Education: How Old The New

by James J. Walsh

"If we compare Spanish America with the United States a hundred years ago we must recognize that while in the North there was a sounder body politic, a purer social life and a more general dissemination of elementary education, yet in Spanish America there were both vastly greater wealth and greater poverty, more imposing monuments of civilization, such as public buildings, institutions of learning and hospitals, more populous and richer cities, a higher attainment in certain branches of science. No one can read Humboldt's account of the City of Mexico and its establishments for the promotion of science and the fine arts without realizing that whatever may be the superiorities of the United States over Mexico in these respects, they have been mostly the gains of the age of steam."

While we are prone to think that a republican form of government is the great foster-mother of progress and that whatever development may have come in South American countries has been the result of the foundation of the South American republics, Professor Bourne is not of that opinion and is inclined to think that if the Spanish Colonial Government could have been maintained at its best until the coming of the age of steam or well on into the nineteenth century, then the South American republics would have been serious [{307}] rivals of the United States and have been kept from being so hampered as they were by their internal political dissensions. His paragraph on this matter is so contradictory of ordinary impressions, here in the United States particularly, that it seems worth while calling attention to it because it contains that most precious of suggestions, a thought that is entirely different from any that most people have had before. He says:

"During the first half-century after the application of steam to transportation Mexico weltered in domestic turmoils arising out of the crash of the old régime. If the rule of Spain could have lasted half a century longer, being progressively as it was during the reign of Charles III; if a succession of such viceroys as Revilla Gigedo, in Mexico, and De Croix and De Taboaday Lemos, in Peru, could have borne sway in America until railroads could have been built, intercolonial intercourse ramified and a distinctly Spanish-American spirit developed, a great Spanish-American federal state might possibly have been created, capable of self-defense against Europe, and inviting co-operation rather than aggression from the neighbor in the North."

Lima was the great centre for education in South America, and Mexico, in Spanish North America, was not far at all behind. The tracing of the steps of the development of education in Mexico emphasizes especially the difference between the Spaniards and the Englishmen in their [{308}] relation to the Indian. Bishop Zumaraga wanted a college for Indians in his bishopric, and it was because of this beneficent purpose that the first institution for higher education in the New World was founded as early as 1535. At that time the need for education for the whites was not felt so much, since only adults as a rule were in the colony, the number of children and growing youths being as yet very small. Accordingly, the College of Santa Cruz, in Tlaltelolco, one of the quarters of the City of Mexico reserved for the Indians, was founded under the bishop's patronage. Among the faculty were graduates of the University of Paris and of Salamanca, two of the greatest universities of Europe of this time, and they had not only the ambition to teach, but also to follow out that other purpose of a university--to investigate and write. Among them were such eminent scholars as Bernardino de Sahagun, the founder of American anthropology, and Juan de Torquemada, who is himself a product of Mexican education, whose "Monarquia Indiana" is a great storehouse of facts concerning Mexico before the coming of the whites, and precious details with regard to Mexican antiquities.

Knowing this, it is not surprising that the curriculum was broad and liberal. Besides the elementary branches and grammar and rhetoric, instruction was provided in Latin, philosophy, Mexican medicine, music, botany (especially with [{309}] reference to native plants), the zoology of Mexico, some principles of agriculture, and the native languages. It is not surprising to be told that many of the graduates of this college became Alcaldes and Governors in the Indian towns, and that they did much to spread civilization and culture among their compatriots. The English-speaking Americans furnished nothing of this kind, and our colleges for Indians came only in the nineteenth century. It is true that Harvard, according to its charter, was "for the education of the Indian youth of this country in knowledge and godliness," but the Indians were entirely neglected and no serious effort was ever made to give them any education. It was a son of the Puritans who said that his forefathers first fell on their knees and then on the aborigines, and the difference in the treatment of the Indians by the English and the Spaniards is a marked note in all their history.

