A course of study in Vocal Music is also offered to Normal School students, and this may possibly lead to the first discovery of a fine Philippine musical voice.

There is also a Public School for Chinese situated in the Calle de la Asuncion, in the business quarter of Binondo (Manila).

In the Saint Thomasʼs University (vide p. [194]) there are few changes. The diplomas now issued to students in Law and Medicine are only honorific. With or without this diploma a student must pass an examination at the centres established by the Americans for the faculties of Law and Medicine before he can practise, and the same obligation applies to Americans who may arrive, otherwise qualified, in the Islands. Practical instruction in the healing art, or “walking the hospitals,” as it is called in England, is given at the San Juan de Dios Hospital as heretofore. The theoretical tuition in these faculties is furnished at the College of San José. Besides the Government schools, there are many others continuing the Spanish system, such as the Colegio de San Juan de Dios, where, besides the usual subjects taught, the syllabus is as follows:—

Commerce. Drawing. Japanese Language. Modelling in Plaster. Piano, Violin. Sketching from Nature. Stenography. Typewriting. Watercolouring. And preparation for the B.A. examination.

The Seminario Central de San Javier, under Jesuit superintendence, is really intended for students proposing to enter the Church. Many, however, follow the course of study and enter civil life. In the large provincial towns there are Spanish schools, and at Dagúpan the Colegio Instituto follows the same curriculum as that established in the Manila College of San Juan de Letran. In Spanish times Jaro was the educational centre of the Visayas Islands. Since the American advent Yloilo has superseded Jaro in that respect, and a large school is about to be erected on 75 acres of land given by several generous donors for the purpose. The system of education is uniform throughout the Islands, where schools of all grades are established, and others are in course of foundation in every municipality. Including about ₱1,000,000 disbursed annually for the schools by the municipalities, the cost of Education is about 20 per cent, of the total revenue—a sum out of all proportion to the taxpayersʼ ability to contribute.

According to the Philippine Commission Act No. 1123, of April, 1904, the official language will be English from January 1, 1906. It will be used in court proceedings, and no person will be eligible for Government service who does not know that language.

In general the popular desire for education is very pronounced. American opinion as to the capability of the Filipinos to attain a high degree of learning and maintain it seems much divided, for many return to America and publicly express pessimistic views on this point. In daily conversation with young middle-class Filipinos one can readily see that the ambition of the majority is limited to the acquisition of sufficient English to qualify them for Government employment or commercial occupations. The industries of the Islands are relatively insignificant. The true source of their wealth is agriculture. In most, not to say all, tropical countries, the educated native shuns manual labour, and with this tendency dominant in the Filipino, it is difficult to foresee what may happen as education advances. The history of the world shows that national prosperity has first come from industrial development, with the desire and the need for education following as a natural sequence. To have free intercourse with the outside world it is necessary to know a European language. This is recognized even in Japan, where, notwithstanding its independent nationality, half the best-educated classes speak some European tongue. If the majority of the Filipinos had understood Spanish at the period of the American advent, it might be a matter of regret that this language was not officially preserved on account of the superior beauty of all Latin languages; but such was not the case. Millions still only speak the many dialects; and to carry out the present system of education a common speech-medium becomes a necessity. However, generations will pass away before native idiom will cease to be the vulgar tongue, and the engrafted speech anything more than the official and polite language of the better classes. The old belief of colonizing nations that European language and European dress alone impart civilization to the Oriental is an exploded theory. The Asiatic can be more easily moulded and subjected to the ways and the will of the white man by treating with him in his native language. It is difficult to gain his entire confidence through the medium of a foreign tongue. The Spanish friars understood this thoroughly. It is a deplorable fact that the common people of Asia generally acquire only the bad qualities of the European concurrently with his language, lose many of their own natural characteristics, which are often charmingly simple, and become morally perverted.

The best native servants are those who can only speak their mother-tongue. In times past the rustic who came to speak Spanish was loth to follow the plough. If an English farm labourer should learn Spanish, perhaps he would be equally loth. One may therefore assume that if the common people should come to acquire the English language, agricultural coolie labour would become a necessity. In 1903 one hundred Philippine youths were sent, at Government expense, to various schools in America for a four-yearsʼ course of tuition. It is to be hoped that they will return to their homes impressed with the dignity of labour and be more anxious to develop the natural resources of the country than to live at the expense of the taxpayers.