Filipino Education and Spanish Colonialism: Toward an Autonomous Perspective Author(s): Karl Schwartz Source: Comparative Education Review, Vol. 15, No. 2, Colonialism and Education (Jun., 1971), pp. 202-218 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Comparative and International Education Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1186730 . Accessed: 07/09/2014 22:32 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . The University of Chicago Press and Comparative and International Education Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Comparative Education Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 27.33.45.108 on Sun, 7 Sep 2014 22:32:22 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Transcript
Filipino Education and Spanish Colonialism: Toward an Autonomous PerspectiveAuthor(s): Karl SchwartzSource: Comparative Education Review, Vol. 15, No. 2, Colonialism and Education (Jun., 1971),pp. 202-218Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Comparative and InternationalEducation SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1186730 .
Accessed: 07/09/2014 22:32
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
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FILIPINO EDUCATION AND SPANISH COLONIALISM: TOWARD AN AUTONOMOUS
PERSPECTIVE
KARL SCHWARTZ
THE CHOICE OF VANTAGE POINT for viewing Philippine history is crucial to the pic- ture one has of the role of colonialism in the development of Philippine educa- tion. Existing histories tend to view it from a "colonial" perspective. By this we mean that their primary focus is upon the educational policies and practices of the Spanish Crown and the Philippine Catholic Mission, and that their chief con- cern lies with what the Spaniards did to educate Filipinos. The typical picture drawn from this perspective divides Philippine educational history into three pe- riods. The first, 1565-1768, covers educational developments from the beginning of Spanish colonialism to the expulsion of the Jesuits who were, as usual, active agents of education. The second period covers developments between 1768 and 1863 and includes the battle over the educational carcass left by the fleeing Jesuits and government efforts to establish vocational schools. The third period, 1863- 1898, begins with the Educational Decree of 1863 and government efforts to weak- en church control over education, and ends with the Filipino Revolution and the American acquisition of the Islands.'
Given this picture of Philippine education it is fairly easy to conclude that colonialism was a major factor shaping educational development. A closer exami- nation of it reveals, however, that Filipinos-their responses to Spanish education and their efforts to establish an independent educational system-are largely ab- sent from the picture of Philippine education drawn from a colonial perspective. An adequate assessment of the role of colonialism cannot be made until Filipino educational behavior is examined.
It is our contention that beneath the educational policies and practices of Span- ish colonialism was a relatively cohesive body of fairly independent Filipino edu- cational activity which can be revealed only by shifting to what J. C. Van Leur has called an autonomous historical perspective.2 The primary focus of such a
'This is the periodization followed by Encarnacion Alzona, A History of Education in the Philippines, 1565-1930 (Manila: University of the Philippines Press, 1932). An alternative exists in the pre-1865 and post-1865 periodization of Evergisto Bazaco, History of Education in the Philippines, the Spanish Period, 1565-1898 (Manila: University of Santo Tomas Press, 1939). The year 1865 marked the opening of the Manila Normal School for Men. Since Manila Normal was created by the Educational Decree of 1863, Bazaco's periodization does not differ greatly from that of Alzona.
2 The idea of an autonomous as distinct from a colonial perspective was first used by the Dutch historian J. C. Van Leur during the 1930's in a series of articles and reviews which are available in English translation in J. C. Van Leur, Indonesian Trade and Society: Essays in Asian Social and Economic History (The Hague: W. V. Van Hoeve Publishers, Ltd., 1967). A number
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perspective is upon Filipino educational behavior rather than colonial policies or practices, and its chief concern lies with how Filipinos used education rather than what the Spaniards did to educate the Filipinos. Their education will be dis- cussed here in terms of "Filipinos and the Colonial Schools" and "Filipinos and the Private Schools." Seen from an autonomous perspective, colonialism through its educational policies and practices did not totally shape developments; it sim- ply established the outermost limits of Filipino educational initiative and left a broad expanse of educational behavior untouched.
FILIPINOS AND THE COLONIAL SCHOOLS
An autonomous perspective does not deny the presence of Spanish schools. What it does is to recognize that while the Spaniards could provide schools, it was up to the Filipinos to use them. Spanish policies and practices created the typical dual system of colonial education, one set of schools for Filipino youth and an- other for the children of resident Spaniards. Spanish education for the Filipinos was designed to convert them to Catholicism and then to maintain them in that faith. Instruction in these schools, known as catechism schools, generally covered little more than Christian doctrine and enough reading and writing to make Fil- ipinos aware of and to enable them to fulfill their religious obligations. Ideally, instruction was also to have been given in Spanish, arithmetic and various handi- crafts. Schools for Spanish youth, on the other hand, were designed to duplicate the instruction given in Spain. The Catechism Schools.: The first catechism school was founded by Father Pedro Chirino at Tigbauan, Panay, in 1593. Others soon followed. These early catechism schools varied widely. They ranged from the boarding school of Fa- ther Alonso de Humanes at Dulag, Leyte, which received a yearly government stipend and was attended by about sixty boys who studied Christian doctrine, read- ing, writing, arithmetic, music and art, to the school of Father Diego de Otazo at Tinagon, Leyte, which gave only a short course in Christian doctrine.4
Detailed information on the Filipinos' use of these early schools is not avail-
of contemporary historians, especially John R. W. Smail, "On the Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern Southeast Asia,"Journal of Southeast Asian History, 2 (July, 1961), pp. 72- 102, have expanded and extended Van Leur's original thinking. In this discussion we are using perspective to mean the analyst's "frame of mind" or "frame of reference."
