It is the most sacred duty of every gube_The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898; Volume 46, 1721-1739 Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century

excogitate and choose the most suitable, safe, and correct methods

of teaching for the attainment of so sacred an end. It cannot be even

doubted that the authors of our traditional legislation for the Indias

had other motives than the accuracy and rectitude in the creation of

the laws concerning instruction, or other primordial end in it than the

knowledge and adoration of God, the supreme end of man on earth; and as

a means, the knowledge of the divine mysteries, of the revealed truths,

in a word, of the Catholic religion, among the human beings of the New

World. Rapid without doubt was the progress which the Catholic faith

made in the immense territories of that unknown world, notwithstanding

the interminable series of difficulties which our fervent missionaries,

covetous to gain souls for God, were to meet in the evangelization of

so many races and so numerous peoples divided by so diverse languages,

which were so many other obstacles superable by their strong desire

and never-satisfied zeal. In order to conquer those difficulties,

and that that zeal might be more productive for the cause of religion,

and more advantageous for the believers, fifty-eight years after the

immortal Colón had discovered this world full of marvels, the first law

was dictated in regard to the creation of schools for the teaching of

Castilian, signed by Carlos V while governing at Valladolid, June 7,

and reproduced July 17, 1550. Such is law xviii, título i, book vi,

which reads as follows.

"Having made particular examination in regard to whether, even in

the most perfect language of the Indians, the ministers of our holy

Catholic faith can explain themselves well and fittingly, we have

recognized that that is impossible without committing great discords

and imperfections; and although chairs are founded where the priests

who shall instruct the Indians may be taught, this is not a fitting

remedy because of the great diversity of languages; and having resolved

that it will be advantageous to introduce the Castilian language: we

command teachers to be given to the Indians, in order to teach those

who wish of their own accord to study it, in the way which will be

of least trouble and without expense to them. It has appeared that

this can be well done by the sacristans, as in the villages of these

kingdoms they teach reading, writing, and the Christian doctrine."

But one can immediately understand that teachers who taught without

any charge, who might be sacristans, and Indians who wished to study

voluntarily, were not fitting factors to attain the most praiseworthy

end which the legislator proposed to himself; and in fact it could not

have given the desired result since eighty-four years afterwards, law

v, título xiii, book i, was issued by Felipe IV, without indicating the

means, in Madrid, March 2, 1634, and repeated two years afterward, on

November 4, which reads as follows: "We ask and request the archbishops

and the bishops to provide and order the curas and missionaries of

the Indians in their dioceses, by the use of the mildest means,

to arrange and direct that all the Indians be taught the Spanish

language, and in that language the Christian doctrine, so that they

may become more capable of understanding the mysteries of our holy

Catholic faith and so that other advantages may be gained for their

salvation, and follow in their government and method of life." The

fulfilment of both laws [was] recorded by the royal decree of March 20,

1686, [82] and those laws were at the same time extended to Filipinas,

since the desire of the legislator was the same in both parts, namely,

"to consult upon what is the most efficacious means for destroying the

idolatries incurred at present by the majority of the Indians as was

true at the beginning of their conversion, etc.," as is said in the

above-mentioned royal decree. From that decree one infers a wholesome

instruction for Filipinas; but it is no wonder that the Filipinos

have not learned Castilian, and that they abandon their primitive

superstitions with difficulty, when the Americans of greater capacity

than they, with greater means, with a powerful and constant stream of

Christian civilization, carried by numerous missionaries, and a greater

European emigration, after two centuries did not know the Castilian

speech, and the majority were sunk in their idolatries, a thing which

does not occur with the masses of the Filipinos, although they are

not a little superstitious, a quality exhibited in more or less degree

by numerous peoples of Europa after so many centuries of illumination.

For the same end and filled with the same spirit was issued the royal

decree of April 16, 1770, which, like the preceding one, was also

extended to Filipinas, as were also other later ones, all of which were

animated by the most Christian zeal, so that the Indians might learn

better the mysteries and doctrinal points of the Catholic religion,

for the easier and surer salvation of their souls. Without danger

of taking from these laws any valuable data, in accordance with the

necessity which counsels it, let us reduce ourselves for the moment

to a review of the orders given directly for Filipinas which are

found in the celebrated ordinances, first in those given by Corcuera

in the year 1642, revised by Cruzat in 1696, and added to by their

successors. Among them is one, the 52d, of Governor-general Solis,

marquis of Obando, dated October 19, 1752. Among other things that

ordinance says: "Through my desires of aiding with the greatest

exactness the spiritual and temporal welfare of those vassals,

supplying them with all the means of acquiring and consolidating it, I

have resolved to order, as by the present I do order and command, said

governors, corregidors, alcaldes-mayor, and other justices of these

islands, that exactly and punctually, and without interpretation or

opinion, they give and cause to be given the most opportune measures,

so that in the villages of their districts they demand, establish,

and found, from this day forward, schools where the children of the

natives and other inhabitants of their districts may be educated and

taught (in primary letters in the Castilian or Spanish language),

seeing to it earnestly and carefully that they study, learn, and

receive education in that language and not in that of the country or

any other. They shall work for its greater increase, extension, and

intelligence, without consenting or allowing ... this determination

to be violated, or schools of any other language to be erected or

started, under penalty of five hundred [pesos?] applied in the manner

decreed by this superior government.... For that purpose, and so that

it may have the fullest effect, I revoke, annul, and declare of no

use and value ordinance 29, which declares that Spaniards shall not

be allowed to live in or remain in the villages of the Indians; for in

the future they must be admitted to such residence. The alcaldes-mayor

and justices shall see to it that such people live in a Christian

manner and according to the commands of God; and they shall arrest,

punish, and exile those who fail in this matter. This is to be

understood of the schools which are to be supported and maintained

at the cost of the villages themselves and of the funds which the

communal treasuries shall have assigned for those of the languages of

the country (for as abovesaid the latter must cease and shall cease

in proportion as the schools for teaching in the Castilian language

shall be built and established); and for the attainment of the duties

and posts of governors and other honorable military posts it shall

be a necessary qualification that those on whom they are conferred

be the most capable, experienced, and clever in being able to read,

talk, and write, in the above-mentioned Spanish language, and such

posts must be given to such persons and not to others," etc.

In accordance with all that which is faithfully quoted in regard

to this particular, is ordinance 25 of the zealous Raón in 1768,

which reads as follows: "As it is very important that there be

good schoolteachers for the teaching of the Indians, and as it is

advisable for them to learn the Spanish language in order to know the

Christian doctrine better, and since the salary of one peso and one

cabán of rice, which it is the custom to give them from the communal

funds each month, is very little, it is ordered that the alcaldes,

with the intervention of the curas, or missionary ministers, make

a computation of the salary which can be given in each village (in

proportion to its tributes) to the schoolteacher, giving an account

thereof to the superior government for its approval.... For, with

the increase of salaries, better teachers can be had and the end of

law xviii, título i, book vi, as will be related hereafter, can be

better attained." This is fulfilled at greater length in ordinance

or article 93, reading as follows: "In accordance with section 52

of the ancient ordinances, and 17 of those drawn up by governor Don

Pedro Manuel de Arandía, it is strictly and rigorously ordered the

alcaldes-mayor, and asked and petitioned from the father ministers,

that each one, in so far as concerns him, shall apply his zeal to the

end that in all the villages there should be one schoolmaster well

instructed in the Spanish language, and that he teach the Indians to

read and write in it, the Christian doctrine, and other prayers, as

is ordered by the king, our sovereign, in his royal decree of June 5,

1754, because of the most serious disadvantages which result by doing

the contrary to the religion and the state. For the attainment of so

important teaching, the salary of each teacher shall be paid punctually

from the communal funds, namely, one peso and one cabán of rice per

month. Permission is given to the above-mentioned alcaldes-mayor

so that, in the large villages and in proportion to the capacity of

said teachers, they may increase their salary by giving information

thereof to the superior government for its approval, as is stated

in section 25. The above-mentioned teachers shall be informed that,

if they do not teach the Indians, and instruct them in the Spanish

language, they will be condemned to make restitution of the pay which

they shall have received, and shall be deprived of holding any post in

these islands and punished at the will of said alcaldes. The latter,

especially in their visit to the villages of their provinces, shall

investigate with particular care the observance of the abovesaid, and

shall inform the superior government.... It is to be noted that for

any slight omission of the alcaldes in regard to this most important

point, they shall incur the indignation of the superior tribunals,

and shall be rigorously punished and fined in proportion to their lack

of zeal and fulfilment of this section; for experience has taught that

for particular ends and unjust laxity or neglect they have proceeded

hitherto with little zeal and with total want of observance of law

xviii, título i, book vi, which is corroborated and confirmed by

many royal decrees and by the abovesaid sections of the ordinances

preceding that law."

Since we are decided to make an exact and complete adjustment of

accounts treating of this matter, we transcribe here, in order to

attain that, whatever has to do most especially with both ancient

and modern legislation, in order to remove at once the mask under

which the detractors of the religious orders have been masquerading,

blaming them openly for the backward state of the Filipino villages,

for their deficiency in education and especially for the ignorance of

Castilian, without other proof than the completely gratuitous assertion

that those religious orders have constantly opposed the development

of education and, in a resolute manner, the study of Castilian. [83]

In order to prove this supposed opposition, they adduce as an argument

(which is negative, and, consequently, of no value) the fact that

although the teaching (and with it the Castilian speech) was ordered

from the beginning of the conquest with evident insistence and under

heavy penalties, the established laws have not given the abundant

results which were to be desired. Now, because those results have

not been obtained, are the missionaries to blame? The supposition

made in order to hurl this crimination upon the religious orders is

not serious nor can it be cited by persons who esteem themselves as

sensible and reasonable beings.

Before that criminal supposition and that groundless crimination it is

fitting to ask: "Were those laws, given with the most just desire and

the most holy finality, as is that of christianizing those idolatrous

souls and guaranteeing them in the faith of Jesus Christ, suitable for

the production of the desired ends? Were the means, which were proposed

in those laws, conducive to the end which was being prosecuted? Nay,

more, granting the sufficiency of those laws and the propriety of those

means for the American districts, since those laws were given for them,

was it within the bonds of reason to adapt them with equal propriety

and sufficiency to Filipinas?" If it is impossible to grant the first,

it is evidently impossible to assent to the second as certain.

