III
School attendance
Education is compulsory. This concluding requirement of the regulations exists in the laws of public instruction of almost all nations. Nevertheless, in its application, the governments pay attention to the social circumstances of the country. In our country parents incur a fine who do not send their children to school, the fine being from one-half to two reals, according to circumstances (art. 2, of school regulations).
Before having recourse to this coercive means, a zealous supervisor has other means of greater efficacy. The parish priest, venerated by his parishioners, ought to excite the consciences of the heads of the family, and make them comprehend their responsibility before God and men in depriving their children of education. If an instinctive duty counsels them to give their children bread, the duty to give them an education (the bread of the soul) is a sacred one, without which Christian man cannot live. The mothers of the family ought to be for the supervisor, under this point of view, the preferred object of their supplication, warnings, and tender and salutary counsels.
The goad of their own interests so powerful in the human heart ought also to be excited for this noble end. The law has considered them very carefully and it is fitting for the supervisor to unfold before the eyes of the parents so that their simple intelligence may well understand that not only ought they, but that it is profitable for them to send their children to school, for after the schools have been established for fifteen years in the village of their habitation those who cannot speak, read, or write Castilian:
Cannot be gobernadorcillos.
Nor lieutenants of justice.
Nor form part of the principalía; unless they enjoy that privilege because of heredity—a right which will continue to rapidly disappear, in proportion as the instruction develops, and as only those who possess an education become principales.
Lastly, after a school has been established in the village for thirty years, those who unite [in themselves] said circumstance can enjoy the enviable exemption of personal services.
Another more pressing thing must also be recalled to the attention of the parents daily and hourly if possible. Five years after the publication of the regulations, no one who cannot prove that he can talk, read, and write Castilian, can be appointed to any remunerative post in this archipelago.