3 The Educational Decree of 1863 converted the catechism schools into public schools. In reality only their name changed. According to Alzona, instruction continued to center around Christian doctrine and prayers, and the local priest continued to exercise total veto power over the schools as school inspector. See Alzona, op. cit., p. 120. Since there was little difference be- tween the pre- and post-1863 schools in practice, we make no distinction between them here.
4 For a more complete description of these early mission catechism schools see Constante C. Floresca, Education in the Philippines During the Early Period of Christianization from 1565 to 1600 (unpublished Masters' Thesis, Cebu City, The Philippines: University of San Carlos, 1950); Horacio de la Costa, "Jesuit Education in the Philippines in 1768," Philippine Studies, 4/2 (1956), pp. 127-156; and John L. Phelan, "Pre-baptismal Instruction and the Administration of
Baptism in the Philippines During the 16th Century," The Americas, 12 (July, 1955), pp. 3-23.
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able. It is not clear, for example, how many catechism schools existed or how
many Filipinos attended them. However, it seems fairly safe to say that most of them were small, attended by a maximum of twenty or thirty boys, and that a
majority of Filipinos were unaffected by them at least until after the first years of
the seventeenth century. It does appear, however, that those who attended the
early catechism schools did so enthusiastically. Chirino, for instance, was full of
praise for his students. He commented:
They have learned our language and its pronunciation, and write it even better than we do, for they are so clever that they learn anything with the greatest ease. I have had letters written by themselves in very handsome and fluent style. In
Tigbauan I had in my school a very young boy, who, using as a model letters writ- ten to me in a very good handwriting, learned in three months to write even better than I; and he copied for me important documents faithfully, exactly, and without errors.5
Similar praise came from Otazo: "I have often considered how they would mea-
sure up to Spanish boys, and it seems to me that European children are by no
means their superiors in understanding and judgment."6
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Catholicism and the cate-
chism schools spread throughout the Islands,7 and by the beginning of the nine-
teenth century every Philippine town, according to observers, had its own school.
Tomas Comyn noted in 1810 that the priests maintained "schools of the first rudi-
ments in all the towns, and the inhabitants [were] well versed in the art of writ-
ing."8 Similarly, Father Hilaron Diez believed that "there are many villages such as Arago, Dulaguete, Boljoon [in] Cebu and several in the province of Iloilo where not a single boy or girl can be found who cannot read or write."9
While they must be used with a great deal of caution, available enrollment
data seem to support these casual observations and to suggest that the early nine-
teenth century schools were fairly well attended. (See Table 1.) As a percentage of the total population in each province, attendance in 1818 ranged from 40 and
6 See Emma C. Blair and James A. Robertson, The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Cleveland: The Arthur H. Clark Co., 1903-1909), Vol. 12, p. 243.
8 Quoted in Horacio de la Costa, The Jesuits in the Philippines, 1581-1768 (Cambridge: Har- vard University Press, 1961), p. 289.
7 There is little available information on the development of catechism schools during these years. Phelan notes that "primary instruction flourished from the 1580's onwards, but after the intensification of the Dutch war from 1609 onward, the quality of instruction fell off noticeably." John L. Phelan, The Hispanization of the Philippines: Spanish Aims and Filipino Responses, 1565-1700 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1959), p. 59. Fox makes a similar conclusion: "while a certain lethargy or even decline marked the last half of the seventeenth century, quiet growth ran through the following four or five decades." Henry F. Fox, "Primary Education in the Philippines 1565-1863," Philippine Studies, 13 (April, 1965), p. 222. This gradual expansion was made possible by the growth of private schools and the emergence of Filipino teachers.
8 Thomas Comyn, State of the Philippines in 1810, trans. William Walton (London: T. and J. Allman, 1821), p. 216.
SQuoted in Frederick Fox and Juan Mercader, "Some Notes on Education in Cebu Province, 1820-1898," Philippine Studies, 9 (January, 1961), p. 26.
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even 50 per cent in the more populous provinces such as Cebu to 18 per cent in several of the less populous provinces. Enrollments at this level seem abnormally high and, in fact, Elidoro Robles suggests that there was a tendency to inflate early nineteenth century enrollment figures.10 However, given that these schools were
primarily religious institutions providing catechetical instruction, it is equally likely that in compiling local statistics the parish priest included adult attendance at Sunday and evening catechetical classes in school enrollments. What is impor- tant is that the catechism schools seem to have been fairly popular during the
early years of the nineteenth century, for quite the opposite seems to have been the case during the latter part of the century.
