Journal of Race Development - 1910 - 14.pdf

7/27/2019 Journal of Race Development - 1910 - 14.pdf

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What May Be Expected from Philippine Education?

Author(s): David P. BarrowsSource: The Journal of Race Development, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Oct., 1910), pp. 156-168Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29737855 .

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WHAT MAY BE EXPECTED FROM PHILIPPINEEDUCATION?By David P. Barrows, Ph.D., Recently Director of Educationin the Philippines.

The opening of American markets to their products isunquestionably bringing a new era of business prosperityto the Philippines. The governor general has announcedrecently that for the fiscal year ending June 30th, the sumof imports and exports exceeds by $17,000,000 the commerceof the previous year. Everywhere there is increased indus?trial activity. The present administration is laying greatemphasis on the material development of the islands; manymillions of pesos have been spent for roads; other millionsfor permanent buildings, for harbor improvements, for thebeautification of Manila. Newly constructed railroads areoperating. Added exertions are being made for the sup?pression of human and animal disease. The peace which hasobtained inpractically all parts of the archipelago since 1906continues unbroken. Yet this prosperity is not a solution ofthe Philippine problem, nor do these economic successes,striking as they are, meet the real expectations of the peoplethemselves. Neither will this business activity, if unsup?ported by other agencies, insure a general diffusion of wellbeing.The Philippines have been prosperous before. There werelong periods under Spanish rule, when trade rapidly increased,when each year added new areas to productive cultivation,

when settlers and adventurers from Spain crowded to theislands, and yet the real social needs of the people were not

met, the social discontent was not changed, and revolutionwas not averted. No mere economic policy is adequate tothe growing aspirations of such a race as the Filipino. Thereis something yet far more difficult to supply and that is a

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PHILIPPINE EDUCATION 157

legitimate outlet for the restlessness and ambition of anawakened and passionate people; something else far harderto preserve than business prosperity, and that is under?standing and accord between this dependent people and theirpolitical masters.The most pressing problems of the twentieth century arethose occasioned by racial contact and collision. Over alarge part of the earth, the white man ismaster of the polit?ical fortunes of the backward and dependent peoples ofother races, but it is doubtful if he can longer generally

maintain his superior position except by generous conces?sions. The future is full of trouble and will tax the capaci?ties of the white race as perhaps they have never been taxedbefore. Toward the close of the last century there was ageneral feeling that the dependent peoples were to remainindefinitely dependent, their just treatment and material

well-being assured by the control of the colonial nations ofEurope. The marked success of the British Empire at theend of the century had much to do with establishing thisconfidence and at least one attempt to state this expectationin scientific terms was made by a British writer, Mr. Ben?jamin Kidd. It was assumed that the temper of dependentraces would remain submissive and that they would be evercontent under the economic advantages of the white man'srule.

That this view was devoid of statesmanship and of thatrare but certain sense for future change, is clear now afterthe passage of a single decade. Over great countries whereit was thought that the natives would remain docile indefi?nitely, there now prevail discontent and the menace ofrebellion. The Mohammedan world which seemed politi?cally enfeebled past hopes of recovery, has renewed itsstrength and is pregnant with great change. There is anuneasy consciousness that colonial policies that seemedsecurely planted on a century of success, now have no cer?tain future. There are few advocates of repression. Lord

Morley's recent Indian Speeches reflect the wiser attitudethat seeks to concede, because it sees that concession isnecessary, just and generous.



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158 DAVID P. BARROWS

It is this present shifting of policies, thatmakes the historyof the European administration of the Philippines signifi?cant. The Spanish failure has its lesson and that lessonmustbe seen by other colonial nations or the failure will be re?peated elsewhere. What Spain faced in the Philippinesduring the last decades of her rule, other powers with depend?ent peoples must face also in these early decades of thepresent century.For 333 years, Spaniards governed the Philippines, and insome ways with a high degree of success and a minimum ofoppression. The occupation of the Philippines came at theclose of the active period of Spanish conquest and it had thebenefit of more than seventy years of experience in America.Two generations of Spaniards had borne the costs of dis?covery and conquest, and they had learned much, when in1565, Legazpi set sail from Mexico for the Philippines.There had been a reaction against the brutality that markedthe conquest