It has been shown that law xviii was given in the year 1550, or

fifty-eight years after the discovery of the New World. One hundred

and forty-two years later that order was repeated by means of law v,

of 1634, the fulfilment of which was recorded in 1686, or one hundred

and ninety-four years after our arrival on the American coasts. Those

laws had been, if not barren, of little fruit, whenever the cause

for repeating that law was to banish the idolatries in which the

majority of the Indians are now sunk, as they were at the beginning of

the conversions. How can that development in instruction be acquired

"with Indians who would like to learn, when taught by teachers without

pay, and which, so that the teachers might not cost anything, could

be well done by the sacristans," who would immediately be Indians

like the pupils, doubtless stupid in learning and incapable of

teaching the Catholic doctrine in Castilian? Now then, if those laws

were inefficient in the American districts, a country more compact,

could they be more efficient in Filipinas, which is composed of many

islands; could those means exercise more influence on the intellects

of those islanders who are of less capacity than the Americans, and

the latter were directly invaded by a constant and powerful stream

of civilization, catechised and administered by a numerous pleiad of

missionaries when the islands of Urdaneta and Legazpi did not receive

more than the residues or crumbs, which, both of the former and the

latter, came by way of Acapulco--in America with an invader who carried

almost all before him, and who tended by his number to cause the pure

primitive race to disappear, exactly the contrary to what occurs in

the Filipino country, where the native race, in an imposing mass,

is above all absorption, this idea being sufficient only so that not

even with very many means more powerful than those hitherto placed

in practice can they attain the effects which the laws demand?

Consequently, the laws were not adaptable to that country for which

they were not made, and not even was that country known when law

xviii was given. Neither have the means or factors which have been

put in play since, been in relation, even remote relation, with the

ends whose attainment is desired.

On one hand, the great scarcity of missionaries scattered among so

numerous islands (each one occupying a most extensive territory,

with scarcely any communication [with one another], with a work both

arduous and multiple, in all the orders, especially in the learning of

so diverse and most difficult languages, and the adaptation of these

languages in regard to their characters, phonetics, pronunciation,

etc., to our characters, spelling, etc., a knowledge attained afterward

by prolonged and constant phonological and philological studies),

abandoned to their own resources and energies, since it is known

that for many dozens of leguas there was no other Spaniard than the

missionary, occupied preferably in the administration of sacraments

and evangelization and the conservation of so numerous fields of

Christendom; on the other hand the means which the laws granted them,

entirely null and void, as has been shown, as is also the result

obtained by the last royal decree of 1686, by which it is newly ordered

"that schools be established and teachers appointed for the Indians, in

order to teach the Castilian language to those who would voluntarily

wish to learn it, in the way that may be of less trouble to them

and without expense;" and with this clause of voluntary instruction,

without trouble and without expense, since the natives were scattered

in so many and so distant villages or reductions, and had no teachers,

not since they knew the Castilian language, but that they could not

even know it except by a rudimentary method in their own language:

was there any possibility even that that beautiful language whose

knowledge would have freed the missionary from so many sorrows, from

so painful labor, from so continual anxieties as the detractors of

those orders cannot even imagine, could be taught? Notwithstanding,

it will be proved by unassailable documents that those missionaries

with some useless laws, most of them deficient, have obtained what no

one else could have obtained. Those religious orders, then, have not

been the enemies, but the great friends, of instruction. They Have not

been opposed, nor only slight lovers of its development, but decided

well-wishers, and even enthusiasts in its greater development; and

in order to achieve that, the missionaries and parish priests have

done that which very few, perhaps no one, could have done: namely,

to create schools wherever they preached the gospel; to support them

by all means, and even pay them from their scant savings; to bring to

a head all classes of philological work; to compile methods, grammars,

innumerable dictionaries, books of doctrine, of doctrinal discourses,

and many others which besides illuminating the understanding,

strengthened the souls in the faith, in accordance with the spirit

of those laws.

Furthermore, do the detractors of the religious believe that,

if the alcaldes, corregidors, and justices, threatened with very

severe penalties by those laws, were convinced of the fact that the

missionaries were opposed to the teaching in that part which was viable

or feasible, they would not have used their authority to punish,

correct, or prevent, that opposition? The ordinances above copied

are a copy of the laws given for America, as already mentioned, and

suffer in great measure from their peculiarity and lack of application,

especially in what regards the teaching of Castilian.

It was in every point impossible that, with the elements possessed

by the alcaldes-mayor, corregidors, and governors, they could have

observed ordinance 52 of the marquis of Obando. That ordinance contains

orders that are positively impracticable and even contradictory. On one

side it is ordered "that schools be erected where the children of the

natives may be educated (in primary letters in the Castilian language)

seeing to it that in this language and not in that of the country, or

in any other, they study, be taught, and educated, and that schools

of another language be not erected or started under penalty of 500

[pesos?] applied at the will of this superior government." This is

ordered absolutely and without any limitation in immense districts

where there is not a single school of Castilian, nor methods, nor

grammars, nor dictionaries, nor any other method of teaching that

language, nor teachers to teach it, nor scarcely any Indians who have

been able to learn it, as they have not had any great familiarity

with Spaniards who were prohibited by ordinance 29 from residing in

the villages of the Indians. This happened in the year 1752. That

prohibition was suppressed by the above-mentioned ordinance 52. By

the same ordinance was prescribed the quota which the communal

funds were to pay to the teachers, which makes one see immediately

the contradiction of the finality of the preceding order with that

stating "because as abovesaid, these languages must cease and shall

cease in proportion as schools for the Castilian language shall be

erected and established;" the only ones who were ordered to pay.

It results, therefore, quite evidently, both from the context of the

latter ordinance and from ordinance 17 of Arandía, and 25 and 93 of

Raón, that in the Filipino provinces and districts there were no

means of establishing instruction in Castilian; and that the only

schools which were ordered to be paid from the communal funds were

those which should be established with that instruction. Consequently,

neither the alcaldes and other justices threatened with very severe

penalties, and "the anger of the superior tribunals" nor the teachers

"condemned to make restitution of the pay which they had received,"

and punished according to the order of the alcaldes, could make in

their promises and villages those laws, given in the Peninsula and

in the official residence of the first authority of the islands,

viable or practicable. How many laws are there which are very

good and of elevated ends, but barren and unpractical, as they lack

practical meaning! However, in the midst of so many contradictions and

difficulties, in the midst of a work so toilsome and without rest,

in spite of the penury and scarcity which God alone can, and knows

how to, appreciate, in constant struggle with the elements and the

Moros, having to create it and conserve it all, it can be no less than

contemplated with pride by every good Spaniard that those heroic and

humble sons of España attended from the beginning of the conquest to

teaching with a zeal worthy of all praise.

A precious testimony of this is that mentioned by the erudite father

Augustín María, O.S.A. in his Historia del Insigne convento de San

Pablo de Manila [i.e., History of the glorious convent of San Pablo in

Manila], which is preserved unedited in the archives of said convent,

when he says: "In the same year (1571) was founded this convent and

church of San Pablo, which is the chief one of this province, the

capitular house for novitiates, and of studies in grammar, arts,

theology, and canons for Indians and creoles, until the Jesuits

came and opened public schools." Passing by those teaching centers

created in Manila by the religious orders scarcely yet born in those

islands, omitting the introduction of printing, a powerful means for

progress, by those orders, some decades after their establishment in

the islands, and limiting ourselves only to the creation of schools

and the progress of primary instruction, we do not fear to affirm

that before our legislators occupied themselves in giving laws for

teaching in Filipinas, laws had been proclaimed in the assemblies of

the religious orders. Before the famous ordinances of Obando and of

Raón had been published, the printing houses of the said orders had

already printed works entitled: Práctica del Ministerio que siguen

los religiosos del orden de N. P. S. Agustín en Philippinas [i.e.,

Practice of the ministry followed by the religious of the order of our

father St. Augustine in Philippinas]; and the Práctica de párrocos

dominicana [i.e., Practice of the Dominican parish priest]. Before

treating of one or the other it is a duty of historical justice

to discard the two above-cited laws given for the New World, the

first in 1550, fifteen years before the conquest of Filipinas, and

the second in 1634, and both recorded in the royal decree of 1686,

[84] given likewise for América and all extended to the archipelago

of Legazpi. Now then, much before those last dates, the Augustinian

order in its tenth provincial chapter, held May 9, 1596, in which the

reverend father, Fray Lorenzo de León, was elected provincial, among

the acts and resolutions which it established, which are capitular

laws, compulsory on all the religious of the province, was the

following: "It is enjoined upon all the ministers of Indians, that

just as the schoolboys are taught to read and write, they be taught

also to speak our Spanish language, because of the great culture

and profit which follow therefrom." That document was providentially

conserved in the secretary's office of the convent of San Pablo in

Manila, notwithstanding the devastation which that convent suffered

and the loss of precious documents during the English invasion.

They did not cease to hope for the abundant fruits which resulted

from such wise rules as the above, and the schools were created and

continued to increase in a remarkable manner. In order that there

might be uniformity in the method of teaching, in the Augustinian

provincial chapter, held in Manila in August 1712, the practice of the

ministry prescribed in the [provincial] chapter of April 19, 1698, was

ordered to be observed in definite terms. That was directed even in the

chapter held May 17, 1716, in which it was ordered by minute 21 that

the provincial elect, reverend father Fray Tomás Ortiz "should make a

Práctica del Ministerio" [i.e., Practice of the Ministry] and after it

was made to send it through the provinces, "so that all the religious

might observe it;" he did that, signing the circular which accompanied

said Práctica, at Tondo, August 10, of the abovesaid year. From this

Práctica, we copy the following paragraph in regard to the schools:

"Number 79. Not only by a decree of his Majesty, but also by his own

obligation, the minister must use all diligence and care in promoting

and conserving the schools for children in the villages. And when he

encounters difficulty in this, it will be advisable, and many times

necessary, for him to make use of the alcaldes-mayor, so that they

may obtain by their influence what the ministers could not obtain

in this matter by their own efforts. And if the parents refuse to

send their children, the ministers shall also be able to inform the

alcaldes-mayor [i.e., sub-alcaldes] of it in order that the latter

may force them to do it. And above all, the minister ought to be very

happy in contriving to conserve the schools, and in suffering with

patience the great resistance which is found among the natives to

the schools. It will be well to care for them with some expenses for

their conservation, for they are very useful and necessary." Beyond

this valuable paragraph are prescribed the days for school and the

hours and exercises in which the children are to be employed.