Certain reports in the middle of the century suggest a decline in enrollments. The Bishop of Cebu, for instance, after touring his bishopric in 1835 reported: "We noticed that in several towns only a few boys and girls attend schools...."" Fedor Jagor, a German traveling in the Philippines around 1860, noted that while
every town had a school, on the average only half of the eligible pupils attended it.12 Available enrollment data also seem to indicate a sharp decline in cate- chism school enrollments before the 1860's. ((See Table 1.) Attendance as a per- centage of the population of each province in 1866 had fallen to below 10 per cent in most provinces and as low as one per cent in several, including Manila. Further- more, while in 1818 large populations and large enrollments coincided, just the reverse, with the exception of Pangasinan, seems to have been the case during the latter part of the nineteenth century.
This rather dramatic turn-about in attendance can be made more explicit by examining the three provinces for which more detailed population and en- rollment data are available for 1818 and around 1880. (See Table 2.) In 1818 the correlation (Pearson r) between town size and enrollment for each of these se- lected provinces were: .978 in Batangas; .792 in Cebu; and .677 in Iloilo. By 1880 these correlations had changed drastically: in Batangas the correlation between town size and enrollment was -.081; in Cebu, .108; and in Iloilo, -.116.13 These data suggest that towards the end of the nineteenth century Filipinos, especially those in the generally more enlightened and progressive urban areas, were aban- doning the catechism schools in large numbers.14
10 Elidoro G. Robles, The Philippines in the Nineteenth Century (Quezon City, The Philip- pines: Malaya Books Inc., 1969), p. 223.
11 Quoted in Fox and Mercader, op. cit. p. 26. 12 Blair and Robertson, op. cit., Vol. 45, p. 292, note 149. 13 These computations were made according to the formula:
NzXY, - (z,x) (zY1) rx.v
[NzXI2 - (Z1X12)] [Nz1Y2 - (2Y.)2]
where X=population and Y=enrollment. "1 In making this inference we may have pushed these data beyond their creditability. A glance at Table 2, for instance, reveals that the available data are very meagre especially in the
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The Spanish Schools. The Spaniards created a complete primary to university educational system for their own students. It included such schools as the Jesuit- run University of San Ignacio and its attendant secondary school, the College of San Jose, and the Dominican-run University of Santo Tomas with its affiiliated secondary school, the College of San Juan de Letran. These schools were clearly intended for Spanish youth. The incorporating documents of most of them refer to the necessity of educating Spanish youth and at least one, the Royal College of San Felipe, specified that: "The collegiates must be of pure race and have no mix- ture of Moorish or Jewish blood to the fourth degree, and shall have no negro or Bengal blood, or that of any similar nation in their veins, or a fourth part of Filipino blood."15
There is no doubt that, as Domingo Abella points out, "during more than two-thirds of the Spanish period higher education was not available to the Filipi- nos on equal terms with the Spaniards ... ."16 Even so there seems to have been enough flexibility in their enabling legislation to allow some Filipinos to enter the Spanish schools. For instance, the petition which called for the establishment of the College of Manila, which by 1623 had evolved into the University of San Ignacio, specified that instruction be given to the children of "the inhabitants of this city [Manila] and of those of the inhabitants of these islands, as well as the mestizos and the sons of the chief Indians [i.e., Filipinos]."17 Moreover, there seems to have been no difficulty in admitting Mestizos, for in 1599 Bishop Miguel de Benavides noted that "the fathers of the Society of Jesus admit into their classes mulattoes and mestizos."18 Even San Felipe admitted the sons of "influential Pampango families'.' as college servants, and specified that "they shall be taught 'to read and write, and the Spanish language,' and shall be given clerkships if they show aptitude therefore."19
The presence of a small group of Filipinos literate in Spanish and Latin by the 1660's suggests that some Filipinos made use of this flexibility. These Filipinos included such men as Pedro Bukaneg, Tomas Pimpin and Fernando Bagongbanta who wrote verses in Spanish or assisted in the translation of religious documents.
cases of Iloilo and Cebu. However, this interpretation is consonant with the general picture of Filipino educational behavior presented in this study.
15Blair and Robertson, op. cit., Vol. 45, p. 175. "16 Domingo Abella, "The State of Higher Education in the Philippines to 1863-a Historical
Reappraisal," Philippine Historical Review, 1/1 (1965), p. 6. "1 See William C. Repetti, The Beginning of Jesuit Education in the Philippines: The College
of Manila (Manila: Manila Observatory, 1940), p. 6. "is Quoted in Costa, The Jesuits, p. 571. The Jesuits, in fact, seem to have adopted a utili-
tarian view with respect to admitting Filipinos to their schools. In founding the Colegio de Nifios, a school for the sons of Filipino elites established in 1596, they made provisions to include Spanish youth with a vocation for the priesthood so that they might learn the Filipino dialects and accustom themselves to Filipino habits. Costa, The Jesuits, p. 172. Government policy put a quick end to the Colegio de Nifios, but there was nothing to stop the Jesuits from reversing this practice and admitting an occasional Filipino to their schools for the same purpose.
