FEATURE All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Home School By Joy Rojas Philippine Daily Inquirer First Posted 10:28:00 08/24/2008
MANILA, Philippines – At 19, Michael Joshua B. Gemina has accomplished a lot more than most kids his age—or adults twice his age even.
When he was 8, he learned to play the piano and started training in Aikido. The former allowed him to perform with the prestigious Philippine Research for Instrumental Soloists Children’s Orchestra, while the latter saw him become the youngest male black belt in Asia. He also took violin lessons under National Music Competitions for Young Artists winner Gina Medina and was 14 when he began playing the drums. Now a session artist for rock star Barbie Almalbis, Michael plays regularly for Victory Christian Fellowship Ministry in Alabang.
Did we mention that he’s also on a full scholarship at De La Salle University’s College of St. Benilde, where he graduates with a degree in music production come April 2009?
That Michael has been home-schooled for most of his elementary years and all of his high school years explains why. “I am all that I am,” he says. “My parents made deliberate and sacrificial choices for me that they felt were in line with God’s calling on my life. I don’t think I could have taken those extra-curricular activities all at the same time, and still get good academic training, were I not home-schooled.”
Education as Michael knew it changed after Grade 1 when his teacher left midway during the school year to attend to some personal business, a development which his mother Chelo thought was a very abrupt experience for young kids. She was frustrated as well with the way classes were run: “The quality of teachers was extremely far from what I had known it to be as a child. There were many things I observed that didn’t need a Ph.D to address,” she notes. Chelo decided to explore home-schooling, which she learned about in a seminar given by a guest in their church. “The irony,” she says, “was that one of the women looking into this was Michael’s kindergarten teacher who was thinking of home-schooling her daughter!”
Through the years, Michael has gone through a gamut of curricula: In Grade 2, he was enrolled in a correspondence course under A Beka in Florida, USA; a year later, he was under the local home school program The Master’s Academy, and a year after that, he was educated with Bob Jones University Press books. From fifth grade till his high school, it was the Sonlight curriculum for him, a rich and advanced program which fosters a love for reading and enhances writing skills.
Chelo, a long-time ballet teacher and a former English teacher at her alma mater, the University of the Philippines, and in De La Salle University’s main campus, taught Michael at home everyday, from 9 a.m. till about 3 in the afternoon. She’s now teacher to her son Nathan, an 11-year-old who is in the fifth grade. Yes, they don’t have to wear uniforms or wake up early to commute, but when home is your school, it’s classes as usual even as most of the country’s students are let off early due to a raging storm. Surprisingly, home-schooling can be as costly as traditional school. The Geminos, who prefer US-based curricula, invest as much as $1,000 for a huge box filled with a schoolyear’s worth of books and materials.
Transitioning from home school to a conventional school can also be a shock to the system. Bea Marquez, who was home-schooled before her elementary years, and in grade 5 and 6 under The Master’s Academy, A Beka, Math-U-See, and Writing Road to Reading curricula, had to get used to deadlines and the discipline of a formal classroom setup. “Once, my cell phone rang during math and I just walked out of the classroom to answer it,” says Bea, now a 16-year-old high school senior at the Southville International School and Colleges. ’It’s a good thing my teacher didn’t notice.” And while parents can choose to home-school their kids, it takes a different level of commitment to do it—the kind that requires you to curb any career plans and exercise the utmost patience and discipline on a child who would rather sleep than study.
Still, the benefits of home-schooling appear to outweigh any of the perceived “hitches” overwhelmingly. Chelo can impart in one to two days what a teacher in a traditional school normally lectures on in a week, “because she has to ensure the understanding of at least 25 children, whereas I only need to address one to two children at a time.”
Matthew Scott “Mash” Maguigad, a 17-year-old high school senior who has been home-schooled since second grade by his mom, with minimum learning requirements given by the Department of Education, likes that he works on his own pace: “Fast for certain subjects, slow for some. But it is my pace.”
And Bea was able to “travel without going through the hassle of catching up with lessons or being absent. I also became a strong-willed person and closer to my family,” she says.
The freedom to focus on what truly interests and matters to a child is another advantage of home-schooling. Like his older brother, Nathan keeps busy after class with piano lessons and soccer practice; Bea also juggled sports (tennis, soccer) and music (piano, violin lessons) when she was home-schooled. “Being home-schooled affords him the time he needs to spend on his craft, which is what he’s really passionate about,” says Miel, whose son Mash is a full scholar of the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Dance School, which is under Ballet Philippines. “People may think ballet is just an extra-curricular activity. To him, it is not. It is his career path.”
Finally, it’s a myth that home-schooled kids lack the socialization that being in a regular school offers. Extra-curricular activities expose them not only to their peers but to people from all walks of life and a world of experiences unmatched by even the best schools in the world. For Michael, who displayed his inclination towards music early in life, watching plays and concerts at the CCP was “normal and frequent. My mom introduced me to theater at the age of 3,” he recalls. “I sat in the third row watching ‘Joseph the Dreamer.’” And when Michael’s dad Gerry opted to go into business, it left him enough time to spend with his eldest son. “We climbed mountains together, biked and watched car races when I got older. My dad is an outdoor person while my mom is into the arts. So I guess you could say I got the best of both worlds.”
Now what parents wouldn’t want that for their kids?
Copyright 2008 Philippine Daily Inquirer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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