Report of primary education of these islands with relation to the data of approximate accuracy which were sent to this superior civil government by the chiefs of the provinces and districts herein expressed, in observance of the circular of March 1, 1866.
To study and remove the causes of that lamentable statistics; to cause all the children who ought to attend the schools; to promote the development of neglected institutions and the rebuilding of those destroyed; to establish schools in villages which have none; to persuade the justices to protect them, and the heads of families to visit them: beautiful and never-failing task for a supervisor of primary instruction! A thousand times more beautiful and more fertile, if a father of souls exercises it with his ardent charitable spirit, with his wide experience in the moral needs of the villages!
The fathers are also petitioned and requested to earnestly study and prepare for the installation of the Sunday schools, or the schools for adults established by article 29 of the regulations. In regard to that article, by the tenor of the same, this government shall confer with the superior commission of primary instruction, when the local supervisors, having been established and working in the proper manner, the danger of such innovation complicating their labors, disappears.
VI
In respect to the direction of moral and Christian teaching which that requirement fittingly gives to the reverend and learned parish priests subordinate to their respective prelates, this superior government limits itself to assuring them of its most decided support, and the support of the provincial supervisors of primary instruction. Thus educated there is no doubt that the new generations will respond to what is demanded of them by so wise a law, which is destined to unite purity of religious sentiments which form the heart of youth with the duties of patriotism, dignity, and intelligence, which form the civilized man.
I ought, lastly, to say a word on the transcendental act of the examinations, only in order to have the parish priests note that article 13 of the interior regulations did not take account of the royal order of August 28, 1862, which made biennial the period of the session of the ayuntamientos. They must then pay strict heed to the article in regard to holding examinations annually. It will be advisable for them to submit a short review to the children when they go to them every three months for confession and communion.
The provincial supervision entrusted to the alcaldes by article 15 of the organic royal decree, shall be exercised with the aid of a commission composed of the diocesan prelate, or in his absence, by the parish priest of the chief city, and the administrator of the public finances. Where the chief of the province is not the alcalde-mayor, he shall also form a part of the commission, but in the generality of cases, as is well known, he presides over it. Although the above-cited article 15 refers to regulations for schools and teachers for the organization of the provincial center, article 31 of this last order has been limited to a repetition of that precept, almost in the same terms, leaving the dictation of measures which regulate their supervisory action to the judgment of this government. This would be a most important task if the organization of the provincial governments in the archipelago corresponded to the necessities of public administration in all its branches. It would be, I repeat, a most important task, if this superior government could lay aside the difficulties which it would create for itself for the future, by dictating principles of which it is the first to doubt the application, and even recognizing, as it does, the most exquisite care in all the chiefs of the province. To this consideration of a practical nature answers perhaps the indicated vacuity of the regulations for schools.
On the other side, the organization initiated December 20, 1863, by its character of ad interim in so far as it refers to the directive centers of the provinces, seems now to feel the need of reform which afflicts those centers, when among other things it names repeatedly the provincial chiefs.