"1 Blair and Robertson, op. cit., Vol. 45, p. 175.
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As a group they were described in complimentary terms by a contemporary, Fa-
ther Francisco Colin:
There are some of them who commonly serve as clerks in the public accountancies and secretaryships of the kingdom. We have known some so capable that they have deserved to become officials in these posts, and perhaps to supply these offices ad interim. They are also a great help to students in making clean copies of their rough drafts, not only in Romance [Spanish] but also in Latin, for there are some of them who have learned that language.20
TABLE 3. ENROLLMENT BY FACULTIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS, 1645-1898
a. Average yearly enrollment. Sources: Unless otherwise indicated the enrollment figures presented here are from Evaristo Fernandez Arias, Memoria Historico Estadistica Sobre la Ensefianza Secundaria y Superior de Filipinas (Manila: 1883), Part II, Tables 1, 2, 3, 7, 8 and 9. Philosophy, Theology and Law were the main faculties until 1870 when Santo Tomas underwent an administrative reorganization and Philosophy as an independent faculty was eliminated. b. Evargisto Bazaco, History of Education in the Philippines, the Spanish Period (Manila: University of Santo Tomas Press, 1939), p. 419. (c) J. P. Sanger (Director), Census of the Philippines, 1903 (Wash- ington, D. C.: 1905), pp. 630-631, 634.
S Ibid., Vol. 40, p. 52. For additional information about these early Filipino intellectuals see
Epifanio de los Cristobal, "Short History of Tagalog Literature," in M. M. Norton (ed.), Build- ers of a Nation (Manila: 1914), pp. 53-72; or Leonardo Yabes, "The Filipino Scholar," Philippine Social Sciences and Humanities Review, 28 (December, 1963), pp. 319-350.
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Information on Filipino enrollments at all of the universities and colleges is not available, but enrollments at the University of Santo Tomas between 1645 and 1896 reveal some interesting patterns.21 (See Table 3.) The most striking thing is the remarkable stability of enrollments until the middle of the nineteenth cen-
tury. Prior to this time, for nearly two hundred years between 1645 and 1840, there was neither a slow nor a steady increase or decrease in enrollments. The
average yearly enrollment in Philosophy, for instance, fluctuated between 127 and 143 students per year; in Theology, between 22 and 27 students per year; and in
Law, between 48 and 59 students per year. This stability ended abruptly around the middle of the nineteenth century when enrollments in these three faculties increased dramatically. Between 1831 and 1840 Philosophy, Theology and Law had a combined yearly enrollment which averaged 204 students; between 1841 and 1850 their combined average yearly enrollments increased to 334 students; and between 1851 and 1860 these three faculties were enrolling an average of 514 students per year, more than double the 1831-1840 yearly average. This mid-nine- teenth century change seems to have established new enrollment plateaus in the faculties of Philosophy and Theology and to have marked the beginning of bur-
geoning enrollments in Law which during the 1895/96 school year reached 1,159 students.22
The nineteenth century then saw striking and seemingly paradoxical changes in the Filipinos' use of the colonial schools; while attendance at the University of Santo Tomas more than doubled, attendance at the catechism schools fell dras-
tically. This apparent paradox can be resolved by an examination of Filipino- initiated private schools.
FILIPINOS AND THE PRIVATE SCHOOLS
The presence of private schools during the latter part of the nineteenth cen-
tury made it possible for Filipinos to abandon the catechism schools without aban-
doning education. Private schools were not, however, a phenomenon limited to
21 Our conclusions with respect to Filipino enrollments at the University of Santo Tomas will be based on the assumption that the Spanish population in the Philippines, especially during the nineteenth century, was not large enough to.supply all of the Santo Tomas students. Ac- cording to Comyn, in 1810 the number of European and Island-born Spaniards and Mestizos did "not exceed 4,000 persons of both sexes and all ages." Comyn, op. cit. p. 6. By 1876 the Spanish population including Mestizos and Spaniards regardless of birthplace, age or sex numbered just slightly over 13,000. Abella, op. cit., p. 30. Given the time and the nature of the Spanish pop- ulation it is unlikely that 4,000 Spaniards could or would have provided roughly 200 Santo Tomas students a year at the beginning of the nineteenth century or that 13,000 Spaniards provided bet- ter than 500 students a year during the 1870's. Help must have been forthcoming from the Filipino community, and by 1886 Filipinos comprised a clear majority of Santo Tomas students. In that year out of an enrollment of 1,982 there were 1,367 Filipinos, 123 European- and 93 Island-born Spaniards, 180 Spanish Mestizos and 219 Chinese Mestizos. J. P. Sanger (Director), Census of the Philippines, 1903 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1905), Vol. 3, p. 634.
22 R. L. Packard, "Intellectual Attainments and Education of the Filipinos," Report of the Com- missioner of Education for the Year 1900 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1901), Vol. 2, p. 1621.