This same Práctica del Ministerio remarkably increased by its author,

the reverend father Fray Tomás Ortiz, was printed in "Manila, in

the convent of Nuestra Señora de los Angeles [i.e., Our Lady of the

Angels], in the year 1731," and we copy from it, for the eternal

and most valuable testimony in proof of our assertion, the principal

paragraph, which reads as follows:

"158. The father ministers, in fulfilment of their duty, are obliged

to procure, by all means and methods possible, and, if necessary,

by means of royal justices, that all the villages, both capitals

and visitas, shall have schools, and that all the boys attend them

daily. If the natives of the visitas refuse or are unable to support

schools, the boys of those visitas shall be obliged to go to the

schools of the capitals, for in addition to the schools being so

necessary as are attested by ecclesiastical and secular laws, the

absence of schools occasions many spiritual and temporal losses,

as is taught by experience. Among others, one is the vast ignorance

suffered in much of what is necessary for confession in order that

they may become Christians and live like rational people.

"In order to be able to conquer the difficulties which some generally

find in maintaining schools, it is necessary for the father ministers

to procure and solicit two things: one is that ministers be assigned

with salaries suitable for their support; the other is that the

children have primers or books for reading and paper for writing. When

these two things cannot be obtained by other means than at the cost

of the father ministers, they must not therefore excuse themselves

from giving what is necessary for the said two things. For, besides

the fact that they will be doing a great alms thereby, they will also

obtain great relief in the teaching of the boys, and will avoid many

spiritual and temporal losses of the villages, to which by their office

they are obliged. And if the end cannot be obtained without the means,

so also the schools cannot be obtained without any expense, or the

teaching of youth without the schools, or the spiritual welfare of

souls without the teaching, etc. For the same reasons respectively,

endeavor shall be made to maintain schools for little girls, which

shall be held in the houses of the teachers where they shall learn

to read and pray, for which great prudence is necessary."

Another very notable paragraph, in which are prescribed the days for

school, attendance, method, subjects, etc., follows this paragraph

which is worthy of the highest praise. That paragraph imposes the

obligation on the children of great practical sense, that after "mass

is finished (which they were to hear every day) they shall kiss the

father's hand. By this diligence the latter can ascertain those who

do not attend, and force them to attend, etc."

In order that one may see the rare unanimity existing among the

religious corporations in a matter as transcendental as is that of

education, it is very fitting to transcribe here some paragraphs of

the instructions which the reverend father, Fray Manuel del Río,

provincial at that time of the Dominicans, gave to his religious

under date of August 31, 1739, which were printed in Manila in the

same year, and which we have entitled Práctica del párroco dominicana

[i.e., Practice of the Dominican parish priest] as the valuable copy

which we possess has no title page. It reads as follows:

"The king, our sovereign, orders that there be schools in all the

villages of the Indians in order to teach them reading, writing, and

the doctrine. In those schools the ministers must work zealously and

earnestly, as it is a thing which is of so great importance for the

education and spiritual gain of their souls. Schools shall also be

established in the visitas, especially if they are large or distant

from the capital, and in those visitas which are furnished with no

schoolteacher because they are small or near the capital, the lads

shall be obliged to attend the school at the capital. All the lads,

whether chief or timaoas, must attend the school, and they, and their

parents or relatives must be obliged to do so, so that they may not

be exempted from that attendance by any excuse or pretext, except

the singers, who will be taught to read and write in the school of

the cantors. For the more exact fulfilment of this, a list shall be

made of those who ought to attend the school, and a copy of it shall

be given to the said teacher. This shall be read frequently in the

school, noting those who fail in order to punish them.

"In order to maintain said schools and the attendance of the lads

therein without the excuses which some generally offer of not having

primers, pens, or paper for writing, it is necessary for the minister

to solicit the one who has those things for sale in the village, for

those who can buy them. Those who find it impossible to do so shall

be furnished by the minister with those articles by way of alms, and

in that, besides the merit acquired by this virtue, he will gather

the fruit of the welfare and the gain of their souls.

"Girls' schools shall also be formed by causing them to go to the

house of their teacher, so that they may learn to read and sew, and

also learn the doctrine. But they shall not be obliged to attend church

daily, as are the boys, but only on Saturday or any other day assigned

for the reciting of the rosary and the examination in the doctrine."

It is to be noted that both provincials, as well as their successors,

imposed on their subjects the obligation to faithfully observe what

is prescribed in the Práctica and respective instructions, which

the ministers of the Lord fulfilled with especial solicitude and

constancy, since only in this way could they gather the most copious

fruits which we all admire.

The unity of thought and action which the religious corporations had in

a matter so primordial as is teaching is also to be noted. Evidently

it is to be inferred from those beautiful periods that the religious

were trying to pay the teachers, having recourse even to the alcaldes

when that was necessary; and when that could not be obtained they

themselves paid the teacher the fruit of his labors as well as

supplying also the children with everything necessary for their

instruction, such as primers, books, papers, pens, etc. For that, no

quota was put in the budget, since, as is seen, that most essential

datum is not mentioned in the laws, ordinances, and royal decrees

above given. It is also to be noted that, in the rules above cited,

there is no mention of other than boys' schools, but none for girls,

while all were alike considered, both of those of the capital or

villages and those of the barrios, with an equal vigilance by our

missionaries, who from the first, established compulsory attendance as

absolutely indispensable, in contradiction to the old laws, in which

was noted the tendency to liberty or non-compulsion, as is inferred

from the royal decree of November 5, 1782, [85] given for Charcas

(Méjico) and extended to Filipinas confirmed by the law of June 11,

1815, which cites it in its two extremes.

In this way those humble religious worked out the laws as much as

possible, although it cost them much, by rectifying what was not

viable and by supplying the deficiencies of those laws, especially

in the matters pertaining to the salaries of the teachers, and

payment for school supplies, which, on account of the scarcity of

funds from the treasury, the legislature was compelled to establish

as is established in this last royal decree above cited: "That, for

the salary of teachers, the products of foundations, where there

shall be any, be applied in the first place, and for the others,

the products of the property of the community, in accordance with the

terms of the laws." But since the foundations, in case there were any,

existed only in the capitals, which were at the same time the episcopal

residence, and the communal funds were in general exhausted, it was

the same thing as determining that the parish priests would continue

to pay the expenses from their poor living, or find some means which

would give that so desired and difficult result. This penury of the

treasury which was felt equally in España and in Filipinas obliged

his Majesty to extend to these islands the royal decree of October 20,

1817, which reads as follows:

"The existing state of exhaustion of my royal treasury does not permit

that so great a sum be set aside for the endowment of these schools

as would be necessary for so important an object; but the convents

of all the religious orders scattered throughout my kingdoms may in

great measure supply this impossibility...." There was no need to put

this royal decree in force in the Filipinas, since, in the majority

of the convents or parish houses, schools for boys had already been

established in their lower part, and those for girls in the houses

of the women teachers, and other houses made for that purpose. It

is but right to note how much the missionary always labored for the

education of the woman whose better gifts he recognized always. He

created numerous schools for her instruction, and paid for them

from his living, quite contrary to the total inattention which the

administration paid to the schools and teachers for girls, until the

regulations of December 20, 1863 were formulated, the eighth article

of which orders that "there shall be a boys' school and another school

for girls in every village, whatever its number of souls."

Article 2 of these regulations, [86] quite distinct from the path of

the ancient legislation, recognized, in accordance with the conduct

and laws of the religious orders, the necessity of establishing

compulsion in primary teaching; and firm in this principle, it

ordered that "the primary instruction should be compulsory for all

the natives, to the degree that the inattendance of the child might

be penalized by virtue of art. 2, with the fine of from one-half to

two reals." Neither is the legislation exclusive with relation to the

study of Castilian, as is seen by the context of its art. 3; it ordains

education gratis to the poor by art. 4; and the well-to-do shall pay

the teacher a moderate monthly fee, which shall be prescribed by the

governor of each province, after conferring with the parish priest

and gobernadorcillo. Paper, copybooks, ink, and pens shall be given

free to all the children by the teacher, who, at the proper time,

shall receive for this service one duro per month, for every child

who writes, in accordance with the ruling made by a decree of the

superior government, February 16, 1867. Very suitable measures were

to be taken, all in accord with the action of the parish priest,

in order not to give any occasion for fraud. That was a very well

taken resolution, for it stimulated the zeal of the teacher, who

received on this account a sum not to be despised, which, together

with the quota of the well-to-do children and the monthly pay which

he received, according to art. 22, consisting of 12, 15, and 20 pesos,

according as the school of which he was in charge was entrada, ascenso,

or término, he received a pay quite sufficient for his needs, enjoying

in addition, by art. 23, a free dwelling-house for himself and family,

and in due season the pension prescribed by art. 24.

Article 32 determines the powers of the parish priest as local

supervisor, which, although they were conceded with a certain timidity,

were perhaps believed to be excessive or unnecessary, and it seems

its abolition was clearly agreed upon by art. 12 in declaring the

municipal captain "supervisor of the schools." This blow must be

judged as a very strong one in the lofty governmental spheres of

the islands, for the genuine representation of the parish priests in

the villages is one of the functions most natural to their charge,

both as teachers of the Catholic doctrine and ethics, and in the role

of traditional supporters of the schools, although in art. 102 was

established the following as an explanation to art. 12 of the decree:

"Without prejudice to the supervision which belongs in the instruction

to the parish priests according to the regulations of December 1863,

whose powers are not at all altered, the tribunal shall watch carefully

over primary instruction; shall demand the teaching of Castilian in the

schools; shall oblige the inhabitants to send their children to them;

and shall stimulate instruction by means of adequate examinations and

rewards. Said tribunal shall place in operation the most practical

means for the diffusion of the Spanish language among the inhabitants,

deciding upon those means in meetings with the parish priests and

the delegates of the principalía."

At first view one observes the good desire which the author of said

article shelters when he says that the powers conceded to the parish

priest as supervisor of schools by art. 20 of the regulations of

the same shall not be changed in any point, without perceiving that

directly afterward it created another authority in opposition to

that of the parish priest, if not with all the powers of the latter,

because those which he possesses as teacher in ethics and the doctrine

do not admit of transmission, yet clearly of all the others, and in

them with prior rank.

