[2] Vicente Barrantes, from whom these extracts are taken, was for some years secretary to the governor-general at Manila. See Report of Commissioner of Education, 1902, ii, p. 2219. [↑]
[3] Fred W. Atkinson, formerly general superintendent of public instruction in the Philippines, says: “The early work of the Jesuits in training the Filipinos was commendable, and along right lines in furnishing a common school education. It would have been productive of permanently good results if this order had not been supplanted by the local padres, under whose direction the common branches suffered through lack of attention.” See Report of Commissioner of Education, 1900–1901, ii, p. 1317. [↑]
[4] July 27, 1863, several copies of the plan of public instruction approved for the island of Cuba on the fifteenth of the same month were sent by royal order to the governor of the Philippines, with the object of having the proper measure drawn up, and the advisable plan proposed to the ministry, in regard to the application of said plan to those islands. By decree of October 6, Echagüe created a board of reform of the plan of studies, in order to meet the requirements of the preceding royal order. See Montero y Vidal, iii, p. 403. [↑]
[5] See a summary of Barrantes’s book in Report of Commissioner of Education, 1902, ii, pp. 2219–2224. [↑]
[6] “Before this date public schools were hardly known in the Philippines, and instruction was confined solely to the children of parents able to pay for it.” See Census of Philippines, iii, p. 576. [↑]
[7] In the decree of the superior government, of May 7, 1871, occurs the following interesting description of conditions of the schools in the Philippines: “There are at present an infinite number of villages without schools; there are entire provinces without edifices where schools can be located; there are also many schools, or rather all the schools of the archipelago, with the exception of a few in the capital, which do not possess the material equipment for education and teaching; the children have to sit on the ground, and remain there for hours and hours, packed together as if they were not what they are; books are not given to them; they have no writing desks; they are not given pens, ink, or books. Those schools do not merit the name of such; they are not schools, sad it is to say so: they are pernicious collections of children, where since they do not gain anything morally or intellectually, they lose much, and most of all in their good physical development; in fine those schools are an expense, and show no result.” The same decree states the need of economic and administrative reforms in the Philippines, and the need of “roads, canals, ports, postal communications, both inside and outside the archipelago, telegraphs, professional institutions of superior instruction, an active life without fetters for industry, trade, and agriculture;” but all this must be for the greatest use of the greatest number, and all monopoly must be avoided. “To obtain it human means offer no other mean more energetic, more prompt, and powerful, than the creation and organization of the village school, and its supervision, and its location and erection in the most healthful and convenient place, clean, neat, and modestly furnished, so that it may attract the glances of all,” and may thus be of the greatest good. See Grifol y Aliaga, pp. 218, 219. [↑]
[8] The parish priests of the Philippines were called “reverend” or “devout” according as they were regulars or native seculars. See Barrantes’s Instrucción primaria, p. 10. [↑]
[9] See the titles of these orders from 1863 to 1894, post. [↑]
[10] The Spanish government evinced a great interest “in giving the Filipinos a primary education commensurate with the standing of a civilized nation; but the intentions of the government were frustrated by ... the religious orders.” The “great error of the Spanish nation” consisted “in placing in the hands of a few institutions [the religious orders] the future of her colonies in the extreme east, institutions which did not exist in their native country, and which sought only the private interests of the corporation or order to which they belonged. This entire plan of public instruction lived in the minds of the Spanish legislators, but was never put into practice.” Tomás G. del Rosario, in Census of Philippines, iii, p. 582. [↑]
[11] By 1894 there were 2,143 public schools in the Philippines, and 173 sets of provisions regulating them, or tending to the intellectual development of the people. These laws were only superficial. See Tomás G. del Rosario, Census of Philippines, iii, p. 593. [↑]