Chapter VII: Of faults against academic discipline and means of checking them (5)

The studious youth who saw in the new center of teaching the glorious future which invited them by the golden laurels of learning, came in crowds to fill the cloisters of the new university, which, narrow and reduced for containing within their halls so many young men desirous of learning and instruction, begged the aid of another institution which should share with the university in the task of the teacher. The time urged, the necessity was pressing, there was no time to think of the construction of a new edifice for circumstances did not permit it. Then there was fitted up as a college the school of primary instruction instituted by the illustrious Spaniard, Don Gerónimo Guerrero, of glorious memory, whose name should pass to posterity so that he may be blessed eternally by Spaniards and Filipinos, since he dedicated his wealth, his labors, and his care to their instruction and education, not only instructing them in the primary letters, but also supporting them and clothing them with his own resources and with the alms which other charitable persons who were desirous of contributing in so deserving a work gave him. The efforts of that remarkable Spaniard deserved the protection of the government of the mother country and the support of the Council of Indias. The king remunerated them by granting him an encomienda in Ilocos as an aid in that blessed establishment, and God rewarded it by conceding him the religious vocation which induced him to take the habit in the order of the Dominican fathers. He ceded to the latter his schoolhouse, his encomienda, and all his goods, with the sole condition that the said fathers were to take charge of the gratuitous education and teaching of the poor Spanish and native boys. The condition having been accepted by the Dominican fathers the schoolhouse of the worthy Spaniard and now virtuous religious was erected into a college under the advocacy of San Juan de Letrán, July 18, 1640, by license from the governor-general and from the archbishop. Since that college was a school, it had also as its object the elemental instruction and education of abandoned and poor children, in order to make of them good citizens and excellent military men for the defense of the plaza of Manila, and the colony. Erected into a college, the students continued therein the study of philosophy, theology, and canons, in order that those who showed aptitude and merited that dignity, might be ordained as priests. Later, all the young men who cared to devote themselves to the study of secondary education were admitted as pensioned inmates. At the end of that course, and after they had taken their degree, they went to the university of Santo Tomás to take up the higher branches. The above-mentioned college was always very useful and commendable. A blessed asylum in its origin, it has always been until today the institution of secondary teaching in which the Dominican fathers, subjecting themselves rigorously to the urgent, although ancient plan of studies, have been able to mold themselves to the peculiar capacity of the natives, directing with exquisite prudence, their native qualities to the professional studies which most harmonize with them.

Thus, in proportion as the necessities for education were exacting, the monastic orders, ever attentive to every movement which could be of interest to the colony, continued to create centers of instruction: the Jesuit fathers in the Ateneo and in the normal school in Manila; the Dominicans in the university, Letrán, and Dagupan; the Franciscans, in Camarines; the Augustinian Recollects, in Negros; the calced Augustinians founded in Iloilo colleges of secondary education directed by themselves, which promised to be the dawn of a new era of civilization and culture, if the last Indian rebellion, provoked by the obstinate governors and supported by the Americans had not caused its ruin with a secular work, the wonder of the world, with the colleges, with the Spanish domination, with the country, and with all the existing things gained quietly yet at the cost of great hardships, and of enormous sacrifices in self-denial and virtue. [108]

The weak sex also were attended to according to their merits by the religious orders. From before the middle of the eighteenth century dates the institution of the school of Santa Rosa, or of Mother Paula, as its foundress was called. She was a religious of the tertiary branch of St. Dominic, who went from Cataluña to Manila to consecrate herself to the welfare of her own class. Having arrived at Manila, she saw that the greatest benefit which her flaming charity could produce was the education and instruction of the young Indian women. In reality, she labored with pious and burning zeal, until she obtained a house, in which she made the foundation of the beaterio school in which the young Indian women received a Christian education. In the holy fear of God, they learned the doctrine and exercised themselves in the labors peculiar to their sex, in order to later dedicate themselves to God and to the moral education of their sex, or to become married, in which estate they gave application and example of the excellent maxims and sane principles which they learned from their glorious foundress. Mother Paula endured many persecutions which she suffered with resignation and patience. She gave her name to the beaterio, which continued as an educational institution and as a retreat for the girls who desired to embrace it temporarily.

Before the beaterio of Santa Rosa, or of Mother Paula, was founded that of Santa Catalina de Sena. The former was the complement of the latter, which in its beginning only took charge of the education of young Spanish women, It is said that its foundation was due to a certain number of women of the tertiary branch of St. Dominic who retired to a house in order to devote themselves to pious exercises, and from which they went out only to hear mass. Others attribute the foundation of that beaterio school in 1696 to the solicitude of Mother Francisca del Espiritu Santo, and to the reverend father, Fray Juan de Santo Domingo. The illustrious author, Fray Joaquin Martinez de Zúñiga, recognizes as foundress of that beaterio in 1694, Doña Antonia Esguerra, but from any of those three opinions which we follow it will always result that the said beaterio school of Santa Catalina de Sena was dedicated from its beginning to the education and teaching given by women religious to the Spanish girls primarily, and admitted afterwards into its classes Indian and mestizo girls. All learned to read, write, reckon, and the work peculiar to their sex.