It is evident that, by the context of this article, the power of

"watching carefully over primary instruction" is conceded to the

captain, which is identical with the first part of art. 32 of the

school regulations conceded to the parish priest which reads as

follows: "To visit the schools as often as possible." This is the

first part of that article, and the second part "and to see that the

regulations are observed," whose art. 3 orders that "the teachers shall

have special care that the pupils have practical exercise in speaking

the Castilian language," is of identical meaning and effect with the

power conceded to the captain, which declares, "he shall demand that

Castilian be taught in the schools." This power is followed by those of

"he shall compel the inhabitants to send their children to the schools,

and shall stimulate instruction by means of adequate examinations

and rewards;" both powers similar to those which are conceded to the

parish priests by the third part of said art. 32, which declares,

"To promote the attendance of children at the schools." To supplement

this with the compulsory virtue, he is authorized by art. 2, explained

and ratified in No. 3 of the decree of the superior government of

August 30, 1867, to be able to admonish and compel parents, who are

slow in sending their children to the schools, by means of fines from

one-half to two reals, and that which is conceded to him, in accordance

with annual examinations, by art. 13, and art. 7 of the decree of the

superior government, of May 7, 1871, which declares: "The reverend

and learned parish priests, accompanied by the gobernadorcillos and

by the principalías of the villages, shall visit the schools monthly,

shall hold examinations every three months, etc." By this one can

see that the parish priest conserves the first place, even in this,

over the gobernadorcillo and principalía, by whom he is accompanied,

in order to give more luster to the ceremony. That happens in no act

or meeting of the present municipality, in which the parish priest has

no other functions than those of intervention and counsel, included in

that which is signified in the last paragraph of the above-mentioned

art. 102, which says when referring to the municipal captain: "He

shall put in force the most practical means for the diffusion of the

Spanish language among the inhabitants, agreeing upon those means in

meetings with the parish priests and delegates of the principalía;"

and although it is established that the creation of the Sunday

schools of which art. 29 of the regulations speaks, which are also

of the intervention of the parish priest, as are the boys' schools,

falls completely to his share, as the means, if not sole, yet the

one most efficacious and of practical application, it would result

as in all the other powers which have been enumerated as conceded to

the parish priest by the school regulations and to the captain by

decree and municipal regulations--it would result, we say--at each

step in an encounter and rivalry in which the parish priests would

come out second best, for the simple reason, repeated to satiety in

innumerable articles of the decree and municipal regulations, that

the action of the parish priest is nothing more than supervision and

counsel, [87] with the added abasement that "his presence shall not

be included in the number of those who shall concur in the validity

of the deliberations," as is prescribed by art. 49 of the decree

and 64 of the regulations. Sad then, is, and at once, graceless, the

function of the parish priest compared to the action of the captain

and of the board which is executive.

It seems unnecessary to say that the action and powers of the parish

priest in his duties as local supervisor of schools result in the

theoretical legal sphere of action, completely null and void, and

that action carried to the practical field of action exposes it

to continual rivalries, numerous frictions, and even deep quarrels

between two authorities, who in that, as in everything which belongs

to the multiple affairs of the village, ought to be in perfect accord,

as is demanded jointly by the lofty interests of religion and of the

fatherland, of the spiritual welfare and of the material order and

peace of the villages.

And as that duality, besides being shameful and lowering for the

parish priests, is inviolable, and since by another part art. 12 of

the decree and 102 of the regulations, both above cited, in the form

in which they have been compiled, do not fill any need or space,

as all that which is ordained therein is a repetition of what has

been already decreed, there is no reason for their existence, to the

evident common harm, and to the small shame of the parish priest,

who deserves eternal gratitude for his labors, for his solicitude,

and for the zeal which he has ever displayed, and in the midst of

the greatest sacrifices, for the instruction.

Nearly three centuries, since 1565, when the first Augustinians,

the companions of Legazpi and Salcedo reached the Filipinas shores,

until 1863, the year in which regulations were first made for primary

instruction, outlined only hitherto in numerous laws and royal decrees

which it was impossible to fulfil, as is proved, for almost three

centuries, we say, of bold zeal bordering on the inconceivable, of

constant anxiety and watching, of unusual effort, which borders on

the heroic, and with remarkable expenses never paid back, ignored

by most people, and recognized and praised by very few: are these

not sufficient, not only so that the liberty to exercise the noblest

charge which Church and fatherland have confided to them for centuries

in the teaching of the schools, which is intimately associated with

the teaching in the pulpit, be conceded to the parish priests, but

that also by justice illumined by gratitude, the necessary law, moral

force, aid, and support, for the exercise, with perfect repose and

without any impediment, and more, without any asperity and struggle,

of that sacred duty so full of trouble and bitterness for him, so full

of results most beneficial for religion and fatherland, be conceded to

him? If, then, one desire to concede to the parish priest the position

which is in justice due him in education, if there is to be granted

to the missionary that which the most rudimentary gratitude urges,

it is of imperious necessity that that mortifying and abasing duality

be radically destroyed, for it renders useless all the energies of

the parish priest supervisor, and stifles his noble and disinterested

aid offered without tax for the service of the holy ideals of God and

fatherland. Perhaps the parish priest is deprived of this salutary

intervention because such intervention is believed unnecessary,

superfluous or prejudicial to the lofty interests of the fatherland

or of the well-being of the native? Today necessarily more than ever,

through the deep-colored dripping of the blood of the insurrection,

[88] one can see with the clearness of noonday that the intervention

of the parish priest ought to be established in all the orders, in

order that it might again take the lofty position which was overthrown

thirty years ago. Is it, perhaps, because the intervention of the

parish priests will be a barrier, or obstacle, even to the sustained

mark of true progress in education in general, or of Castilian in

particular? But this is perfectly utopian, and even an argument now of

bad taste. The religious orders enemies of true progress! Perhaps they

are not the ones who in their teaching have created everything today

existing in Filipinas? Are not the religious corporations those who

have always formed their ranks in the vanguard of science, and today

especially both in the Peninsula, and in the Magellian Archipelago,

do not numerous colleges nourish with special predilection on the

part of the public? As an incontestible proof of this truth, let one

concede without difficulty what shall afterwards be proposed as a

supplement of that existing today.

The argument of Castilian is a mythical argument of more than long

standing, since it has been proved quite clearly during the preceding

centuries that there has been an absolute lack of material for teaching

it. The patronizing enthusiasts of the Castilian, who think it to be a

panacea, so that the Indian may learn everything and obtain the social

height of the peoples of another race and of other capacities, and who

are persuaded, or appear to be so, that "what is of importance above

all else is that the Indian learn Castilian in order to understand

and to identify himself with the Castila," are laboring under a

false belief. We sincerely believe that the native, if he once come

to understand the Castila in the genuine meaning of the word, will

never come to identify himself with them. Thus it was explained

by a distinguished man of talent, both illustrious and liberal,

Don Patricio de la Escosura, [89] the least monastic man in España

and the one most favorable to the friars in Filipinas of his epoch,

as he himself declared in most ample phrase; a man of government

and administration, who throwing aside as was proper the vulgar

opinion that the friars were opposed to the teaching of Castilian,

assigned in his famous Memoria on Filipinas "of the parish priests,

I say, little must be expected in this matter;" in order to affirm

as follows: "And by this I do not pretend, and much less, deny to

them their apostolic zeal, their desire for the common good, and the

importance of the services which they have lent to religion and the

mother country, and are lending and may lend in the future;" and adding

some years later in his prologue to the small work Recuerdos [i.e.,

Remembrances] which could better be entitled Infundios [i.e., Fables]

of Señor Cañamaque: "Let the friars in the archipelago be suppressed,

and that country will soon be an entirely savage region of the globe,

where there will scarcely remain a vestige or perhaps a remembrance of

Spanish domination. That is a truth, for all those who know and judge

impartially concerning the archipelago, of axiomatic authority." And

that truth established, he immediately asked: "Why then is not that

force utilized, in whose existence and supreme efficacy all agree? Why

are not the friars charged as much as possible with the responsibility

of the immense authority which they in fact exercise by associating

them officially and in reasonable terms with the governmental

and administrative action in Filipinas?" Why? For a very simple

reason. Because governments, like ministers of the crown and royal

commissaries in Filipinas, like Señor Escosura, suffer prejudices and

embrace opinions so original and vulgar as that of the opposition of

the religious corporations to the teaching of Castilian, a universal

panacea as abovesaid, to knowing everything, and which will enable the

native to conquer every sort of obstacle; for this most clear talent,

and we say it truly, caused to be based on the ignorance of Castilian

"so much ignorance and so absurd superstitions at the end of three

centuries, and in spite of the efforts of the Spanish legislator to

civilize the Indians. So long as the Indian," he adds, "speaks his

primitive language, it is approximately impossible to withdraw him

completely from his prejudices, from his superstition, erroneous ideas,

and the puerilities belonging to the savage condition. So long as he

understands the Castilian with difficulty, ... how can he have clear

notions of his duties, and of his rights--he who cannot understand

the laws more than by the medium of some interpreter?..."

What candor and how little understanding of the native, or what excess

of political or party idea!

That illustrious statistician believed that the knowledge of

Castilian and the unity of the language could not be in any time a

favorable base for the insurrection, which was one of the contrary

arguments which he was opposing, for, he was asserting in general

that "neither the population through its number, nor the native

race through its nature and special conditions, are here capable

of independence at any time. This country is not a continent, but

an archipelago. Its diverse provinces are for the greater part,

distinct islands; ... and so long as there is a Spanish military

marine in these waters, supposing that any serious insurrection

should arise (which seems to me highly improbable) there is nothing

easier than to circumscribe it to the locality in which it should

be born, and consequently to stifle it in its cradle." A few lines

afterwards he says: "The Indians here, I repeat, can never become

independent. They feel that also for the present, although perhaps

they do not understand it; and furthermore by instinct they prefer

at all times Spaniards to foreigners, on whom they look moreover

with unfavorable caution." What an illusion, and what an enormous

disillusion! How great would be the deception of Señor Escosura if

he would come to life in his grave! Without troubling us with the

argument of the Castilian, or taking into account the circumstances

that he lays down in regard to the multiplicity of islands which

are extremely unfavorable for their defense, according to his way of

thinking, what would he say now if he lifted his head and observed that

the knowledge of Castilian has been considerably extended--perhaps

four times as much as when he went as royal commissary to Filipinas,

in order to write that Memoria; that, if not the lawyers, the men of

most letters and knowledge of Castilian, the intelligent, and those

of the most cultured native society, in which figures a numerous

pleiad composed of advocates, physicians, pharmacists, painters,

engravers, normal and elementary teachers, municipal captains,

past-captains, cuadrilleros, [90] and hundreds more of those who

understand one another and are in the way of identifying themselves

with the Castila, as Señor Escosura would say, are the leaders, are

those who captain and direct the enormous native multitudes who are

related to them in thought and action, and stimulate and spread that

bloody rebellion which is spreading through all the islands like an

immense spot of oil, in spite of the fact that they are so numerous

and are defended by a respectable squadron; of that insurrection,

which scarcely born and without arms, presents itself powerful, and

armed in the greater part of Luzón and certain other provinces, and

latent or masked in all the remaining provinces; of that insurrection

which without any preamble of liberties, and of little more than

two years of limited exercise of municipal autonomy, is beginning

to proclaim and demand independence, and passing to active life is

establishing a government and is exercising perfect dominion for more

than one-half year in an entire province a few leguas from Manila,

at the very foot of a strong fort and under the fire of its arsenal,

in spite of the numerous squadron which touches its coasts. What would

the author of that Memoria, abounding in liberties and so ample in his

criticism, say? He would say much of that which he then censured in his

opponents. He would ingenuously and solemnly assert in the face of the

bloody panorama of so enormous hetacombs that he had been deceived,

and he would even add that it is at least rash to sow the winds,

which become, as a logical sequel, fatal whirlwinds to finish us;

that the implanting of a certain class of reforms and liberties is a

rash work; and would adduce the reason which he gave in the above-cited

prologue when treating in regard to the difficulty of implanting with

result in those islands "certain literary and scientific professions;"

namely, "that given the physical and intellectual qualifications of

their race, it would be rash to expect that they would ever compare

with Europeans. The Indian learns much more readily than we do; but

he forgets with the same readiness, and retrogrades to his primitive

condition." It seems impossible how a man of so clear judgment and so

exact concepts in regard to persons could stumble so transcendently

as is found throughout in his Memoria. How powerful is the strength

of consistency. The political ideal, like the sectarian, annuls the

deepest and most righteous convictions.