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that century. They developed in response to the deficiencies Filipinos found in the colonial schools and their growth was a slow process marked by two periods of peak activity. The first came around the turn of the seventeenth century when
Filipinos established imitation catechism schools. The second period covers the
fifty or so years preceding the Revolution of 1896 when they established schools which duplicated the first years of a Spanish education.
Elementary Schools.23 The beginning of private education seems to have coin- cided with the emergence of Filipino teachers. As early as 1597 Filipinos were teaching in the mission schools. In that year Father Francisco de Encinas opened a catechism school in Carigara, Leyte, "with a Filipino schoolmaster who taught writing, reading, and music."24 Similarly, in 1605 Juan Maranga, a Filipino alum- nus of Humanes' Dulag boarding school, was in charge of the mission school of Luboc, Bohol.25 It seems that by 1605 Filipino teachers were in charge of the catechism schools. The 1603 Annual Letter of the Jesuits stated that Filipino schoolmasters "made up to a large extent for the shortage of priests."26 Antonio de Morga made a similar observation around 1604 when he wrote:
In many districts the religious make use, in their visitas, of certain of the natives who are clever and well instructed, so that they may teach the others to pray daily, instruct them in other matters touching religion, and see that they come to Mass at the central missions; and in this way they succeed in preserving and maintain- ing their converts. .. .27
The presence of Filipino teachers laid the groundwork for private schools by showing that the Spanish priests were willing to entrust Filipinos with the religi- ous instruction of others. The most ambitious example of a private catechism school seems to have been the one established by Don Gonzalo, the fiscale of Par- nas, Leyte, around 1600. Don Gonzalo's school contained about 100 boys who followed the standard mission school curriculum of Christian doctrine and pray- ers.28 During the following years similar schools became fairly common because, as Phelan points out, the fiscales were made progressively more responsible for or-
ganizing and supervising catechismal instrucQon.29 Over the years, some of the private schools began to emphasize secular instruc-
tion more than Christian doctrine. Manila, for example, in 1701 had "many ped- agogues... willing to teach children their first letters in their own homes for a
23 Government policy permitted private schools to exist but seems to have done nothing to encourage them such as providing grants on the basis of attendance and, later, examination re- sults as the British did in Burma.
24 Costa, The Jesuits, p. 161. 2 Ibid., p. 312. -6 Quoted in Costa, The Jesuits, p. 217. "27 Blair and Robertson, op. cit., Vol. 16, p. 153. 28 Ibid., Vol. 13, pp. 63-64. "9 Phelan, Hispanization, p. 59.
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fee."30 It was not, however, until the latter half of the nineteenth century that their emphasis on secular instruction, particularly Latin and Spanish grammar, clearly distinguished the private schools from the catechism schools. That the two types of schools no longer offered the same education is indicated by the ani- mosity the private ones generated among the Spanish clergy. One of them, Father Jose M. Ruiz, described the private schools of 1887 as follows:
The towns are crowded with ignorant little schoolmasters who, without depending on anyone, open private schools paid by the parents of the children. Thus they learn what little good and a great deal of the bad they know. They teach them the cartilla [primer], a little reading and writing, using as textbooks for both things the books called corridors, which are full of anachronisms, errors, and absurdities of all kinds....31
Ruiz's comment suggests that private schools were fairly common during the 1880's. There seem, however, to be no official Spanish statistics to corroborate his testimony although the Americans, surveying their newly acquired colony around 1900, found 951 private primary, 1,593 public primary, and 314 religious primary schools.32 Nevertheless, indirect evidence tends to support Ruiz's obser- vation. Slightly over one-half of 135 noted Filipinos born between 1833 and 1890 on whom educational information is available received at least a part of their education in private schools.33
The presence of private schools can be further indicated by the not atypical educational careers of two Filipino heroes, Jose Rizal and Apolinario Mabini. Born in 1861 Rizal received his first schooling from a private tutor paid to teach him Latin. When he was nine years old Rizal entered the private school of Jus- tiniano Aquino Cruz and continued his study of Latin and Spanish grammar for several years. He then entered another private school where he learned the mul- tiplication tables. From this school Rizal entered the Ateno Municipal de Man- ila, a Spanish secondary school run by the Jesuits.34 Mabini was born in 1864 and studied his first letters in the private school of his grandfather. He then trans- ferred to the private school of Simplicio Avelino from which, in 1875, he moved to the private secondary school of Father Valerio Malabanan, a Filipino secular priest. After several years at Malabanan's school Mabini entered San Juan de
30 Costa, The Jesuits, p. 506. 31 Quoted in Vincente G. Sinco, "Rizal and Education," Diliman Review, 9 (July, 1961),
p. 298. 32 Sanger, op. cit., Vol. 3, p. 671. ""See the biographical sketches prepared by E. Arsenio Manuel, Dictionary of Philippine
Biography (Quezon City, The Philippines: Filipiniana Publications, 1955). Manuel's list in- cludes noted Filipino artists, actors, schoolteachers, lawyers and politicians but excludes major heroes such as Jose Rizal, Apolinario Mabini, Andres Bonifacio or Emilio Aguinaldo. Of the 135 entries, educational background information is available for seventy-six. Of these, forty at- tended private schools and thirty-six attended Spanish schools only.