The prodigious increase of the Filipino population and of the general prosperity of the country, and even more the advanced extension made by culture in all social classes made the above-mentioned beaterio schools insufficient, and, just as other monastic orders came to the aid of the Dominican fathers when the needs of the times demanded it, so also, the sisters of charity came to the aid of the tertiary mothers, and founded the schools of Luban and Concordia in Manila, in Tuguegarao, Pangasinan, Camarines, Iloilo, Cebú, and Ilocos-Sur.

The monastic orders, charged with the superior rule of almost all the literary profession, directors of the scientific movement of the country, could not have forgotten one class of the greatest utility at any time of the scarcity of religious, although it never corresponded as it ought to the desires of its professors, or to that which the high spiritual interests of the Church and of the faithful demanded and hoped from it. The bishops of the country all proceeding from the monastic cloisters founded the conciliar seminaries directed by religious of all the orders, in which the native clergy was educated, instructed, and formed, as an aid to the regular clergy in the beginning, and as parish priests and administrators after the missions and ministries surrendered to the miters by the religious orders.

All the above-mentioned centers of education gave a suitable increase for the end for which they were created. All attained in a short time so high a degree of splendor, that but seldom or never is seen in cultured Europa. They counted their regular pupils by hundreds, and their day pupils by thousands. The confidence of the families in the solid instruction and morality of the religious professors, in the method and facility in the explanation by expert professors who knew the qualities and defects of the scholars, and even the language of the country, and in the moral and religious regimen to which they rigorously submitted both regular and day pupils contributed to so happy a result.

With respect to the condition of education in the last third of the past century, some affirm that it was highly satisfactory, while others have asserted that its backward state and abandonment were pitiful. If we consider that the courses were made, if not by the rule of the statutes approved by the general government of the colony, October 20, 1786, at least by a plan of almost as respectable an antiquity, the secondary and university education had to result as deficient for modern times. If we add the small capacity of the Indians for the sciences, the chronological defects will show up more clearly through the little gain of the scholars in spite of the enlightened efforts of the eleven doctors, and eighteen licentiates of the royal and pontifical university of Santo Tomás.

As if led by the hand we have now come to touch upon one of the Filipino problems discussed so often and with so great heat, and yet without result to the satisfaction of all. We speak of the aptitude and capacity of the Indians for the letters and sciences.

Has the Filipino Indian that aptitude and sufficiency?

Before entering fully upon the question, we ought to advise that we have lived in several Visayan villages for the space of twenty-three years; that we speak the language fluently; that, as a parish priest, we have necessarily had among our duties to treat with Indians of all social classes, from the most enlightened to the rudest; that we have merited their confidence; that we have studied them and observed them at their domestic fireside and in public life; that we know their customs, their passions, their defects, and their good qualities. And if all this, and much more which we could add, is not sufficient to form an exact and definite judgment on the nature of the Indian, we will say that we have consulted the experience of our predecessors, and the parish-priest religious brothers of the habit, friends, and associates who took part in the sacred ministry in villages of other provinces, and we have found our opinions upon this particular in accord with their more valuable opinions. We will say also, in order that our opinion may not be censured as partial, that by the divine grace we wear the habit of our glorious founder, St. Augustine, the wisest and most universal of the holy fathers, the great figure of the fourth century, the wonderful ancient author, the admiration of the moderns, from whom we have inherited our love for study and the sciences, which with prayer and contemplation constitute the foundation and essence of our institute, as it was founded by a saint consecrated all his life to letters and converted to the faith by means of a book: Tolle lege; tolle, lege. [109] Lastly, we advise that the Order of St. Augustine, to which I have the good fortune to belong, also built a school in Iloilo, dedicated to secondary education, in which it spent huge sums to make it the equal of the best schools of Europa.

Now then, having set forth these preliminaries, we enter upon the question. More than two centuries ago, the university and the colleges of San José, and San Juan de Letrán, in Manila, opened their halls to the Filipino youth. The Indians annually matriculated by thousands in the various courses which were taught by erudite professors. How many scientific notabilities have resulted from the natives up to the present from the university cloisters? How many Indian theologues, canons, philosophers, moralists [have graduated] from the conciliar seminaries? Not even one by exception, which usually is found in any general rule. At the most we have heard of some good advocate, of some regular theologue, of some mediocre canon, of some advanced pharmacist, or of some clever physician. But those whom we can consider as exceptions to the rule, never reach the top rank of their equals in other countries. This lack is not attributed to the professors, for they were always picked men, and in the university of Manila, the present bishop of Oviedo, Señor Vigil, his Excellency, the lately deceased Cardinal Ceferino, the archbishop of Manila, Father Nozaleda, the illustrious Father Orias, and very many other Dominican fathers who were the honor of their order, of their country, and of all the monastic orders, shone pre-eminently for their learning. We recognize more sufficiency in the European mestizo and the Sangley or Chinese mestizo, than in the pure-blooded Indian; and the mestizos of those races are the ones who distinguish themselves, some notably, as authors, advocates, physicians, canons, and among other literary professions, in which not one single pure-blooded Indian has been found. What does this signify, if not that the deficiency exists in the race, and not in the professors or in the books. [110]

