The primary school, the most interesting among all peoples, and more
yet among backward peoples, was found in our time in an incipient
condition, if one considers it as the government desires it, and
as a great number of royal decrees resolved. Primary instruction in
Castilian was alone known in Manila and some suburbs of the capital,
but in the dialects of the country there existed boys' schools in all
the villages, and in the majority of them, also schools for girls. It
is a fact that such schools did not count on more elements than the
pay assigned by the government for the teachers, [150] and the parish
priests together with the provincial chiefs had to decide on the means
for the construction and conservation of the edifices and furnishings,
the former paying in addition their salaries to the teachers of the
girls, or paying them from the funds of the churches according to
the wealth of each one.
This system gave the consequent result of there not being any suitable
directors for complete primary instruction. But in reading, writing,
and religion, in the majority of the villages of the archipelago,
there was found a greater number proportionally than in España,
for the missionaries always considered that education as the first
element of civilization and adhesion of those inhabitants to the
crown of Castilla.
The government tried to improve and make general that education, but
in the Spanish language. [151] For that purpose the assembly appointed
in 1861 made some regulations, taking as its base the creation of
a normal school, which has had realization, and according to Señor
Barrantes, in the above-cited work, it seems that instruction has
improved somewhat in what relates to the Spanish.
The question of whether the parish priests or missionaries have opposed
those rules is of little importance to us. As in all disputable
cases there are partisans who favor and those who oppose--not the
advantage which the generalization of the Spanish language might
be, for all people recognize and admit this hypothesis, but only
the results which the generalization of the Spanish language would
produce, reckoning on the slight capacity of the natives to utilize
the good that they might read in the idiom of Cervantes, and bearing
in mind the political make-up of that country and the evil effects
which would be produced by the daily publications which would arrive
[from España], and which are incapable of enlightening the little but
submissive intelligence of those inhabitants, yet always sufficient
to excite the passions of men who would easily confuse rights with
individual duties, giving a worse result than that which the history
of our ancient colonies registers.
As we do not know of this department in the present circumstances
more than that which the above-cited work brings to light, we shall
limit ourselves to calling the attention of the government so that
it may introduce in that department all the improvements possible,
extending the normal school, which gives very slight results for
a people of five millions, and proving whether this normal school,
organized with a mixture of the language of the country and of the
Spanish and by creating one school in each group of provinces belonging
to the same language, would give a more positive result in regard to
instruction, and one even more efficacious for the propagation of the
Spanish by printing works in two columns in the two languages. [152]
What the archipelago lacks are men and women teachers to give
instruction in the primary schools. Industrial teachers, professorships
for foremen and assistants for public works and master masons would
produce a great result in that country. Lastly, let all the generals
bear in mind what the various ancient decrees rule to the effect that
a charge shall be made to them in their residencias for their neglect
in public instruction.