34 See Jose Rizal, Memorias de un Estudiante de Manila, trans. Leon Ma. Guerrero (Manila: 1950) and Austin Craig, Lineage, Life and Labors of Jose Rizal, the Philippine Patriot (Manila: Philippine Education Co., 1913).
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Letran, a secondary school run by the Dominicans.35 It seems that during the latter half of the nineteenth century it was possible for a Filipino to obtain an
elementary education which would prepare him to attend Spanish secondary schools without entering a public school. This fact suggests a strong and viable
private system of elementary education. The Latinities. Private secondary education was also available during the latter
part of the nineteenth century in schools popularly known as Latinities. The Latinities duplicated the courses given in the Spanish secondary schools, such as San Juan de Letran or the Ateneo Municipal de Manila. They were made pos- sible by the Educational Decree of 1863 which permitted the first two years of sec-
ondary education to be studied under private, certified instructors. However, to
qualify for a degree, Latinity graduates had to finish their schooling in one of the
recognized Spanish schools and to pass an examination administered by the Uni-
versity of Santo Tomas.
By 1886 forty-one Latinities were in existence; two were in Manila proper, twelve in Manila's surburbs, and the rest spread throughout the provinces of Luzon and the Visayas.36 By 1895 their number had more than doubled and they enrolled almost as many first and second year students as the Spanish secondary schools.37 (See Table 4.)
TABLE 4. SECONDARY ENROLLMENTS, FIRST AND SECOND YEARS, 1895-1896
Course Latinities Spanish Schools
Spanish I 1,251 1,077 Latin I 1,198 956 Christian doctrine & Sacred Scripture 1,124 956 Spanish II 487 655 Latin II 487 655 Geography; Spanish & Philippine 565 941
The Founders of Private Schools. The founders of the first private schools seem to have been highly religious, closely associated with the Philippine Catholic Church, and respected members of their communities. For example, Juan Ma- ranga, the Filipino in charge of the Luboc mission school in 1605, was described "as a man of exemplary life who had resolved, instead of marrying and founding a family of his own, to devote his life to the service of the mission as a lay helper."38 As the fiscale of Parnas, Don Gonzalo was the intermediary between the Spanish
35 Cesar A. Majul, Apolinario Mabini: Revolutionary (Manila: Vertex Press, Inc., 1946). 86 Blair and Robertson, op. cit., Vol. 45, p. 247, note 120. 37 Bazaco, op. cit., pp. 345-346. 38 Costa, The Jesuits, p. 312.
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clergy and their Filipino parishioners and was, undoubtedly, also a man of ex- emplary life.
Little is known for certain about the founders of eighteenth century private schools. In all probability most were like Juan Maranga or Don Gonzalo. But as the private schools became more sectarian, the connection between the Church and the private school founders became more tenuous. Moreover, it is likely that a number of the eighteenth century school founders were Filipinos who had been educated in the Spanish schools and who were teaching to earn a living. The nine- teenth century founders were clearly of two types; Filipino secular priests and educated lay Filipinos. The latter seem to have had fairly diverse backgrounds with only their education in common. However, when one examines the possible motives each group had for founding private schools the distinctions between the nineteenth century school founders tend to blur.
Before 1896 one of the major Filipino-Spaniard controversies was seculari- zation. Contrary to established Church practice, the great majority of Philippine parishes were in the hands of the Regular Orders rather than in those of the secu- lar priests. In 1870, for instance, only 181 of the 792 Philippine parishes were ad- ministered by secular priests.3" The controversy over who was to hold the parishes had clear racial overtones, for by and large Filipinos were seculars and Spaniards were regulars. It spilled over into the realm of private education as Filipino secu- lars, unable to obtain parishes to support themselves or to advance within the Church, founded private schools.
According to Evergisto Bazaco it was a fairly common practice for Filipino seculars to establish private schools.40 Their religious training included instruc- tion in Christian doctrine and Latin grammar. Since these subjects were the staple of nineteenth century education, it was fairly easy for,Filipino seculars to move from the parish house to the school house. Most of the schools run by secular priests were probably identical to either the Latinity of Father Valerio Malaba- nan, attended by Mabini, or the elementary school of Father Antonio Medale in Dumajug, Cebu, which provided "a broader and more thorough elementary cur- riculum in preparation for secondary studies ...."9 41As well as providing an edu- cation for Filipino youth, these schools supplied an income for the secular priests. Malabanan's school was so successful in fact that after several years he left the Church to devote full time to its management.42
There is no doubt that many of the lay Filipinos who established private schools did so to earn a living also. But for some Filipinos, laymen and secular priests alike, political considerations also seem to have been motivating factors.
3' Alzona, op. cit., p. 152. 40 Bazaco, op. cit., p. 278. 41 Fox and Mercader, "Some Notes," p. 33. 42Zolio M. Galang, Encylopedia of the Philippines (Manila: McCullough Printing Co., 1950),
Vol. 3, p. 380.