When we have tried to demonstrate to them some abstract truth, a mystery, a catholic dogma, some philosophical thesis, with the greatest simplicity, clearness, and precision, we have observed that the attention of the Indian, excited and sustained at the beginning, gradually diminished, his eyes wandered, his distraction was manifest. Giving another turn and another form to the exposition, we have succeeded in awakening those sleepy or tired minds, but always for only a few moments. By one example we obtain more than by the most exact dissertations, and by the most clear explanations; for their childish minds, their excessively acute sensibility needs something palpable to bring some light to the darkness of their understandings. We have observed that phenomenon also in the rude as well as the instructed Indians who had learned to reason by logic, and have cultivated the mind by study as far as their mental strengths can go. It must be inferred then that the Filipino Indian is a grown-up child. As a child he cannot go beyond the elemental in the sciences, for his most limited understanding cannot mount in its flight to the heights of the metaphysical. Examples, similes, and metaphors are the indirect means to make him understand the intangible, the spiritual, and the abstract. There can be no luminous philosophical dissertations, or brilliant theories, or abstruse problems, but examples, many examples to make him perceive the truth and the essence of things, causing him to touch, feel, and perceive, with eyes, ears, touch, and the other bodily senses.

There have not been lacking those who have attributed the incapacity and insufficiency of the Indians to intellectual laziness which corresponds to the laziness peculiar to an equatorial country, where the burning rays of fiery sun enervates the physical and intellectual forces. We neither affirm nor deny this, since it might well happen that the Indians possess, like children, in the beginning in potentiality intellectual faculties in their germ equal and even superior to those of the white race, but we incline to the belief that the Indian of pure blood can never reach in scientific culture to the level of the European. If he ever attains anything in the field of science, it must be because another blood inoculates in his own blood the divine breath of wisdom, and then he will be able to advance somewhat when the cross whitens his olive-colored face, has lowered his prominent cheek-bones, and elevated his flat nose a trifle. Until that time comes, the Indian will always be a grown-up child, as simple, as ignorant, and as credulous as a child, but with all the passions, vices, and defects of the adult.

"In regard to the nature and understanding of the Indians," says Retana, "speaking in general, they are more clever than the American Indians. [111] They readily learn any art, and with the same readiness they imitate any work which is placed before them. They make fine clerks and are employed in the accounting offices and other offices in that duty. For, besides the fact that they write well, they are excellent accountants, have capacity for directing a lawsuit, and very sharp in getting the parties to the lawsuit all tangled up. There are good stonemasons, and musicians among them. But in all these things, they only reach a certain degree which they never surpass, either because of laziness, or for the lack of intellect, which we must suppose to be sufficiently limited. For they never invent anything, and all is reduced to their skill of imitation. Those who give themselves to the sciences never surpass a mediocrity in their comprehension.

"He who has had to do with the Indians of Filipinas can do no less than assent to this truth. We find them more clever than ourselves in learning any mechanical work, but more stupid in whatever depends upon the understanding or on the imagination. In so brief a time do they learn the trade of artists, musicians, embroiderers, cobblers, tailors, and whatever is reduced to the mechanical, that they exercise it fairly well in little time. If they are not satisfied with it, they readily give it up and learn another trade. There are Indians who have gone through all those trades, and they have filled them all well. But not one of them has ever surpassed mediocrity. There has never been an artisan who has invented any improvement in the trade which he learned. They are most ingenious in imitating what they see, but they never invent anything. If those men had the talents of Europeans, why is it possible that one cannot find in three hundred years one who has added anything to what was taught him?

"I can affirm of the Filipinos with whom I have lived for more than sixteen years, that they are handy in every kind of mechanism which is shown to them. They are capable of imitating the most curious works, but they can invent nothing, for they lack imagination and fancy, and are very obtuse in the abstract sciences because they lack understanding.

"Some try to attribute this to the subordination in which the Spaniards hold them. I will ask such people why does not that subordination and submission prevent them from making any mechanical work with a sufficient perfection? The soldiers learn the military exercise quicker than do the Spaniards; the children learn to read readily; most of them write an excellent hand. The girls easily imitate the laces and embroideries of Europa. Why do they not imitate equally well our philosophers, our mathematicians, and our poets? Why do they not make any advance in painting, in music, and in the other sciences which require imagination and understanding? [112] More than half of the seculars of the Manila archbishopric are Indians. There are some who have become alcaldes-mayor, officers in the royal army, and advocates in the royal Audiencia. Why have none of them gone beyond a very moderate mediocrity in the sciences to which they have dedicated themselves? Just as among Europeans individuals are found for all kinds of abstract sciences, it must be confessed that in the same manner nations are found who, because of the climate in which they have lived for a long series of generations, have contracted a certain tangency of understanding which disposes them very little to receive metaphysical and spiritual ideas." [113]

This gives us the key to the fatal results obtained in education in Filipinas. Of the hundreds of students who matriculated annually in the colleges, fifteen per cent did not succeed in obtaining the degree of bachelor, and if those who gained a professional title in the university scarcely reached ten per cent, and of them the greater number were advocates without clients, and physicians without patients, they, united with those who abandoned their books and mutilated their career, were in the villages the greatest calamity that befell the country. They all pompously called themselves pilósopos for filósofos [i.e., philosophers], and they were no more than ignorant and presuming fellows, pettifoggers, intriguers, and lazy, haughty, and vain fellows, who neither could nor would work, or aid their parents in work or trade, but could dress as those in Manila, prink themselves out like women, censuring everything, even the religious acts, in order that they might be esteemed sages. They were, through their vices, a grievous weight to the parish priests; by their laziness and viciousness, an insupportable burden to their families; by their lewdness and intrigues the mine which furnished suits to the lawyers, and for the disaffected and filibuster, as they were almost all of them affiliated with freemasonry, a danger to the government and to the nation. [114] All those evil students learned all the evil of the capitals and laden with vices, evil ideas, and morals, they were in the villages a scandal for the majority, a snare for some, and mischievous for all.

