ECOLOGICAL EDUCATION: AN APPROACH OF AN AETA COMMUNITY SCHOOL

Abstract

St. Francis Learning Center Foundation, Inc. is an Aeta Community School run by the Congregation of St. Francis of Immaculate Conception located at Subic, Zambales. They practiced a certain school curriculum that respects the ecological culture of the tribe. They align it to address the needs and enhance the basic skills of the Aeta children that will contribute to their tribe. However, standardization of the curriculum of all schools in the Philippines has been a great challenge for the institution due to limited resources and alignment difficulties that neglected to consider the community needs. This paper provides a review of the importance of Laudato Si’s concept of ecological education vis-a-vis the anthropological, religious, and cultural background of the Aeta tribe. Moreover, this work describes the contemporary curriculum development approaches and possible integration into indigenous practices. The results of this study will greatly contribute to the development of contextualized ecological curriculum. The experimental design referred to as ethnographic was used. Taken together, the findings suggest the importance of the enduring value of education in context, smooth integration of ecological education into our existing curriculum, and offer a new paradigm of understanding curriculum standards based on grassroots needs and resources. These findings add substantially to our understanding of curriculum development that challenges the validity, effectiveness, and relevance of contextualized curriculum as opposed to curriculum standardization that exists in our country.