214 June 1971
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This is suggested by the careers of Mariano Servilla, a Filipino secular priest, and
Jose Basa y Enriques, a lawyer. Sevilla, born in 1839, held a doctorate in theology from the University of Santo Tomas. An outspoken advocate of secularization, Sevilla was implicated in the abortive Cavite Revolt of 1872. He was banished from the Philippines for several years, and on his return established the Colegio de la Sagrada Familia, a Latinity offering the first three years of secondary educa- tion.43 Basa, born in 1843, held a masters in law from the University of Santo Tomas. An advocate of secularization and a critic of Spanish policy, he was also
implicated in the Cavite Revolt and banished. Several years after his return to the Philippines he established a private secondary school which was attended by sixty to seventy students per year.44
Neither Sevilla nor Basa left autobiographical proof of their motivations, hence one must infer from other sources their reasons for founding private schools. It is possible, however, that they and others like them were radicalized
by personal experiences and general Philippine developments and were motivated to found private schools by thoughts of Filipino independence. There appears to be little doubt that in the minds of late nineteenth century Filipinos education was clearly linked to Spanish dominance and Filipino subservience. According to Mabini, "the Spanish government, working hand in hand with the friar, tried to isolate the Filipinos, intellectually and physically, from the outside world that
they might not be subjected to influences other than those both judged it conveni- ent to allow."45 Encarnacion Alzona, a product of the Spanish schools, declared
flatly that the aim of Spanish education was to make Filipinos "the passive, servile and blind servants of the friars."46 The intellectual climate was ripe, therefore, for private schools to be founded by those who sought and taught, covertly if not
overtly, Filipino independence. Furthermore, the role private school graduates played in opposing Spanish rule suggests that private schools were a possible source of the Filipino desire for independence. Of the 135 noted Filipinos born between 1833 and 1890 whose educational backgrounds are known, forty attended
private schools sometime during their educational careers. Of these forty whose
political activities are known, twenty fought against and only two supported the
Spaniards during the 1896 Revolution.47 Initially, Filipinos were motivated to found private schools because of their conversion to Catholicism. Eventually, however, their reasons became more economic and political.
4 Manuel, op. cit. p. 404. "44 Ibid., pp. 90-91. 5 Apolinario Mabini, La Revolucion Filipina, trans. Leon Ma. Guerrero (Manila: National
Historical Commission, 1969), p. 20. At the time Mabini was detained on the Island of Guam by the Americans for his refusal to cooperate with them. " Alzona, op. cit., p. 168. 47 Manuel, op. cit. If one includes the major Filipino revolutionary heroes which Manuel ex-
cludes from his list such as Jose Rizal, Apolinario Mabini, Andres Bonifacio or Emilio Aguinaldo, all of whom attended private schools, then the connection between the private schools and the 1896 Revolution becomes even more striking.
Comparative Education Review 215
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Filipino educational behavior with respect to both the colonial schools and the private schools can be divided roughly into three phases. The first phase cov- ers the initial response of Filipinos to Spanish education. During this phase, which spans the years between 1590 and about 1640, Filipinos became teachers in the mission schools and established private schools imitating them. The second phase was one of educational continuity covering roughly the two hundred years between 1640 and 1840. Although during this phase education expanded through- out the Islands, the Filipino variants of mission schools and Filipino patterns of attendance remained basically unchanged. The final phase of Filipino education- al behavior covers the years immediately preceding the Revolution of 1896. This phase saw Filipinos substituting attendance at private elementary and secondary schools for attendance at equivalent Spanish schools while at the same time doub- ling their enrollments at the University of Santo Tomas.
It is significant that these phases of Filipino educational behavior only margi- nally coincide with the periods of Philippine educational history generally marked off by a colonial perspective: e.g., The Founding of Schools, 1565-1768; Progress of Education, 1768-1863; and The Educational Decree and after, 1863- 1898. Juxtaposing these two alternate periodizations it is possible to conclude that shifts in Spanish educational policy and practices do not adequately explain changes in Filipino educational behavior. If they did then these two periodiza- tions would match much better than they do. It is necessary, therefore, to look for supplementary explanations.
Despite its several phases there is a general pattern to Filipino educational initiative. Rather than offering anything radically different, it simply imitated the educational models set by the Spaniards. The first private schools duplicated as best they could the mission schools while the nineteenth century private schools duplicated the schools designed for Spanish youth. But there is an important dif- ference within these two periods. Whereas the early school founders imitated the Spanish model of "native" education, later school founders emulated the model of the "elite" one. Early Filipino initiative obviously reflected a readiness to ac- cept and work within the framework of Spanish colonialism. This readiness is easily understood when it is realized that during the seventeenth century Cathol- icism became almost literally the Filipino life style. As an extension of the Church, the catechism school, private or mission, was central to the lives of Filipi- nos. Nineteenth century educational initiative, however, reflected a clear dissatis- faction with the role assigned Filipinos in the colonial system and a desire to use education to improve their lot. Both the dissatisfaction and the desire for change, we suggest, were the result of Spanish racism.