"Those deserters from the university," says Escosura, "half instructed with incomplete notions of the sciences which, belonging to the superior education, require to be studied by persons of consideration and social prestige, and above all to be upright, in order that they may not be dangerous to the public safety; those deserters from the university form, I repeat, a class in Filipinas, and are, above all, insatiable leeches who devour the substance of the Indians, so many other founts of lawsuits and quarrels among their fellowcitizens."

Perhaps I shall be asked at this point: "Why since you [religious] see and know all this, why did your religious devote themselves to, and encourage, education?" Because it is very difficult to separate oneself from the influence of the time; for it is impossible to oppose the conquering current of opinion, as the monastic orders of Filipinas did not arrange means to free themselves from the pressure of the government, and to reply to the unjust charge of having retrograded, which those who did not know the country even on the map fulminated against them; and lastly to avoid greater evils. The regular province of the Augustinian fathers was the last to devote itself to superior education among the Indians. When did it do that, and why? When Señor Becerra was minister of the colonies in the years 1887 and 1888, and that minister of sad memory planned an official institute in the capital of Iloilo, the Augustinian fathers saw in the plan of the minister a most grave danger for the country, and they went ahead to ward it off. All we parish-priest regulars of Filipinas saw with pain the advances which freemasonry was making in the country by means of the abandoned advocates and physicians, unfit students, ambitious caciques, wealthy fellows, ruined by their vices or by play--we know the works of the spade against the foundation of Spanish domination which were based on religion, prestige, and superiority of race. We all recognized and experienced the apathy and indifference of the authorities who were not ignorant of the frauds and plans of the lodges; and there were even governors of the provinces who protected them. And if to all that which we knew, recognized, and could not remedy, we had consented that Señor Becerra establish in Iloilo an institute of secondary education with professors who might have been freemasons or atheists, the catastrophe would have been certain and imminent, for such institute would be a seeding place for filibusters and insurgents. In order to avoid that, the Augustinian order planned and constructed at its own expense an edifice which it resolved to dedicate as an institute. That could not be carried out, for the last revolution of '98 came upon them before it was inaugurated.

More beneficial for the country, more in accordance with the monastic traditions, more in harmony with the recommendations of our glorious founder, which were practiced by our virtuous ancestors, would have been the opening of schools of arts and crafts. In reality, although the Spanish government established a few of those schools in Manila, Pampanga, and Iloilo, it was so unseasonable that it was unable to gather the fruits which were promised in their founded hopes. Such is the scarcity of Indian artists and artisans, that of the former there are a few sculptors, engravers, and painters, etc., but of the latter, we can assert that almost all the trades are in the hands of the Chinese, and only carpentry, cabinet-making, architecture, masonry, and some other trades, are exercised by Indians, to whom the parish-priest religious taught them because they needed them for their works and constructions.

It is known that the ancient monks divided their time among prayer, contemplation, study, and manual work. St. Anthony [115] and his five thousand monks, as well as all those who afterward imitated the monastic life or that of the desert, employed part of their day in labor with their hands, weaving mats, making shoes, oars, boats, or small skiffs, and other similar labors. Our father, St. Augustine, desired his monks to also devote some hours of the day to manual labor. Accordingly, our predecessors did it. It is true, that the spirit of the respective epochs changed the character of the bodily work, but the monastic corporations of Filipinas, which recognized the incapacity of the Indian for science and deplored the pernicious effects of science poorly digested by the natives, if they could not do away with the action of the governments, the influence of opinion, the pressure of the times, would have had to turn aside, by means of their parish-priest religious, the tendency of the Indians to the literary branches, and to have directed that tendency to those branches of pure imitation, for which it is necessary to recognize, and we do that gladly, that the Filipino Indian has exceptional abilities. At the same time that the university was founded, and the colleges provided, schools and workshops ought to have been established for the natives, which would have obtained the preference in those narrow, dull, and lazy minds, with greater benefits to the country and less harm to all. All the monasteries founded by St. Basil the Great [116] had in charge an elementary superior school, and another of arts and crafts joined to it. That ought to be the model of the religious orders in Filipinas, in spite of the governments of the mother country, of the demands of opinion manifestly gone astray on this point, and of the spirit of the epoch which could not have any influence in that country, most especially by their constitution, nature, customs, and government. Had the religious corporations, thoroughly permeated with their Christian and civilizing mission, proceeded in that manner, the contingent of sons with the three pointed design of the square and apron, [117] who left the halls of the colleges and became the petty leaders and chief revolutionists who betrayed the mother country and were also the greatest enemies of those who had taught them the little good that they knew, would not have been so numerous.