During the next few years schools were established also for the education of mestizo children, that is, of the mixed race who are now called Creoles. In fact, in 1536 a fund from the Royal Exchequer was given for the teaching of these children. Strange as it may seem, for we are apt to think that the teaching of girls is a modern idea, schools were also established for Indian girls. All of these schools continued to flourish, and gradually spread beyond the City of Mexico itself into the villages of the Indians. As a [{310}] matter of fact, wherever a mission was established a school was also founded. Every town, Indian as well as Spanish, was by law required to have its church, hospital and school for teaching Indian children Spanish and the elements of religion. The teaching and parish work in the Indian villages was in charge of two or more friars, as a rule, and was well done. The remains of the monasteries with their magnificent Spanish-American architecture, are still to be seen in many portions of Mexico and of the Spanish territories that have been incorporated with the United States, in places where they might be least expected, and they show the influence for culture and education that gradually extended all over the Mexican country.

In the course of time the necessity for advanced teaching for the constantly growing number of native whites began to be felt, and so during the fifth decade of the sixteenth century a number of schools for them came into existence in the City of Mexico. The need was felt for some central institution. Accordingly, the Spanish Crown was petitioned to establish authoritatively a university. Such a step would have been utterly out of the question in English America, because the Crown was so little interested in colonial affairs. In the Spanish country, however, the Crown was deeply interested in making the colonists feel that though they were at a distance from the centre of government, their rulers were interested in [{311}] securing for them, as far as possible, all the opportunities of life at home in Spain. This is so different from what is ordinarily presumed to have been the attitude of Spain towards its colonies as to be quite a surprise for those who have depended on old-fashioned history, but there can be no doubt of its truth. Accordingly, the University of Mexico received its royal charter the same year as the University of Lima (1551). Mexico was not formally organized as a university until 1553. In the light of these dates, it is rather amusing to have the Century Dictionary, under the word Harvard University, speak of that institution as the oldest and largest institution of learning in America. It had been preceded by almost a century, not only in South America, but also in North America. The importance of Harvard was as nothing compared to the universities of Lima and Mexico, and indeed for a century after its foundation Harvard was scarcely more than a small theological school, with a hundred or so of pupils, sometimes having no graduating class, practically never graduating more than eight or ten pupils, while the two Spanish-American universities counted their students by the thousand and their annual graduates by the hundred.

The reason for the success of these South American universities above that of Harvard is to be found in the fact that Harvard's sphere of usefulness was extremely limited because of [{312}] religious differences and shades of differences. This had hampered all education in Protestant countries very seriously. Professor Paulsen, who holds the chair of philosophy at the University of Berlin, calls attention to the fact that the Reformation had anything but the effect of favoring education that has often been said. The picture that he draws of conditions in Germany a century before the foundation of Harvard would serve very well as a lively prototype of the factors at work in preventing Harvard from becoming such an educational institution as the universities of Lima and Mexico so naturally became. He says, in "German Universities and University Studies": "During this period [after Luther's revolt] a more determined effort was made to control instruction than at any period before or since. The fear of heresy, the extraordinary anxiety to keep instruction well within orthodox lines, was not less intense at the Lutheran than at the Catholic institutions; perhaps it was even more so, because here doctrine was not so well established, apostasy was possible in either of two directions, toward Catholicism or Calvinism. Even the philosophic faculty felt the pressure of this demand for correctness of doctrines. Thus came about these restrictions within the petty states and their narrow-minded established churches which well-nigh stifled the intellectual life of the German people."

Because of this and the fact that the attendance [{313}] at the college did not justify it, the school of medicine at Harvard was not opened until after the Revolution (1783). The law school was not opened until 1817.

This is sometimes spoken of as the earliest law school connected with a university on this continent, but, of course, only by those who know nothing at all about the history of the Spanish-American universities. In the Spanish countries the chairs in law were established very early; indeed, before those of medicine. Canon law was always an important subject in Spanish universities, and civil law was so closely connected with it that it was never neglected.