The women in education are on a plane with the men.
Each town of 5,000 inhabitants has two schools for children of both sexes. The towns of 10,000 inhabitants have three schools. There are technical training schools in Manila, Iloilo, and Bacoler. "In these schools are taught cabinet work, silversmithing, lock-smithing, lithography, carpentering, machinery, decorating, sculpture, political economy, commercial law, book-keeping, and commercial correspondence, French and English; and there is one superior college for painting, sculpture and engraving. There is also a college of commercial exports in Manila, and a nautical school, as well as a superior school of agriculture. Ten model farms and a meteorological observatory are conducted in other provinces, together with a service of geological studies, a botanical garden and a museum, a laboratory and military academy and a school of telegraphy."
Manila has a girl's school (La Ascuncion) of elementary and superior branches, directed by French, English and Spanish mothers, which teaches French, English literature, arithmetic, algebra, trigonometry, topography, physics, geology, universal history, geography, designing, music, dress-making and needle-work. The capital has besides a municipal school of primary instruction and the following colleges: Santa Ysabel, Santa Catolina, La Concordia, Santa Rosa de la Looban, a hospital of San Jose, and an Asylum of St. Vincent de Paul, all of which are places of instruction for children. There are other elementary schools in the State of Camannis, in Pasig, in Vigan and Jaro.
The entire conduct of the civilization of the Philippines as well as local authorities are in the hands of the Philipinos themselves. They also had charge of the public offices of the government during the last century.
There is a medical school and a school for mid-wives.
"All the young people and especially the boys, belonging to well-to-do families residing in the other islands go to Manila to study the arts and learn a profession. Among the natives to be ignorant and uneducated, is a shameful condition of degradation."
"The sons of the rich families began to go to Spain in 1854" to be educated.
[Illustration: FELIPE AGONCILLO Emissary of the Filipinos to the United States.]
When the Spaniards first went to the islands "they found the Philipinos enlightened and advanced in civilization." "They had founderies for casting iron and brass, for making guns and powder. They had their special writing with two alphabets, and used paper imported from China and Japan." This was in the early part of the sixteenth century. The Spanish government took the part of the natives against the imposition of exhorbitant taxes, and the tortures of the inquisition by the early settlers.