The cholera, which made ravages in the Filipino Archipelago in 1882, left in the saddest orphanage many children of both sexes and of all the races. They, abandoned, and without resources, wandered through the streets begging public charity. The Spanish women, moved by the disconsolate spectacle, which so many ragged and hungry children offered, formed a society, from which a committee was chosen, which went to the governor-general to beg for food and shelter for those abandoned children. The governor summoned the provincials of the monastic order, as being the natural protectors of the destitute, and creators of the centers of education and learning in the country. He petitioned them for support and aid. The father provincial of the Augustinians, representing his order, took under charge of the province of Santísimo Nombre de Jesús, the support, education, and teaching of the abandoned and orphaned children. The Augustinian fathers assigned for that purpose local sites provisionally in the avenue of San Marcelino, where they gathered the children who were wandering through the city of Manila, and gave them shelter in the temporary barracks. But since the latter had no hygienic conditions, and were not large enough, they transferred the children to the lower parts of the convent of Guadalupe, which were spacious and well ventilated. There they opened workshops of sculpture and ceramics, painting, and modeling, and there they remained until the year 1892, when the schools, workshops, and children were transferred to the building of the new plant constructed for that purpose in the village of Malabon. That place united all the desirable conditions of solidity, decoration, size, and even elegance, which could be desired. There the Augustinian fathers taught the orphans, in addition to their primary letters, painting, designing, sculpture, and modeling, printing, and binding, and indeed the printing plant was bought by the voluntary donation of some religious, through the economies practiced in the missions by dint of privations and of a life of poverty and mortification. We know one of those religious, respectable for his exemplary virtue, who gave for that purpose all his savings, consisting of two thousand pesos. We feel that his humility has prohibited us from placing his name here, so that he may be blessed by all who should hear of a charity and liberality peculiar to the sons of a St. Augustine, who gave even his death-bed to the poor, and suitable also to those of Santo Tomás de Villanueva, father of the poor. That asylum of the orphans, and of the unfortunates abandoned by its founders who had to flee from the ingratitude of the revolutionists, was burned by the shells which the Americans threw to dislodge the Indian rebels who had made forts of it, and being looted afterward by pillaging Chinese who took away even the paving-stones of the lower floor, a cargo of which was surprised by the North American police in the Pasig River, and returned to the Augustinian fathers--the only indemnity which they have received up to date.

The Augustinian fathers also extended their charity to orphan girls. For that purpose they caused sisters of their tertiary branch to go from the Peninsula, who took charge of the education and instruction of the children in the orphanage that was built in Mandaloya at the expense of the said Augustinian fathers. More than three hundred Indian mestizo and Spanish girls received a fine education there, so much so that their work in embroidery, sewing, and the manufacture of artificial flowers, took the prize in the expositions at Madrid and Manila.

So excellent and fine was the education that the orphan girls received in Mandaloya, that it was necessary to accede to the repeated requests of influential families who begged that the Augustinian tertiary mothers receive as pensioners the daughters of many Peninsulars and Spanish mestizos.

EDUCATION SINCE AMERICAN OCCUPATION

It is the chief glory of American connection with the Philippines, that no sooner was their easy conquest an assured fact, than attention was directed toward the education of the peoples who thus came under the control of the western democracy. In spite of the more than three centuries of Spanish rule, although many measures had been dictated by the government and by the religious orders, although the college of San José, the Dominican university of Santo Tomás, the college of San Juan de Letran, and various other institutions had flourished for the greater or less part of Spanish domination, and especially, although the active government measures, beginning with the memorable decree of December 20, 1863, had induced a wider result in primary instruction, the educational methods in force in the islands were antiquated, often without result, and narrowing, and to a certain degree tended to shackle rather than to free the mind. The best work was done by the Jesuits who had adopted the most progressive methods used in the islands during Spanish occupancy. The religious orders are not without praise for having established, as early as they did, educational institutions where some Filipinos could, to a certain extent, take on the advantages of the occidental polish and education which Spain had to offer. But it must be remembered that Spain itself has never, since the early days when the great Salamanca University flourished as one of the most advanced outposts of education in the world, been renowned as a center of learning. Hence, it may be said, whatever the cause for its deficiency, that Spain gave to the Philippines the best that it had in the way of education; with the reservation that the remoteness of the colony from the mother country gave opportunity for neglect and carelessness on the part of both official and ecclesiastic, and for the furthering of private or corporation ends, at the expense of and detriment to the colony. Quite apparently, a country cannot give to a colony what it does not itself possess. Had Spain possessed a more modern and effective system of education, doubtless the same would have been true in the Philippines. To determine the reason for the backwardness of education in the islands, therefore, one must examine the causes for its poor condition in Spain, and the two will be found in great measure to be the same. The root of the matter will be found in the close connection between Church and State--this connection dating back in greatest measure to 1493, when the ecclesiastical patronage of the Spanish monarch became a settled fact, and Church and State were irrevocably bound together--and a misconception as to where the educational function primarily resides--which we take to be a function of government.

We cannot, in the short compass allowed, enter into the discussion of the factors involved, the most important of which is the question of the friar orders and the transference of their power in greater proportion even than in Spain, into the Philippines. Suffice it to say here that those who would blame the friar orders exclusively for the backward state of the Philippines in education as in other things, go astray; and the same is equally true of those who would excuse them altogether. The same remark holds true of the government. Both the religious orders, or even more broadly, the entire ecclesiastical government, and the civil government, are to be reproached for the deplorable condition of Philippine education.

