What I Learned As A Filipino Mom After Enrolling My Kid In A Special Science Curriculum
The linoleum by our dining table was still sticky from ube halaya crumbs when Kiko dragged his dented plastic storage box out from under the stairs last Saturday. It was one of those weird post-rain afternoons in Metro Manila, the sun breaking through gray clouds just enough to warm the window sill, and my 11-year-old had been digging for 10 minutes looking for his 4th grade science project. “I know it’s here,” he mumbled, socks slipping down his ankles, a hole gaping at the toe of his left one. When he pulled it out, I almost didn’t recognize it: a lumpy solar-powered phone charger wrapped in packing tape, its casing cut from an old 1.5 liter mineral water bottle.
He dragged the small side table to the window, pulled out my beat-up backup phone I keep for emergency texts during brownouts, and plugged the charger in. Two minutes later, the dead red low-battery icon flipped to green. He whooped and fell backwards off his chair, landing on the pile of laundry I’d been folding. “Told you it would work,” he said, grinning up at me. That line got me thinking about all the things people told me before I enrolled him in our division’s special science curriculum two years ago.
Most of the parents at our pedia’s waiting room were talking about entrance exams that year. The neighbor whose husband is an engineer told me he’d paid ₱120,000 for a six-month review course for his oldest, and even then he barely got into the regional science high. My cousin, who teaches at a regular public elementary, shook her head when I said Kiko was applying. “He loves drawing more than he loves memorizing formulas,” she said. “Why put him through all that stress? It’s just for kids who want to be doctors or engineers anyway, you’re gonna burn him out before high school.” I left that conversation with a knot in my stomach. I’d looked at the curriculum guide online, and I knew the stereotype held for a lot of programs: accelerated lessons, hours of homework every night, zero room for anything that wasn’t math or science. But our local public elementary’s program had one thing that caught my eye: half of their grade is based on hands-on projects, not written tests. I figured it was worth a shot. He passed the entrance exam, not at the top of the list, but high enough to get a spot.
The first month was rough. He had two projects due a week, on top of regular homework, and I was staying up late helping him cut cardboard or run to the neighborhood sari-sari for extra tape. I started to think my cousin was right. Then I went to the first school exhibit. His group had done a water quality test of the creek that runs behind our subdivision. They’d gone every afternoon for a week, borrowed testing kits from the local city environment office for free, interviewed the barangay tanod about how often people dump garbage there. Kiko didn’t just make a poster – he drew a whole comic strip showing how dirty water was making the kids who play there sick. He got third place, but he talked about that project for three months. That’s when I realized most of what I’d heard about the special science curriculum here was wrong.
A lot of parents I talk to now ask me if they should have their kid apply, and what they should do to prepare. First off, you don’t need to pay for those expensive review courses. Most entrance tests don’t ask kids to memorize advanced high school science in 5th grade. They test how you solve problems, how you think through a question. Instead of spending six months doing mock tests after school, spend one Saturday a month doing small, cheap projects at home: grow mongo beans in different amounts of light, build a small boat out of recycled plastic to see how much weight it holds, walk around your neighborhood and count how many different types of insects you can find. That builds the exact skills these programs are actually looking for, and it costs almost nothing. The second thing: if your kid gets in, don’t make them quit their other hobbies to “focus on science”. Kiko still spends an hour drawing his comic books every night after homework, and I’ve never made him stop. His teacher even encouraged him to use that skill for school projects, like he did with the water quality comic. A lot of parents I know pull their kid out of basketball or art class the second they get into the program, but that defeats the whole point: the best science projects come from connecting what you love to what you’re learning.
It’s not all good, of course. There’s still way more pressure than there should be. Last month Kiko had a big unit test, stayed up until 10 PM studying, and got an 88. He came home crying because the kid next to him got a 96 and said 88 was too low for a special science student. I sat with him on the couch eating vanilla sorbetes from the cart that stops by our gate, and then I emailed his adviser the next day. We worked out a small adjustment: Kiko can turn in projects one day late if he needs extra time to work on them slowly, and I don’t check the online grade portal anymore – I only look at his report card at the end of the quarter. That took a lot of pressure off both of us.
Kiko’s already talking about modifying his old solar charger to charge our small electric fan during the next brownout – we’ve had three in the last month, and it’s been miserable. He’s asking me to take him to the hardware store tomorrow to buy a bigger battery. I still worry some days. I worry that the pressure will get to him, that I pushed him into something he doesn’t really want. I know it’s not the right fit for every kid: if your kid would rather spend all their time writing poetry or practicing basketball, that’s fine, a regular curriculum gives them more time to do that. But for Kiko, it’s worked. He doesn’t even want to be an engineer yet – he still says he wants to draw comics for a living. But now he draws comics about solar power and clean water, and he gets excited when he can figure out how to fix something broken around the house. It’s not the status symbol some parents make it out to be. It’s just a different way of learning, and right now, that’s enough for us.
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