But let us turn backwards a piece to pick up an end not allowed to fall

to chance. We said that, as a proof that the religious orders have

neither now nor ever been opposed to the teaching, one would concede

without difficulty what we are going to set forth as a supplement of

what exists today.

It is known by all, and is demonstrated quite clearly, that the

traditional laws for teaching, if admirably penetrated by the spirit,

profoundly Catholic, of their epoch, were very deficient, and in no

small measure impracticable in Filipinas, because they lack almost

all the means indispensable for the happy attainment which legislators

and missionaries ardently desired; equally notorious is it, and also

demonstrated, that the absolute lack of legal rules and regulations to

facilitate their obligation accentuated more strongly the deficiency

of those laws. We say legal, because the few regulations that there

were, and which were practiced, were those of which mention has

already been made in the Práctica del Ministerio of 1712, circulated

as was compulsory, by their provincial among the Augustinian parish

priests, revised in the provincial chapter of 1716, and amplified and

printed in 1731; and the Instrucciones morales y religiosas [i.e.,

Moral and religious Instructions], [91] printed in 1739 for the use

of the Dominican fathers--a lamentable lack which disappeared with

the publication of the regulations of December 20, 1863.

This law which was successively perfected by numerous decrees of the

superior government of the islands, especially by generals Izquierdo,

Gándara, and Weyler, who were filled with the praiseworthy desire for

the teaching; this law together with the opening of the Suez Canal,

which has produced a notable increase in the European population,

[92] and by this and by the facility of numerous communications and

most valuable commercial transactions, has been an abundant fount of

education and progress, which must be perfected and heightened so

that what ought to be an abundant and beneficial irrigation for so

valuable possessions may not be converted into a devastating torrent.

But even after this which we might call a giant's step in the history

of the Filipinas, their progress and their relations with Europa,

within the islands even, very much still needs to be done. It is a

fact that the coasting trade steam vessels have acquired an increase

more considerable than could have been imagined twenty years ago,

while the sail-coasting trade has not been diminished for this reason,

but increased. But just as the maritime communications have acquired

great facility, communications by land have deteriorated not a little,

and the neighborhood roads of all the islands have been falling into

complete neglect since the day when the days of forced labor began

to be reduced, and this tax became redeemable [in money].

If the greater number of roads in good condition with their

corresponding log bridges over the creeks and the simple plank

over the narrow valleys are absolutely indispensable for commercial

transactions, for the advisable development of primary instruction, the

capital is the constant attendance of the children at the school. In

order that this may be attained, it is quite necessary to construct

those roads, for in their majority they have no existence, and where

they have fallen into neglect they must be made passable alike for

the dry season and for the rainy season, prohibiting and rigorously

fining the owners of the adjacent fields who cut the roads in order

to make fields or runnels of water for the same. This being done,

it is equally necessary that the small barrios and isolated groups of

dwellings be grouped together, thus forming large barrios; or those

already existing be united in such manner that they form districts

of seventy to eighty citizens as a minimum.

Not a little labor and repeated orders will it cost to form these

groups, since it is known that the native feels as no one else

the homesickness for the forest, an effect perhaps of his humid

temperament, perhaps the reminiscence of his primitive condition;

and when this is done, to establish municipal schools for both sexes

in all the barrios which consist of more than one hundred citizens,

or uniting two for this purpose, which are distant more than three

kilometers from the central schools or from the village, which is

the distance demanded by the law for the compulsory attendance of the

children. These Schools, with the necessary conditions of ventilation,

capacity, and security, ought to be erected by the respective

municipalities, in accordance with the simple lithograph plans which

must be furnished gratis by the body of civil engineers which shall

be conserved, as was formerly done, in the archives of said tribunals,

in order that they might be used when the time came. The men and women

teachers who shall be normal [graduates] shall have the option of

petitioning these posts, and if they should not be supplied with them,

the former teacher may petition them under the condition of capacity,

which they shall prove by a preceding examination held before the

provincial board of primary instruction, in case that they shall not

already have stood a prior examination. Both of them shall be suitably

paid according to circumstances, and that quota shall be completed

with another small particular quota from each well-to-do child.

It is of great convenience for the ends of fitness, and especially of

morality, that men or women teachers shall not be appointed either in

the villages or in the barrios of the villages, without a previous

report of the parish priests of their native towns, to the effect

that they do not fall short of the age of twelve years, and naming

the villages where they shall have been resident; and that the parish

priests have the power of suspending them, according to the tenor of

the second authorization of art. 32 of the school regulations and the

superior decree of August 30, 1867, informing the provincial supervisor

for the definitive sentence, if this last measure of rigor shall have

been used; naming or recommending, according to the cases of casual

or definitive suspension, the substitute with his respective pay.

An unequivocal proof that the religious corporations not only are

not trying to escape the instruction, but that they are promoting it

with all their strength, is that they believe and sustain both in

Manila and in the provinces, numerous schools and refuges for both

sexes. And so that so praiseworthy desires, as the said corporations

are found to possess in this matter, may have a happy outcome,

and so that the provinces may reckon an abundant seminary of the

youth of both sexes, which in due time shall be converted into an

intelligent and capable staff of teachers, which shall have as its

base morality and unconditional love for España, who shall cause

those two sacred loves--love of virtue and love of fatherland--to

spring up in the hearts of their pupils, not only should the

above-mentioned corporations be empowered but also furnished all the

means of establishing normal schools for men and women teachers in the

principal provinces of the archipelago, under the direction and care

of those corporations, in order by this means to assure the Catholic

and social education, which carry with themselves a deep and abiding

love for España.

No one, in better conditions than the religious orders, who by means

of the parish priests are at the front of the villages, can proceed

with more accuracy and knowledge of the cause in the selection of

the youth who shall people those schools, for no one, better than

the parish priests, has a more perfect knowledge of the moral and

intellectual conditions of those youth and of their inclinations and

ancestral inheritance from their forbears, the absolutely necessary

factors for obtaining the beneficent result which it is desired to

obtain, namely, the most complete moral, intellectual, and truly

conceived patriotic regeneration, profoundly disturbed by a not

small number of causes, which rapidly developing within the envenomed

surrounding of masonry, and powerfully pushed forward by that impious

sect, have produced grievous days for España and Filipinas, in which

the precious blood of their sons has been abundantly shed, causing

thereby enormous expenses to the Peninsula, and a half century of

retrogression for the islands, together with the infamous blot of

the highest ingratitude of its rebellious sons. Now more than ever

is this means of regeneration demanded.

And we faithfully believe that that means of regeneration ought to

be placed in practice as soon as possible, the government removing

on its part every kind of obstacle, especially of documents and

information. That is the point on which these initiatives are

wrecked, or are indefinitely detained, as happened to the zealous and

untiring Señor Gainza in regard to his school of Santa Isabel--the

normal school for women teachers in Nueva Cáceres--who after having

struggled for a long time in the offices of the superior government,

of administration, instruction, and engineers, was compelled to

resolve his cherished project by presenting it personally to Queen

Doña Isabel, who fully and kindly acceded to his supplication, and

even thus with the valuable license of her Majesty communicated in

due form, that eminent prelate still met all sorts of difficulties,

from the provincial chief, which only disappeared with his departure

from the same. In order that these labors might have a homogeneous

result and those normal schools respond efficaciously to the concept

of the fatherland, it is not advisable that the instruction in them

be given by others than Spanish corporations, and consequently, by

Spanish religious, who are the ones who can really impress that love,

prohibiting, as a consequence of this standard, the teaching of the

schools already established, be they private or not, from being given

in any other language than the Spanish, or in ordinary conversation,

that any other language than the Castilian be used, without this at

all preventing other languages from being taught.

For the better order, progress, and homogeneity, it is indispensable

that one bear in mind the capacity of the natives, in order to assign

the list of studies which they are to take. That must be proportioned

in all institutions to their nature, and those studies, as is evident,

must be suppressed, which either give an unadvisable or useless

result, because of being outside the intellectual sphere of the

native. Still more evident is the necessity of the instruction for

the natives obeying a uniform plan of method and social education,

in order to avoid ill feeling among the teaching communities, and

peculiarities and comparisons, which by themselves are always odious,

and which cause not a little mischief among the natives, who, if they

are not distinguished by their character and reasoning, yet are by

nature very observant, and lay great stress on all external details,

so that without troubling themselves in seeking the cause, they form

their opinion or standard; and from that time on they will not be

inclined toward those things which the masons and separatists are

pursuing with the greatest of rancor by finding in those same things

more obstacles for the attainment of their evil purposes.

The list of studies, as well as the method of teaching and

of education will be the first and immediate end of the studies,

opinion, and formula which the Superior Board of Public Instruction

shall bear to its conclusion with singular interest. This board

shall form the consequent schedules and above-mentioned methods,

which it shall subject to the approbation of the general government

of the archipelago.