It is the results of the pre-American education that allows the following to be said: "The party which follows the intellectual leadership of Leon Guerrero (director of El Renacimiento) is quietly resisting what they call the 'Anglo-Saxonization' of their people through the schools. These men are really Spanish at heart (the older, mostly so in blood), and they have a Spanish-Latin feeling of hostility to the very name of 'Anglo-Saxon.' They prefer Latin education and educational methods, and Latin molds of civilization. Where they go astray is in their assumption, entirely gratuitous, that they really represent the Filipino people and Filipino ways of thought, desires and aspirations which are to be 'squelched' by this new campaign of instruction in English. Now, superficially, there are little evidences to corroborate this view, as would be inevitable, as the results of three centuries of tutelage according to Spanish models. But the man who looks beneath the surface sees at once that the Filipinos are not 'Latins' and were not 'Latinized,' and that these intellectual Latins, floating at the top of Filipino society are as mistaken as can be in assuming that they are representative of their people. The truth is, the Filipinos, in the mass, are, as regards the purposes of any real education, virgin material to work upon. Not only has their national and social life not been cast over in Latin molds, but Spanish influence was just sufficient, added to their undeveloped state at the time of the conquest, so that there are no 'Filipino molds' of civilization. They are really just ready to be worked upon, and whatever fundamental elements of 'Filipino nationality' there are latent, whatever inherent or acquired social traits properly constituting a 'Filipino soul,' will come to the front with this new opportunity." [118]

It is impossible to give a comprehensive résumé of American efforts toward the education of the Filipinos. The captious critic will emphasize the mistakes which have been made and which will be made in the future, and it is yet perhaps too early to make a pronounced statement as to the results; but this much may be said, and in no spirit of American self-congratulation, namely, that the Filipino is at present enjoying the greatest opportunity that has ever been offered to him to acquire an education. The chief problem of the Philippines has well been said to be that of education. [119] Chief among future developments must be industrial education, which will not only train rightly the great dexterity of the Filipino, but also teach him the dignity of work with the hands, whatever his rank or station, and thus help to fit him for, and hasten the time when he shall enjoy greater self-government than he enjoys at present.

Below we give the direct available sources for a study of American education in the Philippines, from which the student may be able to study the question in its many phases. It is to be noted that a study of the present-day education in the islands must always be made hand-in-hand with that of the past. As might be expected, the majority of such sources are government documents.

Public Laws and Resolutions passed by the United States Philippine Commission (published by authority of the U. S. Philippine Commission, Manila). The various volumes of these laws contain the following acts concerned with education (number of act and date alone being given).

1900--3, Sept. 12; 4, Sept. 12; 11, Oct. 3; 15, Oct. 10; 32,
Oct. 24. 1901--69, Jan. 5 (accompanied later in vol. by arguments
of Dr. T. H. Pardo de Tavera and others against the rector of the
university of Santo Tomás, and the Roman Catholic Church, in regard
to the college of San José; and appearing also in Senate doc.,
no. 190, 56th Congress, 2d session); 74, Jan. 21; 93, Mar. 4;
97, Mar. 9; 110, Mar. 30; 129, May 16; 156, July 1; 163, July
13; 180, July 24; 201, Aug. 13; 222, Sept. 6; 228, Sept. 7; 239,
Sept. 25; 248, Oct. 2; 264, Oct. 14; 285, Oct. 29; 291, Nov. 2;
311, Dec. 4. 1902--330, Jan. 9; 339, Jan. 28; 373, Mar. 7; 407,
May 24; 415, June 9; 446, Aug. 15; 453, Oct. 8; 490, Oct. 27; 512,
Nov. 10; 514, Nov. 11; 524, Nov. 18; 532, Nov. 24; 563, Dec. 22;
565, Dec. 22. 1903--600, Jan. 27; 661, Mar. 5; 672, Mar. 7; 682,
Mar. 14; 686, Mar. 17; 734, April 8; 744, April 8; 795, July
23; 807, July 27; 810, July 30; 832, Aug. 12; 837, Aug. 24; 846,
Aug. 24; 854, Aug. 26; 858, Aug. 27; 880, Sept. 10; 904, Sept. 25;
917, Oct. 1; 919, Oct. 2; 997, Nov. 17; 1018, Dec. 2. 1904--1048,
Feb. 6; 1049, Feb. 11; 1057, Feb. 20; 1085, Mar. 10; 1133, Apr. 28;
1175, June 2; 1188, June 29; 1199, July 19; 1216, Aug. 17; 1225,
Aug. 31; 1231, Oct. 14; 1251, Nov. 25; 1275, Dec. 6. 1905--Jan. 12.

Of these the most important is act no. 74 (and its various amendments), establishing a Department of Public Instruction in the Philippines, and appropriating $40,000 for the organization and maintenance of a normal and trade school in Manila, and $15,000 for the organization and maintenance of an agricultural school in the island of Negros, for the year 1901. Many of the acts are appropriations for various purposes. In addition to the above, acts touching archives and laboratories, as well as various other matters, may be considered as having educational value.

Reports of the Philippine Commission (Washington). Of chief value in this publication are the annual reports of the Secretary of Public Instruction, such reports beginning for the year 1902. It is to be noted that these reports contain the following (we cite from the Commission report for 1905, just issued): General report of the secretary of Public Instruction; report of the superintendent of Education; report of the chief of the Bureau of Architecture and Construction of Public Buildings; report of the Public Printer; report of the Bureau of Archives, Patents, Copyrights, etc.; report of the acting librarian of the American circulating Library; report of the editor of the Official Gazette. Special references in the various reports are as follows:

1900--i, pp. 17-42; 1901--i, pp. 133-148, ii, pp. 511-575 (appendix
FF containing Fred W. Atkinson's report); 1902--first annual report
of the Secretary of Public Instruction, year ending Oct. 15, 1902,
ii, pp. 865-1049; 1903--second annual report of the Secretary
of Public Instruction, iii, pp. 667-985; 1900-1903--containing
various general reports for those years, and which occur in the
preceding volumes, pp. 121-129, 257-272, 399-434, and 685-721;
1904--third annual report, etc., iii, pp. 811-971; 1905--fourth
annual report, etc., ending June 30, 1905, iv, pp. 369-652.

