Chapter VII: Of faults against academic discipline and means of checking them (4)

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.

II

"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.