Racism and Education in the Nineteenth Century. Fedor Jagor described Philip-
216 June 1971
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pine society in 1860 as revolving around "pride, envy, place-hunting and caste- hatred." He also noted that European-born Spaniards despised Island-born
Spaniards, that both despised the Mestizos and that all three looked down upon the Filipinos.48 Racism was not always the central dynamic of Philippine so-
ciety, however. The only distinction the early missionaries made was between heathen and Catholic, and a conterted heathen was granted all the rights and
obligations of a full-fledged Catholic. But racism developed over the years and it became particularly acute in the nineteenth century largely because, according to Sinabaldo de Mas, of the competition for scarce government jobs.49 The racist nature of nineteenth century Philippine society was succintly summarized by Don Enrique Altamirano y Salcedo, the Spanish civil governor of Cagayan Province, 1894-1898. Reviewing his experiences in 1902 he wrote:
The manner in which the Indios were treated by the civil or military authorities and by the resident Peninsular Spaniards was the first thing that attracted my atten- tion. I could not understand why the Indios, submissive and obedient as they were, could not be treated not so much as brothers, but as persons.
... the conduct with which the Spaniard looked down upon them was such that to him an ilustrado [an educated man] who occupied a public office was the same as an unlettered peasant from the rice paddies. He who had a white face, no matter how lowly was the class he had come from, considered himself above him whose skin was not white... ;no matter what office he held, only for being an Indio he was supposed to bow his head and refrain from answering the insults he received from those who were white-skinned. This custom was, there, in the Philippines, so deeprooted, and it was carried to unthinkable exaggeration .... 50
Filipinos were aware of and responsive to Spanish racism. Rizal wrote "that as a boy he felt deeply the little regard with which he was treated by the Spanish simply because he was an Indio."51 Similarly, Mas reports a number of incidents where even the unlettered, common Filipino no longer granted Spaniards for-
merly given courtesies such as standing when a Spaniard entered the room or
yielding the path to him.52
The link between education and racism in the minds of the Filipinos was
forged by Spanish social practice. Spaniards would ridicule educated Filipinos suggesting that because they were Filipinos they had no right to an education,
"4Fedor Jagor, Reisen in den Philippinen, trans. Austin Craig (ed.), The Former Philip- pines Through Foreign Eyes (Manila: Philippine Education Co., 1916), pp. 23-24. Racism as a factor in Filipino, history has not been fully explored. An important beginning has been made, however, in the works of Leon Ma. Guerrero, The First Filipino: A Biography of Jose Rizal (Manila: Vertex Press, Inc., 1969) and Domingo Abella, "Jose Ma. Panganiban y Enverga: A
Filipino Intellectual and His Times," Journal of History 6/1 (1958), pp. 4-26. "49 Sinabaldo de Mas, Informe Sobre el Estado de las Islas Filipinas en 1842, trans. Carlos Botor
(Baguio City, The Philippines: Catholic School Press, 1963), p. 125. "5o Quoted in Abella, op. cit., p. 6. ",1 Quoted in Guerrero, op. cit., p. 47. "-2 Mas, op. cit., pp. 157-158.
Comparative Education Review 217
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considered to be a Spanish prerogative. This process was described by Manuel Xerez y Burgos as follows:
When a priest [Spaniard] met a man who had any education, any culture at all, in towns where there was very little culture, and got him before a great many people, he would say '0! You are a Spaniard now, I suppose. You will very soon be a Prot- estant and a heretic, and soon you will be exconimunicated;' and of course it would
expose the man to great shame. And the friar would say, 'You are a very ugly per- son to try to imitate the Spaniards; you are more like a monkey, and you have no
right to try and separate yourself from the carabaos.'53
This type of behavior determined the Filipino response. To combat Spanish racism it was necessary for the Filipinos to obtain an education identical or su-
perior to that of the Spaniards. By doing so they would make it impossible for the
Spaniards to continue to claim intellectual superiority. The Filipino imitation of Spanish schools and the doubling of enrollments at the University of Santo Tomas, shown earlier, were motivated by Filipino efforts to refute a claimed
Spanish intellectual superiority. In summary, the educational policies and practices of Spanish colonialism
created a dual system of education in the Philippines: catechism schools for the
Filipinos and academic schools duplicating those of the Peninsula for Spaniards. Over the years and largely in response to Spanish racism Filipinos found the catechism schools inadequate; and, particularly in the latter part of the nine- teenth century, they created an independent educational system which duplicated the first years of the academic education Spanish policy sought to deny them. The success which Filipinos had in creating this system suggests that colonialism, rather than determining educational developments through governmental poli- cies and practices, simply establishes the outermost limits for the educational in- itiative of the colonized. They in turn are free to shape an educational system in
response to the various pressures they feel.
"Jacob G. Shurman, Report of the Philippine Commission to the President, June 31, 1900 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1900), Vol. 2, p. 407.
218 June 1971
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