In addition to the above much other educational matter will be found scattered through the other volumes for each year. These volumes are also published separately in the Reports of the War Department.

Reports of the Commissioner of Education (Washington). Several of these reports contain matter on the Philippines, as follows:

1899-1900--ii, chap. xxix (in part), pp. 1595-1640, "Intellectual
attainments and education of the Filipinos" (contains some Spanish
data, act. 74, of the Philippine Commission, a bibliography,
and the Tagálog alphabet); 1901--ii, chap. xxix, pp. 1317-1440,
"Present educational movement in the Philippines," by Fred
W. Atkinson; 1902--ii, chap. i, pp. 2219-2271, "Education in
the Philippines;" 1903--chap. xlvi (in part), pp. 2385-2388,
"Education in the Philippines" (taken from report of David
P. Barrows for the year ending Sept. 30, 1903).

Bulletins of the Bureau of Education (Manila, 1904 and 1905), as follows:

No. 1, Philippine Normal School prospectus for the year 1903-4,
(in both English and Spanish); no. 2, Course of study in vocal
music (for vacation normal institutes); no. 3, Philippine School of
Arts and Trades (1904-1905, in both English and Spanish); no. 4,
Philippine Nautical School (prospectus for the year 1904-1905,
in both English and Spanish); no. 5, Notes on the treatment
of Smallpox (for use of teachers); no. 6, Report of Industrial
Exhibits of the Philippine Schools (Louisiana Purchase Exposition);
no. 7, Courses of Instruction for the Public Schools of the
Philippine Islands; no. 8 (?); no. 9, List of Philippine Baptismal
Names; no. 10, Government in the United States (prepared for use
in the Philippine public schools); no. 11, Courses in mechanical
drawing, woodworking, and ironworking for provincial secondary
schools; no. 12, Advanced and postgraduate studies offered by the
Philippine Normal School (preparation for entrance to American
colleges and universities or to the university of the Philippines;
in English and Spanish).

Municipal Code (Manila, 1905). Contains matter on schools, teachers, etc.

Census of the Philippine Islands (Washington, 1905), iii, pp. 638-669, "[Education] under the Americans," by Prescott F. Jernegan, of the Philippine Normal School (a short account through 1903). Also, another division entitled, "Schools: schedule; summary of statistics; classification; buildings; teachers; pupils; sources of revenue; expenditures," pp. 670-694.

Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor. No. 58, May, 1905 (Washington, 1905), pp. 721-905, "Labor Conditions in the Philippines," by Victor S. Clark. Much of this will be found to have a bearing on education.

Books on the Philippines

Atkinson, Fred W.: The Philippine Islands (Ginn and Co., 1905); especially chap. xiv, pp. 373-412, "Education."

Freer, William B.: Philippine experiences of an American teacher (New York, 1906).

LeRoy, James A.: Philippine Life in town and country (New York and London, 1905); especially chap. vii, pp. 202-245, "Education and public opinion." Most of this book has a bearing on educational matters.

Stuntz, Homer C.: The Philippines and the Far East (Cincinnati and New York); especially chap. xii, pp. 185-215, "Educating a nation."

Willis, Henry Parker: Our Philippine problem (New York, 1905), especially chap. x, pp. 226-246, "American education in the Philippines." See a criticism of this book by James A. LeRoy, in Political Science Quarterly, for June, 1906.