of the Antilles and occasioned the exterminationof the Indians. Innumerable passages in the laws of theIndies indicate that the Spanish conscience was solicitousand troubled. Las Casas was still alive in the convent of hisorder inValladolid. This, and the different attitude of thenatives, freed the conquest of the Philippines from the vio?lence and misfortune witnessed in America and made possi?ble the early establishment of a paternal and beneficentpolicy. This policy treated the native as a ward and forcenturies contemplated no other status for him. The nativesincreased in numbers, in civilization and on the whole in

well-being. Until near the middle of the century the relation?ship between the natives and the missionaries who weretheir immediate governors seemed well-nigh ideal to many

writers who described the Philippines as they were before1850. Then Spain's policy suddenly became inadequate.It had neglected the education of the native, even whenadmitted to holy orders; it did not tolerate the growth ofnative leadership; it was hostile to every influence comingfrom the outside world. It sought to keep the Philippinesa closed vessel, dedicated to the Church.

But the opening of the islands to foreign trade, the arrival



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of Spaniards of secular pursuits, the reverberation in thePhilippines of the clamorous revolutions in Spain, then theopening of the Suez Canal and the entrance of a host ofdisturbing ideas made impossible the old paternal r?gime ofthe friars, and Spain failed in the courage and will to carrythrough a policy of reform. Spain did not wholly lackliberal statesmen, as creditable legislative reforms of thelast decades of her rule show, but they were unequal toaccomplish the complete change of policy which alone wouldhave been adequate to preserve the sovereignty of Spain.Public education of natives was provided after 1860, ameasure of local government conceded, the " assimilationpolicy" was advocated by some, as was representation in theCort?s, but the influence of the Church was thrown heavilyagainst all this advance and the result was reaction and rebel?lion. The policy of sympathy and concession recommendedby a small number of Spanish statesmen was defeated bythose who despised Filipino capacity, and saw in its everydevelopment a menace to their own authority. Spain'sexperience shows that no amount of material advantage,and no sense of past benefits conferred will hold the alle?giance of a subject people permeated with liberal ideas andconscious that it is being repressed and intimidated fromfollowing the line of its natural advancement.When in 1898, the government of the Philippines passed toour hand we inherited a revolution that had been in progressfor many years; Filipino leaders were flushed with theirsuccesses, confident that nationality could be won and reso?lute that the period of disturbance and warfare should notend until their rights were secure. The governments of theBritish and Dutch colonies of Malaysia offered no pre?cedents for us to follow in this situation, for itwas entirelydifferent from anything over which British or Dutch rulehas been successful. Only a policy of conciliation and sincerefriendliness to Filipino aspirations had any hope of success.

Fortunately the elements of such a policy were found inthe plan to which the American instinctively turned?nativeeducation. This national feeling for schools was shown strik?ingly in the attitude of the army even while engaged in the



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work of subjugation. Schools were reopened in every partof the archipelago and their work cared forwith intelligenceand solicitude by military men. During those dreadful andperplexing months of 1900 and the early part of 1901,officers commanding the garrisons of towns in all parts of thearchipelago manifested their belief in a policy of native con?ciliation by the warmest support and advocacy of education.With the organization of civil government by the Taft

Commission, education was made the main feature of theadministration. The Bureau of Education was organisedby law in January, 1901, and the engagement of a thousand

American teachers was in response to the requests of Fili?pinos who appeared before the Commission in public dis?cussion of the bill and pleaded for native enlightenment.It is its attitude toward schools and the intellectual develop?ment of the natives that actually determines the characterof a colonial policy at the present day. In its emphasis oneducation the Taft Commission really established a new stan?dard in the relations of a colonial government and its subjectpopulation. Nor has the government ever had reason torepent of its attitude toward education. When in 1903,Mr. Taft leftManila forWashington, he declared that aboveall other efforts that had contributed to the success of hispolicy, was the work and influence of the American teacher.

Ten years have now passed since the educational policyof the United States in the Philippines was started, and it ispossible to begin to estimate some of its results and to decidewhere that policy now stands and what can be said for itsfuture.

