for propagating endangered native species of ferns; and plant nurseries.
Free-range chickens and sheep add colour to the farmhouse’s gardens. Trees, shrubs, flowering plants and vegetables are properly labelled to familiarise students and visitors with the common and scientific names of plants.
The farm has been visited by legions of schoolchildren and parents from other schools as well, and has become a case study for agricultural schools and universities in the Philippines. Tourists visiting the famous Taal Volcano in Tagaytay, which is nearby, have come to stay at the farm’s campsite, learning about farming, and fishing in its ponds.
This inspired Mrs Soliven to develop the farm into a botanical garden and farm resort, complete with conference facilities and houses with Thai, Indonesian and Japanese motifs.
During the launch of the Preziosa Botanic Garden and Farm Resort, which coincided with the celebration of Mrs Soliven’s 77th birthday last month, guests marvelled at the beautifully landscaped gardens, the vegetable plots and flower beds, plant nurseries and fruit trees, many of which came from Thailand.
Bountiful crop: An array of produce harvested from the Montessori demonstration farm.
Path to prosperity: The Montessori school, transformed into a botanical garden.
On display and sale at the reception area was an array of the vegetables, fruits and potted herbs and ornamental plants grown on the farm.
A frequent visitor to Thailand, Mrs Soliven has unwittingly served as the Kingdom’s goodwill ambassador to the Philippines through her farm. As a botanical garden, it has taken on a new mission to conserve native flora, but has not lost its royal Thai concept of self-sufficiency and its primary role of teaching schoolchildren economic independence through agriculture.
Camping on the farm and learning how to plant may not make children aspire to become farmers, but the experience and knowledge they gain will remain with them forever. It might even inspire them to grow their own garden crops later in life, if not now. n
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