We shall bring this brief statement regarding American education in the Philippines to a close with a short abstract of the recent address by Dr. T. H. Pardo de Tavera, before the teachers assembled at Manila in order to attend the Summer Institute, founded by the director of Public Instruction, and inaugurated this year, and published in the supplement of the issue of May 17, 1906, of El Renacimiento. His point of view of true civilization and education is in the main that they are the resultant of not one but of many factors, and that those of one race may be debtors to another race and yet not lose their identity. True progress does not consist in exclusiveness but in the admittance of all that is good notwithstanding its source. By adopting Anglo-Saxon civilization and education, Filipinos will not weaken, but strengthen themselves. The viewpoint of a people may change, and must change often in order that they may progress. To speak of special mentalities is vague and misleading. On whatever side the situation of the Philippines be considered, he says, whether political, social, or economic, it is seen that "public instruction is the chief factor, to which we should direct the most vigorous action of our energies." Progress is the direct and necessary result of education, and the Filipinos realizing this desire the extension of schools. It has often been said that the Filipinos need an education in harmony with their customs and traditions, in order that they may preserve their peculiar manner of existence, or "that the conscience called poetically 'the Filipino soul' might not be changed or disfigured." Let those who criticize the American method of education, on the ground that it is destroying the "Filipino soul" define that term, and name the characteristic qualities belonging to it, which will disappear with the new education; and let them propose a system of education. Some wish to preserve the traditional education of Filipinos which is conservative and exclusive. The teaching of Filipinos, since Spain is a Catholic monarchy, where the divine origin of rulers is a tenet, has always been dogmatic, and blind obedience is to be given to the government. Such teaching produces a conservative and exclusive society, which is opposed to change. The Filipinos desire a democratic government, but their traditions and education form in them a mentality quite opposed to democratic ideas. Consequently, they must first change their mental viewpoint before they can become democratic. It must be a work of peaceful evolution, through free instruction. Living as they are now under a democratic form of government, Filipinos should adopt a form of education in accordance with the ideals of democracy. The two forces working in the formation of the character of individuals, and hence peoples, are conservatism and the reforming force, the latter of which means progress and constitutes education. Those peoples who do not progress live under the laws of conservatism, inheritance, and tradition. Those progress who have conquered inherited and traditional traits by means of education. Some races are inferior to others, but that inferiority is not necessarily permanent. Inferiority is purely an historical cause, and inferior races are those that preserve their national soul unchanged through the centuries. The Spanish race is not inferior to the Anglo-Saxon, but its education is under a political and religious dogmatism which has made of Spain a country with a traditional and truly conservative soul. Italy has gone through and is even now going through a period of regeneration. In Spain, men are struggling for better education based on Anglo-Saxon principles. [120] Before the Filipino revolution, many Filipinos were sent to Europe to study without any fear of destroying the "Filipino soul;" but now that the civilization that they went to seek has sought them, under the form of Anglo-Saxon public instruction, there is a strange reaction. The Franks and Gauls who submitted to Roman civilization have not lost their peculiar identity. Had they not adopted the Roman civilization, their condition would have been that of the Malays under British domination, who are now inferior. Since they did adopt it they were enabled to raise their coefficient of capacity. The Filipino mentality has been already changed by Spanish education, the customs and life of the two races having been quite distinct. Civilization is the result of the contact of peoples by means of which the victories obtained in all departments of intelligence and morality may be increased, perfected, and transmitted from one to another. Anglo-Saxon education will not cause the Filipinos to lose their desire for independence. The Filipino revolution was started by men who received a Spanish education. The entire Filipinist movement was guided by men educated in Europe and the University, the latter of which was Spanish. They were broader men. The Anglo-Saxon education cannot make submissive peoples. It is destined to form individuals capable of thinking for themselves, and of working according to their own impulses. Those civilizations that mark an epoch in history were the result of other civilizations. The Anglo-Saxon race today bear the torch of civilization formerly borne by the Romans. The Anglo-Saxon civilization will extend, but not Anglo-Saxon domination. The Japanese are an example of a race who have changed their standpoint in regard to civilization. Filipino mentality is composed of good and bad traits. Complete education must be arrived at by conserving the good and eliminating the bad. Complete assimilation cannot take place. The Filipino character cannot entirely change, for the instruction in the schools is not sufficient to cause such a radical change. Happiness does not consist in seeking easeful and unresponsible repose, but in the struggle for existence that entails work. Filipinos must learn that true progress comes through struggle and a show of energy. The Filipinos are intelligent, easy to educate, and prepared by their Spanish education of three centuries for the new education now offered them. Education means advance. The greater means of communication that are to be established will aid in the work by destroying inequalities and composing differences. The various dialects are a great barrier to Filipino homogeneity, and a common language is needed. The Filipino people free and capable of self-government will be formed by the American and Filipino teachers. "Filipino soul" [121] is a poetical expression which reveals a poetical mentality in those who use it. Such mentality is insufficient for the progress of a people along the true path of modern civilization.

NOTES

[1] The following summary of events, sometimes in full translation and sometimes abridged, is obtained from the histories of Concepción, Zúñiga, and Montero y Vidal, the source of each paragraph being indicated at the end.

[2] "As the latter [i.e., Bustamante] could not defend himself, and it was for the interest of the religious orders and of the principal citizens of Manila that the blame for what had occurred should recoil upon Bustamante, they accumulated against him numberless charges--most of them formulated by his assassins, by the officials who had defrauded the exchequer, by those who were debtors to the treasury, and by all who, instead of making amends for their offences in a military post, had been replaced in their offices by Archbishop Cuesta" (Montero y Vidal, Hist. de Filipinas, i, pp. 430-431).

[3] Sebastian de Totanes was a noted member of the Franciscan order in the islands. He was born in the village of Totanes in Spain, in 1687, and entered that order in 1706. After finishing his studies he gave instruction in the Toledo convent for several years, departing thence (1715) for the Filipinas missions, which he joined two years later. He held various high offices in the order there, among them being that of minister provincial (1738-41); he also administered the churches in Sampaloc (1721-29), Lilio (1732-35), and Pagsanhan (1735-38). In 1746 he went to Europe as procurator of his order to Roma and Madrid, and died at the latter city, on February 13, 1748. He left a grammar and manual of the Tagálog language, which is regarded as one of the beat works of its kind; it was published at Sampaloc in 1745. (See Huerta's Estado.)

[4] "Although the archbishop had not, in strictness, any direct connection with the assassination of the head of government of the islands, his connivance with the seditious element, the fact that the authority was entrusted to him, and his tolerance and lenity in the investigation and punishment of the criminals, aroused against him the wrath of the [home] government; and, in spite of his advanced age, he was transferred to the bishopric of Mechoacan, in Nueva Espana" (Montero y Vidal, Hist. de Filipinas, i, p. 432).