No one can deny that the Filipino has made a most magni?ficent response to the opportunities of schooling held out tohim. From one end of the archipelago to the other, there hasbeen and continues to be a passionate desire for education.Towns have vied with one another in their sacrifices forschools and in the erection of school buildings. Advocacyof schools is an almost indispensable pre-election pledge, andschool support is the basis of many a town officials claim ofpublic usefulness. The application of the proceeds of taxa?tion to schools has more than once saved the government's



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financial legislation from complete unpopularity; in oneyear over 265,000 pesos was voluntarily contributed to sup?plement the public revenue of the schools. The PhilippineAssembly inaugurated in 1907 has further expressed the widepopular support of education. Of the 75 bills passed at thefirst sessions of the first Legislature, 9 had for their objectthe aid and encouragement of education. One of these actsestablished the University of the Philippines, and the firstact to be passed or considered by the Assembly was oneappropriating 1,000,000 pesos to aid in the construction of"barrio" or hamlet school houses.

It is this fine spirit and eager desire for schools that hasmade the work of the American educator in the Philippines acomparatively simple problem. The work has grown underhis hands with great rapidity and its extension has beenlimited by only one thing, the inadequacy of the revenueprovided by the government. The aim almost from thefirst, was to reach the entire Christian population with acomplete system of primary and industrial schools. Thisobject, which at first seemed a distant goal, has been nearlyattained. Of the nearly 1200 "pueblos" or townshipsof the Spanish r?gime, probably not one is now without awell organized and carefully supervised system of publicschools. Of the more than 12,000 barrios or villages in whichthe great mass of the population lives, probably not morethan thirty per cent at the present time are without schoolprivileges. Practically the entire population is beingreached by instruction in the English language and theelements of literacy. Out of a population of perhaps 7,000,000, nearly 600,000 are in attendance upon public schools.The number of Filipino teachers, all of them trained byAmerican teachers and giving their instruction in Englishis shown by reports for the last year to be 8210. All pri?

mary teaching is done by these Filipinos. The creationand training of this great corps of young native men andwomen, qualifying them as instructors in a foreign language,preparing them by normal courses, institutes, vacationschools and assemblies and by daily training classes to teach,not only the common primary branches, but industrial work,



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hygiene, simple domestic science, local government andvillage improvement, gardening and agriculture is the mostnotable achievement of the Bureau of Education. All ofthe above branches are taught in the primary schools and theteaching is done by Filipino young men and women who haveproven themselves equal to their tasks and responsive tothe obligations of their profession.

Nearly 200 intermediate schools with vocational andspecialized courses of three years carry further the work ofthe primary schools and the public school system is completedby some 40 high schools, one in each province, and by thenewly established university.

Wherever one goes now in the Philippines, even in remoteprovinces and isolated hamlets he will find a troop of childrenfilling the narrow streets or plaza, who can engage with himin ordinary English conversation, and whose thoughts andideas have been quickened and raised far above the mentallevel of the illiterate and ignorant class from which thesechildren spring. Such results are cumulative. A few more

years may tell immensely in favor of general enlightenment,and to one who has watched the progress of ten years, theday seems close when the entire archipelago will be unitedby a common tongue and by a native journalism (alreadyan active factor in the formation of public opinion) express?ing itself in English and intelligible to every class and toevery body of population.

The social consequences of this public instruction promiseto be very striking. The Filipino people have made in thelast hundred years some remarkable advances in civiliza?tion and in culture, but these advantages have hitherto beenconfined to a small class of the population?only a few fami?lies in each town. Now a great middle class is forming. It

already controls education through the teachers who inlarge part are from middle class families. It is gaining con?trol of the civil service through the system of competitiveexaminations. The new forms of industry, railroading,telegraphs and telephones, mail service, commercial busi?ness?all are filled by the class of young people educated inpublic schools since the American occupation. The types of