The abovesaid superior board may be composed of the following

gentlemen: the archbishop of Manila; the intendant of the public

treasury; the president of the Audiencia; civil governor of Manila;

secretary of the superior government; one councilor of administration;

the provincials of the Augustinians, Franciscans, Dominicans, and

Recollects; the rectors of the university, of the normal school,

and of the seminary. To it shall be submitted the revision of the

present schedules, both for the normal schools and in so far as the

schedules of the studies of primary and secondary and higher education

need to be revised; and at the same time the method of teaching and

of education for both sexes, the execution of which, as I have just

said, will be accomplished under the character of its importance and

immediate necessity.

The attention of every studious and observing man, who has lived in

residence in the Filipino provinces, is not a little struck by the

excessive number of young men, who having taken more or less courses

in Manila, but without concluding the course begun, or even taking

the degree of bachelor, after their parents have spent considerable

sums on them, return to their villages with very little or no virtue,

but with many vices. At first sight one notes in these young men an

irritating radical attitude and a freedom mixed with unendurable

arrogance and vanity. Their fellow countrymen, whom they disdain

because they possess, although in a superficial manner, the Castilian

speech full of phrases and sounds, which would make the most reserved

Viscayan laugh, and of high-sounding words which they use without

understanding their real significance, immediately look up to them as

so many Senecas. They are persuaded that they are perfect gentlemen,

for by dint of seeing them practiced they have learned a few social

formulas; they wear a cravat, and boots, and pantaloons of the

latest style. For the rest, they are completely devoid of fundamental

knowledge, and of the fundamentals of knowledge in the studies which

they have taken, and have acquired only a slight tint of the part, let

us say the bark of those studies, which they conclude by forgetting

in proportion as time passes and their passions increase. These

young men who forget what they have learned with so great facility,

do not, as a general rule, devote themselves to any work, for they

do not like work and cannot perform any; for the habits that they

have contracted are very different--habits of pastime, idleness,

and the waste of their paternal capital. In such condition are those

who, as a rule, furnish the contingent of the staff of those who are

employed without pay, of aspirants, and amanuenses with little pay

of the offices and municipalities, while the most intelligent and

skilful devote themselves to making writs for parties in litigation,

a very handy matter, and one never finished among the natives, not

even by force of many deceptions and the loss of great interests.

And that our opinion is not formed from the smoke of straw, and

lightly, is proved by the numerous lists of matriculations which

accompany the conscientious and well written memorials by trustworthy

Dominican fathers, especially those which were published in the

years 1883 and 1887, because of the expositions of Amsterdam and

Filipinas, in Madrid. We cannot resist the temptation to transcribe

here a valuable paragraph, which wonderfully meets our purpose. It

is taken from the writing signed by the excellent Dominican, Father

Buitrago, for the last-mentioned exposition. It is as follows: "The

first thing which offers itself to the consideration of the reader,

is the multitude of the inscriptions of matriculation, and the small

proportionate number of approvals. On this point, the first thing that

offers is to investigate the causes of that disproportion, which is

a great surprise to those who are ignorant of the special conditions

under which secondary teaching in this country is found. Many of the

young men who matriculate for it, have scarcely any or no desire to

obtain a passing mark in their courses, their only object being to

learn the Castilian language, and to know, in order that they may

afterward occupy a more important position in their villages, some of

the customs of the Spaniards. Those who come to Manila with the decided

intention of terminating a literary career are relatively very few. In

this matter their families exact but little also. And then there is

added the method of living in this place, crowded together in their

greatest part in private houses under the nominal vigilance of their

landlords or landladies, as they call the owners of the houses in which

they are lodged. Consequently, not few in this capital are reared in

idleness and learn the vices of Europeans without taking on their good

qualities. The rector of the university can do nothing on this point,

for the rules allow students to matriculate two or three times or even

more often, in the same course, in spite of their not passing in it."

Before such an inundation of wise men, whose scholastic modesty suffers

with a serene mind and with immovable resignation [resignación de

estuco] three and more failures in one study, there is no other

means, since the lash cannot be legally used, or the oak rod of

the oldtime dominie, than to put in practice a salutary strictness

in the examinations of the secondary education, and to revise the

regulations more strictly, in order thereby to free the provinces of

that inundation of learning which parches the fields for lack of arms

to work them, uses up the savings of the wealthy families, fills the

villages with vampires who suck the sweat of the poor or careless with

impunity, increases the lawsuits and ill feeling in the villages,

makes of the municipalities and offices a workshop of intrigue,

and gives a numerous contingent to the lodges and to separatism.

And as the above-mentioned author of the said Memoria adds: "It is

apparent to us at times that (the rector) actively negotiated to

subject the lodging houses for students to one set of regulations,

in order to watch over their moral and literary conduct better; but

such efforts have had no result;" it is thoroughly necessary to create

a law, in which the rector shall be authorized to extend his zeal,

vigilance, and action to such houses, and also to subject all the

day students of Manila, without distinction of establishments, to the

university police of the rector and his agents, reëstablishing in this

regard the ancient university right. For that purpose, full powers

ought to be given to the rector, so that, now by himself in faults

of less degree, and now by the university Council in the greater,

he may impose academical fines, and even ask the aid of public force

in case of necessity, beginning by demanding from each young man who

wishes to matriculate, the certificate or report of good conduct given

by the parish priest of the village whence he comes. This requirement

is of exceptional advisability, not only for the general ends of the

instruction, but also for the more perfect selection of the persons

who, on devoting themselves to the noble employment of teaching,

shall form the understanding and the heart of future generations.

Only in this manner can we succeed in getting the Filipino youth to

acquire the conditions and habits of morality and study, until they

reach the end of their capacity. Only in this manner can we succeed

in giving to the fatherland, grateful children, to Filipinas, honored

citizens, to society, useful members, to families, children who honor

the white hairs of their parents, and to the public posts a suitable

staff, without pretensions, and faithful in the performance of their

duties; and that they shall be consequently, fervent Catholics,

who shall never forget what the parish priest taught them when they

were children, in his simple doctrinal lessons, and who shall be heard

afterwards to repeat to their teachers, to bless the divine cross which

illumined their intellects and saved their souls, and to bless España,

which amid the folds of its yellow banner or crowning its standards,

brought the cross triumphant to those shores, and with it Christian

civilization and true progress.

"Until the end of the year 1863 in which was dictated the memorable

royal decree, which established a plan of primary instruction in

Filipinas, and which arranged for the creation of schools of primary

instruction in all the villages of the islands, and the creation

of a normal school in Manila, whence should graduate well-educated

and religious teachers who should take the foremost places in those

institutions, it might be said that there had been no legislation in

regard to primary instruction in these islands. For, although it is

certain that precepts directed to the attainment of education by the

natives, and very particularly the teaching of the beautiful Spanish

language, are not lacking (some of those precepts being contained in

the Leyes de Indias, and in the edicts of good government), it is a

fact that those precepts are isolated arrangements without conclusions,

the product of the good desire which has always animated the Spanish

monarchs and their worthy representatives in the archipelago for the

advancement and prosperity of these islands, but without resting upon

a firm foundation for lack of the elements for its existence.

"Before the above-mentioned epoch the reverend and learned parish

priests of the villages came to fill in great measure and voluntarily

the noble ends of propagating primary instruction throughout these

distant regions by the aid of their own pupils, the most advanced of

whom dedicated themselves to the teaching of their fellow citizens,

although they received but very little remuneration for their work

and care, and there was no consideration of teachers or titles which

accredited them as such." [93]

In fact the religious corporations in Filipinas were those who busied

themselves with the interest which the matter deserved in primary

instruction, which was abandoned almost entirely by the authorities

until the year 1863, notwithstanding the repeated recommendations,

orders, and laws of our monarchs and of the Councils of Indias. The

religious were the first teachers of primary letters in Filipinas,

as they were afterwards in secondary instruction, in the superior

teaching with faculties, and in the principal arts and trades which

the Indians learned. By the advice of the religious, the villages

constructed the first schools. The religious directed the works; they

gave the instruction, until they had pupils who could be substituted

for them and leave them free for the spiritual administration of

the faithful; and they, the religious, paid the wages of those

improvised teachers, without official title or character as such,

but sufficiently instructed to teach the tiny people their first

letters, and to succeed in obtaining that seventy-five per cent of

the inhabitants [of the Filipino village] might learn how to read and

write correctly. Señor Hilarión, [94] archbishop of Manila, was able

to say to the most excellent Ayuntamiento of that city when provincial

of the calced Augustinians: "There are multitudes of villages, such

as Argao, Dalaguete, and Bolhoon, in Cebú, and many in the province

of Iloilo, in which it is difficult to find a single boy or girl who

does not know how to read or write, an advantage which many cities

of our España have not yet succeeded in obtaining."

The pay that the religious could give to the teachers educated by

them was moderate, but in faith none of the detractors of the monastic

corporations of Filipinas had given as much, or even the half, for so

beneficial a work. The religious not only provided large, roomy, and

ventilated places for the primary instruction of the two sects, and

acted as teachers until the most advanced pupils could use something

of what was supplied them in teaching, but also provided the schools

with the suitable and necessary furnishings in which the industry

and genius of the parish-priest regular came to aid their pecuniary

appeals and the absolute lack of the materials for teaching. There

was no ink, paper, or pens. The first was not necessary for the new

papyrus, which was no other than the magnificent leaf of the banana,

and the pen was a small bit of bamboo cut in the manner of a pen. From

each leaf of the banana they could get twenty or thirty pages of a

larger size than those of Iturzaeta. On the other side of the leaf,

covered with fine down and smooth as that of velvet, the Indians

wrote their letters with the bamboo cut in the form of a pen or of

the ancient stylus. What was thus written was not very permanent,

nor was there any need that it should be, for the copy pages were

not kept as a justification of the expenses of writing allowed by

the teachers according to rule later, because of the distrustful or

cautious official administration. Since the material was plentiful

and free the children were allowed to write as many pages as they

wished. More, in fact, they would be seen seated and writing at all

hours of the day, not only in their houses, but also in the square,

in the street, on the roads, for in all parts they had ready at hand

bananas and bamboos, and a stone or any other kind of an object was

used as a desk. And, since the aptitude of the native Filipino is

so remarkable for imitation, and his patience so great, they did

not stop their writing until they imitated ours with the greatest

perfection. The religious also wrote the books and primers for their

reading, formerly in manuscript, then printed in their own dialect,

so that they might profit from the maxims and doctrine, and history

and religion, in proportion as they became proficient in reading.