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professional man and woman, physician, engineer and nurseare all being changed by the young force pressing upwardfrom the poor and unlettered masses through the publicschools. Nor are the agricultural peasantry remaining unaf?fected. The institutions of "bonded debt" and "caci?quismo," which have blighted the social progress of thebarrio people, are being undermined. These rural classesare no longer completely subservient, as they were tenyears ago, to a dominant proprietary class which exploitedthem. Thrift and economy will come with knowledge ofaccounts, savings banks andindependent production taughtin the primary schools.It is still too early to observe the direct effects of this sys?tem of education upon the great experiment of representativegovernment which is being tried in the Philippines. Thismodern principle (not yet fully established among Euro?pean peoples) now runs through all the political institutionsof the Philippines. The municipal councils and presidentsare elective, so are two of the three members of the provin?cial boards, including the provincial governor, and so is thePhilippine Assembly which now, with the Philippine Commis?sion, is the supreme legislative body in the islands. Suffrageis still restricted, only about 150,000 electors in a populationof 7,000,000. But one of the qualifications by which thefranchise is obtainable is a knowledge of the English lan?guage, and while the voting age is high (twenty-three), inless than a decade the majority of electors will be youngmen who have qualified for political activity through theireducation in the primary schools, and these young men willhold the future of democracy and representative govern?ment in their power.

The consequences that are involved in the success or fail?ure of America's great experiment in native government,would alone justify all the emphasis that can be placed uponthe education of the Filipino. Judging from the attitudeof those young men who have already attained the franchisethrough the schools, it may be supposed that the coming

Filipino electorate is going to be far more alert, more criti?cal of mistakes, and more impatient of restrictions and of



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arbitrary government than the generation of Filipinos whofirst opposed and at last cooperated in the establishment ofAmerican government. These young men are going to makethe task of future governors general of the Philippines in?creasingly difficult, unless these officials be men fully insympathy with native development and resolute to guardits every privilege and opportunity. Their appearance inpolitical life will mean the final passing of the standards ofpolitical conduct inherited from the Spanish r?gime, theend of those vestiges of arbitrary and irresponsible authoritythat still tempt the American official from the straight pathof his legal powers; it will mean the disuse of Spanish incourts and legislature, in schools and popular journalism.It will mean the actual extension to the soil of Malaysia,of the principles of American government and civil liberty.In view of all the circumstances the greatest task beforethe American educator in the Philippines is the training of

Filipinos for leadership. The schools have undertaken awide scope of activities. They have revived native arts andindustries and are teaching them in the primary schools;they have provided shops, laboratories and facilities forindustrial training that probably cannot be paralleled in anystate in America; they have taken up the campaign againstdisease and epidemic and are diffusing a knowledge of sani?tation and nursing throughout the archipelago. These areimportant practical ends, but they are less important than togive to the Filipino people leaders who will be equal to thetasks and trials which lie before them. Industrial progress,triumph over plague, general well-being?all these (thoughwith immense difficulty )might be realized without education,but moral and political leadership, never. Civilized man?kind has always been controlled and directed by his scholarlyclass; he always will be and no backward people can hope toparticipate in the control of their own destinies or to maketheir progress truly and fundamentally their own, untiltrained and disciplined leaders of their own race and kindexist in sufficient numbers to make them capable of selfdirection. It is this that makes the forty or more secondaryschools of the Philippines such important factors in the edu



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cation of the islands and justifies the comparatively largeexpenditures for their equipment and conduct. This justifiesalso the liberal and humanistic courses which are offered inthese schools together with the training in science and voca?tional branches that are allowed to the option of the student.

Anyone who has considered deeply the needs of the Filipinopeople will see that the greatest need is for an upright andbroadly educated leadership. The responsibilities which ourliberal policy has trusted to them are enormous; they may beproductive of an influence and benefit that will far surpassthe boundaries of the Philippines or of Malaysia, or they

may end in complete disappointment, and retard the prog?ress of the races toward a better understanding and a higherrespect for one another. At present political and socialleadership is in the hands of a small class, really a few individ?uals in each province, who had the advantages of higherSpanish education. These men have been an indispensableelement in the inauguration of the present government oftheir country and future generations will regard them withgratitude, but at its best their education was superficial andilliberal and wholly inadequate for the generation of men towhom must be entrusted the future of the Philippines. Thisgeneration cannot have too liberal a culture. It cannotknow too much of the history of the race, of the spirit ofthe western civilization which it participates in but imper?fectly understands.