Notwithstanding, after 1863, when the government took charge of

education, and the normal school directed by the Jesuit fathers

provided the villages with normal teachers under official title and

pay, the religious ceased to continue to foment education in their

villages, yet not only as local supervisors, with which character they

were invested by the memorable decree of that date--the foundation of

all the circulars, decrees, and instructions which afterward fell upon

that historical document in a vast jumble--but also since the boys

and girls of the barrios distant from the villages twenty kilometers

and sometimes more, were not able on account of the distance to be

present at the official school, did the parish-priest religious,

attentive and vigilant, hasten in their anxiety to supply with their

pecuniary resources the official deficiencies in every barrio or

visita. They had schools built of light materials but solid and well

built, in which teachers, both male and female, appointed and paid

by the parish priests, gave primary instruction in reading, writing,

and arithmetic; and sewing and embroidery to the girls. Finally,

the parish priests also supplied them with paper, pens, ink, books,

thread, needles, and all the other materials needed in teaching. The

said schools were visited by the parish priests, if not periodically,

yet whenever the duties of their ministries would permit. All the boys

and girls of the nearby barrios attended those schools. Every Sunday

after mass, masters and mistresses, with their respective scholars

presented to their parish priests their copy books, sums, sewing,

and embroidery, which they had made during the week. In order to

comprehend the significance of all that has been set forth to this

point, one must bear in mind that the population in Filipinas is

found much scattered in groups of houses called barrios or visitas,

more or less densely populated, and separated by a greater or less

distance from one another. So true is this that of the fourteen

thousand inhabitants of the village of Ogton, verbi gratia, scarcely

four thousand lived within the radius of the village. This scattering

of the inhabitants throughout the jurisdiction of the villages, if it

were meet and convenient at the beginning of the conquest, in order

that the barrios or the visitas might become the nucleus of future

villages, yet had no reason for existence, during the last half of

the past century in the very densely populated provinces like that of

Iloilo and others. The inhabitants of the barrios distant from the

village, from authority, and from the parish priests, could not be

watched and attended to by the paternal solicitude of the latter,

so much, or so well as those of the village, who lived under his

immediate eye. Many of the priests themselves were suspected by

the authorities as breeders of evil doers and criminals, for in the

distant barrios people of evil life gathered, combined their thefts,

and concealed the thefts. They were the pests of the civil guard and

of the local authorities, and the constant preoccupation of the parish

priests who saw that they were not fulfilling their religious duties

as good Christians, and who, in order to administer the sacraments

to them, had to go on horseback, by chair [horimon] or by hammock,

whether it rained in torrents, or the equatorial sun melted their

brains. Many times, and in distinct seasons and occasions, the superior

authority of the islands ordered that the barrios be incorporated into

the villages. Not being able to succeed in that, they ordered the

small barrios to be fused into the greater, and roads to be opened

which would put them in communication with the mother village. Not

even this could they obtain because of the inborn passivity of the

Indians. The one most harmed by that order of things was the parish

priest who had the duty of watching over those scattered sheep, and

giving them the food of the spirit to the danger of his health, and

the exhaustion of his purse, by paying the wages of the teachers and

for the materials used in teaching for the schools of the barrios. [95]

When the schools were already running with regularity, and the fruits

which were produced under the accurate direction and immediate

inspection of the parish priests were plentiful, the superior

government of the islands took possession of the department of

education, and in the above-mentioned decree of 1863, gave official

character to the schools instituted by the parish priests. It conceded

titles as teachers ad interim to those who were then in charge of the

schools appointed by the religious. It assigned them a moderate pay,

but one much greater than that received from the parish priests,

whose resources were certainly very meager, and with which they had

to attend to other duties which their ministry imposed on them. But

the government left in most complete abandonment the settlement of

the barrios composed generally of two-thirds of the total number of

souls. We have already related how and in what manner the parish

priests supplied the governmental omission. Teachers ad interim

were gradually substituted by the normal teachers as they graduated

from the normal school. Indeed in the last years of the past century

there were but few schools not ruled over by teachers of the normal

school. Did education gain much by the semi-academical title of the new

teachers? Did the language of the fatherland become more general? At

first, we must reply with all truth that while the normal teachers

remained under the immediate supervision of the parish priests,

authorized by the official rules to suspend them and fashion them

suitably, education made excellent progress. But when they were

emancipated from the supervision of the parish-priest religious by the

decree of sad memory countersigned by Señor Maura in 1893, creating

the municipalities to which passed the supervision and management

of the schools and the teachers, education went into a decline. [96]

The presence of the children became purely nominal in the triplicate

report which the masters and mistresses sent monthly to the government

of the province. That report had to be visoed by the parish priests,

but the governors received and approved them without that requisite,

disdaining and despising the signature of the parish priests. In that

the latter understood that the visto bueno [i.e., approval] was a

farce, which, taken seriously, lessened the reputation of and gained

ill will for them, without any profit to the teachers and municipal

captains. Consequently, it was all the same for the results whether

they signed the said reports, or did not sign them. But if was painful

to contemplate the empty benches in the school, from which those

regular and interminable rows of four hundred or five hundred boys,

and two other rows of as many or more girls, reduced afterwards to

two or three dozen at the most, no longer went to the church after the

afternoon class. That happened and we have seen it. It was one, and not

of the least serious, misfortunes that came upon the country because

of the unfortunate decree in regard to the Filipino municipalities.

On the creation of the normal school the government proposed as its

principal object the rapid and quick diffusion of Castilian as the

bond of union between the mother country and the colony. The end

was good and praiseworthy, but a mistake was made in the means by

which it was to be obtained, for those means were neither sufficient

nor efficacious. Departing even from the false supposition that all

the normal teachers constantly directed their efforts to teaching

Castilian to the children, nothing serious and positive could be

obtained. In the schools the children read and wrote in Castilian,

learned the grammar by heart, and some teachers gave the explanation

in Castilian also. The teacher asked questions in Castilian, and

the scholars replied in certain dialogues, which they learned by

heart. [97] But what was the result? The children did not understand

one iota of the master's explanation. They answered in the dialogue

like parrots, and the few phrases which they learned in the harmonious

language of Cervantes, they forgot before they reached home, if not in

the very school itself, because they did not again hear them either

when playing with their comrades or in their homes, or in the school

itself. For the constant and daily presence in the school left much to

be desired, especially during the last decade of Spanish rule. Before

the creation of the municipalities to which Señor Maura gave the

local supervision of the schools, the parish priests visited them

frequently. Every afternoon when the boys and girls were dismissed

from school they went to the church in two lines, and the parish

priest observed and even counted the number of those who were present,

and when many of them were absent, they asked the teachers for their

report of the absent children, called on their parents, and with

flattery, admonitions, or threats, succeeded in getting the latter

to see that their children were punctual in attendance. Furthermore,

they clothed at their expense the poor boys and girls who excused

their non-attendance at school because they had no pantaloons,

or were without a skirt with which to cover the body. Later, with

the municipalities, neither the municipal captains nor anyone else

took care of the daily attendance of teachers and scholars in the

school. If primary instruction in Filipinas had gone on in this way

for considerable time it would have pitifully retrograded.

We have already seen the intervention which the parish priests had

in primary education before the decree of 63, after that date, and

also after the never sufficiently-deplored decree in regard to the

municipalities, proposed for the royal signature by the then minister

of the colonies, Don Antonio Maura, in 1893. But, notwithstanding that,

there are many Spaniards who blame the parish-priest religious for the

ignorance of the Indians of Castilian. Why this charge, both gratuitous

and unjust? Some have argued that the parish priests should personally

teach Castilian to the native children. In order to understand the

absurdity of so great a pretension, one need only bear in mind that the

parish-priest regulars in Filipinas had in their charge the spiritual

administration of the villages, the number of souls in the smallest

of which was not less than six thousand, and for the greater part

reached ten thousand, fourteen thousand, and even twenty thousand,

and more. For that work only a few parish priests had a coadjutor, and

those among the Tagálogs, two or three Indian coadjutors, who aided

them in the administration of the sacrament to the well and sick. It

was also the duty of the parish priest to reply to consultations,

give advices, direct communications, exercise the duties of alcaldes,

justices of the peace, decisions, etc.; for in all that they had

to take action, as neither the municipal alcalde nor the justice

of peace of the village understood Castilian, and least of all,

understood the orders, reports, acts, and measures. And it is asked

us, if, after attending to so varied occupations, some peculiar to

their ministry, others imposed by charity and by necessity, the parish

priests would have time, willingness, or pleasure, in officiating as

masters of Castilian without pay; however, there is still more. The

parish priests were the local presidents of the boards of health

and of locusts, public works, industrial and urban contribution,

citizen and tributary poll, etc., etc., and we are asked, I repeat,

if with all these trifles and mummeries the parish priest would have

time even to rest, at the very least.

Others carried their pretension even to meddling with sacred matters

of the temple and interfering with the parochial dwelling, demanding

from the parish priests that the theological moral preaching, and

the explanation of the Christian doctrine be in Castilian, as if it

were the duty of the parish priest to please four deluded people, and

not to instruct his parishioners who, not understanding Castilian,

would have obtained from the catechism and from the sermon that

which the negro did from the story. The same is true of the demand

that the religious should address their servants in our beautiful

language. Seeing that the Indian servants did the reverse of what their

Spanish masters ordered them, and seeing the desperation of the latter

for the said reason, why should the religious have to be subjected to

like impatience when they could avoid it by addressing their servants

in their own language? So general was the opinion that the religious

were opposed to the Indians learning Castilian that Governor-general

Despujols, in his visits to the Ilonga capital, apostrophized the

parish-priest religious harshly, who had gone in commission to salute

him. "You," he said to them, "are the ones who oppose the diffusion of

Castilian in the country." Such were the words of that Catalonian, who

claimed that a colony separated from the mother country by thousands

of miles, and almost abandoned for that reason until the opening

of the isthmus of Suez, should know and speak the Castilian, which

is not known or spoken as yet in Cataluña, or in other provinces of

España. It was very convenient for the Spaniards who went to Filipinas

on business or as employes, and even necessary for them to understand

the Indians, and they demanded that the latter learn Castilian. It

was also very convenient and comfortable for the religious, since

the learning of a dialect of the country cost them at least a year's

study and practice. But was it not easier and more just that forty or

fifty thousand Spaniards learn the language of the country since they

needed it to live and do business in it, than to make six or seven

millions of Indians, very few of whom needed to know it, learn Spanish?