The rather common criticism that is directed against thehigher education of the Filipino and its so called "unprac?tical" character would still probably agree that the presentleaders of the Filipino people are not an over-informed andover-disciplined class, and that the future leadership shouldnot be less cultivated, less informed and less mentally dis?ciplined.

Perhaps enough has been said to indicate the importanceof public instruction in the American ideal of colonial gov?ernment, as that ideal was expressed by those who laid thefoundations of our policy in the Orient. This is the originalelement in America's attempt to do for a dependent peoplewhat has not been done before. It is its distinctive feature



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and if our example is to have value for other colonial peoples,it will be in the complete success of the system of schools.Commercial exploitation, industrial development, the advan?tage to large capitalized undertakings of having a free handamong subject people?these things have been demonstratedelsewhere. Their success may be measured in a vast numberof undertakings in the tropics and up and down WesternAsia. The world will receive no new ideas, the problems ofrelationship between our own and other races will not beclarified by any mere economic success of An erica in the

Philippines, because it will be but a repetition of what hasbeen equally well done elsewhere. It will be but followinga European leading which already promises to end in inade?quacy and disaster. This view needs fresh realization be?cause of the recent trend of the administration in the Philip?pines. The early emphasis on education by An erican offi?cials has not been sustained by those who have succeededto the task of helping on the progress of the Filipincs. Mr.Taft was exceedingly concerned about the educational plan;he placed it first and gave it his confidence and support.

But since his retirement the islands have never had a gover?nor general who was especially interested in education orwilling to maintain its large plans. Education has si; cceededin the Philippines because of its strength as a moral force

?it has been insistently advocated by the Filipinos?notbecause of any marked support of the Commission. Whathas been done since 1903, has been done in spite of very inad?equate financial means, and the refusal of the governmentto add 30 per cent to the revenues for education is aloneresponsible for the failure to make the educational organiza?tion complete for the Archipelago. At the present time therevenues of the government promise to have a great augn entation through the rapid growth of foreign commerce and in?ternal production. Now ought to be the time to appropriategenerously for schools, to raise the n eagre con pensaticnof the native teachers, to place a scheel within the reach ofevery settlement and afford the means to acccx push thegreat objects which the Bureau of Education has consistentlystruggled for, namely, the enlightenn ent of a whole people,



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the elimination of illiteracy, ignorance, credulity and help?lessness, and the complete diffusion of the English tongue.

All this could be done, now, with proper support, in a shortterm of years. But unfortunately for the prospects of com?plete success the attitude of the present administration isnot sympathetic to such an achievement. In his inauguraladdress, last November, Governor General Forbes, afteremphasizing the importance of practically every materialeffort of the administration and promising it his support,spoke as follows of public instruction: "The thought isgrievous that any boy or girl in the Philippine Islands want?ing to get an education should be unable to do so because offailure of the government to provide facilities?and yet theresources of the islands have not developed to a point whereI feel that we are justified in largely increasing the appro?priation for education. The amount of education which weshall be able to accomplish in ten years will be very muchgreater if we devote our first money towards increasing thewealth of the people and later use the resulting increase ofrevenue for extending our educational facilities." This isfallacy. It is paternalism. It is insisting upon doing fora people instead of fitting them to do for themselves. Whereis there an example of a nation which has grown great inspiritual achievement, in the accomplishments that dignifylife and make it generous, and in the self-control and wisdomthat make states just and effective, by placing first its mate?rial concerns? Ideals must have a place. The aims of apeople must be set higher than this. No state can be estab?lished by bread alone.

Practically that general well-being which everyone mustregard as the object of our efforts in the Philippines cannotcome by purely economic effort. Enlarged production is notso difficult, but the problem of distribution will not arrangeitself under the operation of natural laws. For the peasantto profit and to share in that widening of prosperity whichall hope is at hand, he must be made literate, able to keepaccounts, instructed in his rights?freed. This is the workof the schools, and it will not be accomplished until theschools reach the entire population. To postpone that day to



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some future time when the coffers of the government shalloverflow, is to postpone the chances of the great majorityof natives until their opportunities are gone.

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