Father Zúñiga [98] already declared in his time: "It has been ordered

that books be not printed in the Tagálog language, that the Indians

learn the doctrine in the Castilian language, and that the fathers

preach to them in that language. The religious, in order to observe

that command preached to them in Spanish and in Tagálog, but to ask

them to confess some Indians who only knew the doctrine in a language

which they did not understand and that the parish priests should be

satisfied by preaching to their parishioners in a language of which

the latter were ignorant, was almost the same as asking them for that

which Diocletian asked from the Christians, and they would rather

die willingly before fulfilling it.... In order that one may see

the inconsistency of those who rule, it is sufficient to know their

method of procedure in regard to plays. These Indians, as I have said,

are very fond of plays, and the most influential people are those who

become actors. Since such people do not generally know the Castilian

language, they petition that they be allowed to play in their own

language, and there is not the slightest hesitation in allowing plays

in the Tagálog language in all the villages of this province, even

in that of Binondo, which is only separated from the city [of Manila].

"And it is asked that the parish priests preach in Spanish!" [99]

In 1590, we find in the records of our province the following most

note-worthy minute of the provincial chapter: "Likewise, it shall be

charged upon all the ministers of the Indians that, just as the lads of

the school are taught to read and to write, they also shall learn to

talk our Spanish tongue because of the great culture and profit which

follow therefrom (Archives of St. Augustine in Manila)." This was the

rule made by the Augustinian fathers in 1590, and still there are some

who accuse the religious of having been opposed to the diffusion of

Castilian in Filipinas.

The decree in which the religious were charged to teach Castilian in

the kingdoms of Indias is as follows: "By Don Felipe IV, in Madrid,

March 2, 1634; and November 4, 1636, law v. That the curas arrange to

teach the Indians the Castilian language and the Christian doctrine

in the same language.

"We ask and charge the archbishops and bishops to provide and order

in their dioceses the curas and instructors of the Indians, by using

the gentlest means, to arrange and direct all the Indians to be taught

the Spanish language, and that they be taught the Christian doctrine

in that language, so that they may become more apt in the mysteries

of our Catholic faith, and profit for their salvation, and attain

other advantages in their government and mode of living."--Book i,

título xiii.

"We could cite other dispositions [100] but these are sufficient to

cause the noble propositions of our governors-general and the first

apostles of Christianity in that country to be appreciated. Apart

from the fact that in former times the friar could not alone carry

the weight of the extraordinary labor, which is inferred from the

teaching of a language which can be contained in the head of but very

few Indians, the aspiration that our language supplant the many which

are spoken in Filipinas can be only completely illusory."

We cannot resist the desire to reproduce here some paragraphs of

the Carta abierta [i.e., open letter] which was directed through the

columns of La Época by Señor Retana to Don Manuel Becerra, who was

then minister of the Colonies. [101]

"I do not see, Señor Don Manuel, that a single Spaniard exists who

would not be delighted to know that peoples who live many leguas

from ours use the Spanish language as their own language. Why

should we not be proud when we are persuaded that in both Americas

live about forty millions of individuals who speak our beautiful

language? Consequently, I esteem as most meritorious that vehement

desire of yours to effect that there in Filipinas the Malays abandon

their monotonous and poor dialects, and choose as their language that

which we talk in Castilla. Very meritorious is it in fact among us to

sustain so fine a theory; and I say, among us, for if you were English

and set forth your laudable propositions in the House of Lords, or the

House of Commons, of diffusing the language of the mother-country among

the natives of unequal colonies, you may be assured, Señor Becerra,

that on all sides of the circle there would come marks and even cries

of disapproval. For it is a matter sufficiently well known in Great

Britain and in Holland; and in a certain manner in France also, it

is not maintained, not even in theory, that it is advisable for the

conquered races to know the language of the ruling race. The great

Macaulay, a liberal democrat, freethinker, a sincere and enthusiastic

man, published his desire that Christianity be propagated in India,

but he never spoke of a propagation of the English language in the

Hindoostan Empire.

"Think, Señor Don Manuel, and grant me that if it were possible

to please all the Spaniards to have our language propagated in all

quarters of the world, there may be some persons who, thinking like

the English, may conceive that that propagation would be unadvisable,

from the viewpoint of politics.

"But by deprecating such tiquis miquis [102] since I hold, so far

as I am concerned, that today our fellow countrymen who think in

the English fashion in this manner are exceptional, let us come

to the real root of the matter. It is an easy thing for you, Don

Manuel, to see that it is practicable in a brief space of time

to place the Castilian in the head of seven millions of Filipino

Indians. Permit me to make a citation which is of pearls. Not

many months ago the director of the royal college of the Escorial,

or, to be more explicit, Fray Francisco Valdés, a man of superior

talent who has lived in Filipinas for eighteen or twenty years, said:

'Our language cannot be substituted advantageously for the Tagálog,

so long as the social education of that people does not experience

profound and radical transformations.' And the same author adds: 'And

since the total transformation of the customs and manner of living of

a race is not the work of one year, much less of one century, hence,

our firm conviction that great as may be our strength and much as the

fondness of the Indian for Castilian may be exaggerated, the latter

will never be the common idiom of Filipinas.'

"Do you think of tearing out the entrails of seven millions of

individuals by giving them other new ones in this manner all at

once? For the peculiar idiom is born in the peculiar country, and

develops with the individual, and there is no human strength, which

in many years can tear it out. At one step from us lie Cataluña

and Vascongadas, where no success is had in making the speech of

Cervantes common to individuals for whom the resonant drapery of our

rich language is very loose, and whom it suffocates. Much less could

it be so [in Filipinas]!

"Those who make the greatest propaganda are not, indeed, the

masters. As many masters as there are in Cavite, there are in Bulacan,

for example, or more, and in Cavite the people talk fairly good

Castilian, while in Bulacan they scarcely talk any. Why? Because

in Cavite there are many Spaniards who live there, while in Bulacan

there are perhaps not fifty. For the rest another citation and the

conclusion. The famous student of Filipinas, now the bishop of Jaca,

Fray Francisco Valdés, says: 'There are many Indians who come to

know quite well the material of the Spanish word; but the internal

signification and the logical character of our beautiful language is

for them an undecipherable secret. Our meanings [giros] and phrases

are opposed to their peculiar fashion of conceiving and correlating

ideas. From this discrepancy in the association of ideas, they produce

literary products as nonsensical as the one below. This example is

chosen from among innumerable others of the same kind, as it is the

work of a master who passed among those of his class and was really

one of the best instructed. The matter is an invitation elegantly

printed and gotten up on the occasion of the mass called vara which

the gobernadorcillos usually cause to be celebrated with great pomp

on that day when they receive from the governor the vara or staff of

command. It is as follows: On the nineteenth day, in the morning,

and of the present full moon, the mass of my vara will be held in

this church under my charge, for God has gratuitously granted me this

honorable charge. I invite you, therefore, to my house, so that from

that moment the vacancy of my heart having been freed, it may become

full by your presence, until my last hour sounds on the clock of the

Eternal.'" Come now Don Manuel, what do you say to this? [103]

"We might extend our remarks to much greater length [104] in

this important matter in order to prove that the 'Ordeno y mando'

[105] of those who govern always falls to pieces before insuperable

difficulties, and therefore to accuse the religious of being the

reason why Castilian is not popular in Filipinas when we have the most

eloquent data that in the villages ruled by secular priests of the

country, there is less Castilian spoken than in the parishes ruled over

by the friars, is an immense simplicity into which only the malevolent

can fall or those who do not know those races by experience.--Consult

Barrantes's La Instrucción primaria en Filipinas; and Father Valdés's

El Archipiélago Filipino." [106]

If the Spanish government desired that the Castilian language be

rapidly diffused in Filipinas, the normal school or the teachers who

graduated from it were not the most efficient and suitable means, but

the establishment in the Filipino villages of five hundred thousand

Spanish families. The servants of those families, and familiarity and

converse with the native families would have done in a short time,

what never would have succeeded by means of the normal teachers,

and which the other educational schools in which the native dialects

would not be allowed to be spoken, would have taken centuries in

obtaining. It was observed that in the ports and in the capitals

where the Spanish element was numerous, almost all the Indians spoke

Castilian. Consequently, this same thing would have happened in the

villages in which fifty or one hundred Spanish families would have been

settled. Neither was it the mission of the parish-priest religious to

teach Castilian to the Indians, nor did they have time to dedicate

themselves to it. Neither would they have succeeded in that in a

long time, not even with all their prestige and competency. Nor did

they need as parish priests that the Indian should know Castilian,

although as Spaniards they desired it, and very greatly. For, very

strongly did it come to them that language, religion, and customs,

are strong chains which united mother countries to colonies.

No one could be in a position to know the needs of the country, to

feel its forces and appreciate its progress as could the parish-priest

religious. Individual members of respectable communities consecrated

to the spiritual and material happiness of the Indians, passed,

but the spirit which guided their footsteps toward so noble an end,

without separating itself any distance from the preconceived plan,

always existed. When the opportunity to give greater amplitude to

education, and to open up new and vaster horizons to the studious

youth of the country, came, the parish priests were the ones who

recognized that need and satisfied it. By a royal decree of June 8,

1585, King Don Felipe II arranged for the foundation of the college

of San José, which was destined for the education and teaching of

the children of Spaniards resident in Filipinas. Lessons in Latin,

rhetoric, and philosophy, were given in that college by distinguished

Jesuit fathers. The restrictions placed as to the number and quality

of the pupils did not satisfy the need for more centers of learning,

which the Filipino youth urgently demanded within a little time. His

Excellency, the archbishop of Manila, Señor Benavides, a Dominican,

projected the foundation of the college of Santo Tomás, aided by

his Excellency, Don Fray Diego de Soria of the same order, bishop

of Nueva Segovia. [107] With the one thousand pesos fuertes donated

by Señor Benavides and the four thousand by Señor Soria, and the

acquisition of the libraries of both, the works were commenced in the

year 1610. In 1617, the college was in condition of being admitted as

a house by the province of the Dominican fathers in the islands. In

1620, having been provided with professors, it opened its halls to

the Filipino youth without distinction of race. King Don Felipe IV

took the college under his special protection by a royal decree of

November 27, 1623. Some years later, its royal protector obtained

from his Holiness, Pope Innocent X, the fitting bull given November

20, 1644, by which the said college was erected into a university,

and the latter decorated with the honorable titles of Royal and

Pontifical. By a royal decree of May 17, 1680, it was admitted

solemnly under the royal protection, and his Majesty, the king, was

declared its patron. By another royal decree of December 7, 1781, the

statutes approved by the government of the colony, October 20, 1786,

were formed. It continued and is at present in charge of its founders,

the learned and virtuous Dominican fathers. That royal college and

pontifical university has a rector religious, and all the professors

except those of medicine and pharmacy are also Dominicans.

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]

The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898; Volume 46, 1721-1739 Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century · 第 15 / 16 章

It is the most sacred duty of every gubernatorial authority to