CHAPTER XX RELIGIOUS EDUCATION-AMERICAN PERIOD It is not in our province to tell in detail of the development of public education in the past two decades, though the story ought to be better known. In many respects it has no parallel in all history. In the twenty years between 1903 and 1923 the advance numerically was tremendous, as is revealed by the following statistics: The improvement in the quality and grade of public education is not easily reducible to figures; but it is even more significant than the increase in numbers. Less study was required to complete a college course in Spanish times than is now required to finish the high school. PRIVATE SCHOOLS The advances made by the public schools had an interesting effect on the private schools of the Islands. We will consider first the non-religious private schools. Immediately after the opening of the American regime multitudes of private schools sprang up because the demand for education far outran the supply of public schools. They were largely of the same inferior quality as schools in the Spanish period had been. Gradually the government standards and the government schools pushed these private institutions out of existence until in 1923 there were only one twelfth as many private schools as in 1903. More than eleven twelfths of the private secular schools had disappeared. By 1915 a second period in the private secular schools began to appear, and in a few years it gained tremendous proportions. We have reached the corporation or "big business" stage in education. Instead of many small schools there have grown up several high grade colleges and universities with large enrollments. Certain Filipinos had gained national reputations as educators. Some of them had been trained in the best colleges in America. They perceived that great numbers of students were drifting into Manila to complete their education, and were finding the public high schools utterly inadequate to accommodate them. The standardized and recognized private secular schools received this overflow-and the overflow proved greater than the number of students in the secondary public schools. Approximately half of the students pursued night courses and were able to earn a part or all of their living during the day. The result was that National University, Manila University, and Far Eastern College were able to increase at the rate of from five hundred to a thousand new students per year for the first three or four years after their opening. Far Eastern College, for example, gave out the following statistics : Opened 1919-20 with 260 students Opened 1922-23 with 2,860 students National University with former Assistant Director of Education Osias as its President, leaped in two years above the enrollment of any previous institution the Islands have known, and presently bids fair to rank with the largest colleges in the world. Stimulated by these successes a new college is springing into existence each year, with apparently no dearth of students, providing the standards are sufficiently high to merit government recognition. Although these institutions are called "colleges" or "universities" the majority of the students are of intermediate or high school grades.1 The meaning of this decline and later recrudesence of the secular private school is that for a number of years the educational forced-draught instituted by the American Government exceeded the demand; but in the last few years the passion for English education of the new higher type has become so universal that the supply cannot keep pace with the demand. Indeed the hunger for learning and for ever higher learning is gathering impetus every passing year. Already it has become an obsession without parallel in any other country, and where it will end no one can predict. It seems certain however that within forty years the Philippine Islands will be one of the most highly educated nations in the world. Educationally at least this country "has advanced a century in twenty years." Justice Johnson rightly says that "the Filipinos are so rapidly acquiring distinction in Western civilization that they are a marvel to other peoples." "The Filipino of to-morrow," says another, "will not be as the man or woman of yesterday. Even laymen notice the difference between father and young son-between middleaged woman and adolescent girl. For example the average Filipinos-boarders, guests, and family-sleep crowded together in one small room, behind locked doors and windows lest their souls may escape while they sleep. . "I can't sleep like this,' growls the boy who comes home from school. If I don't get fresh air at night, I'll be licked at baseball to-morrow. And I don't believe that old soul fable anyway.' The 1903 and 1918 census reports for private schools are as follows: Private Secular 1918 1903 decrease decrease percentage Schools 644 64% Teachers Pupils 33,700 63,545 29,800 46% increase Pupils 79,000 23,378 52,500 198% (A curious failure in the 1918 census was to enumerate secular and religious private students separately. The numbers of students are estimated above from the proportions of schools and teachers.) "So, fearfully, then boldly, the elders open the windows, to learn by the venture that neither harm comes in nor good escapes thereby." As in no other country on earth the young generation is teaching the old. This is becoming a youthcontrolled nation-in school, in legislature, in court, in church. And it has all the idealism, all the intolerance of fear and of sham that youth always has. Enormous changes are taking place with the swiftness of magic in the thinking of the Filipino nation. In the first place a new English-speaking people is being created in one generation. R. A. Lane, writing in the Cosmopolitan in May, 1892, said, "Of English-speaking people in Manila there are not over five or six hundred." Manila, that was in 1892. In 1923 Manila has far more than 100,000 speaking English, more than 60,000 are now studying English in schools. To put it as strikingly as possible, the number of people who speak English in Manila has increased in thirty years 20,000 More Filipinos use English than Spanish-more have learned English in twenty-five years than learned Spanish in three hundred years! English, in two and one half decades, has become the third spoken language in the Islands, only Visayan and Tagalog being spoken by more people. Probably more people are able to use some English than any native dialect. Before another census is taken English will be easily the first language in all respects. Twenty years hence, the Filipinos will be known as one of the great English-speaking peoples of the world. per cent. An Island wide observer finds that, "the social life is drifting away from the old Roman Catholic Church as a center (where it has been held for centuries past) and is centering more and more around the life of the public schools. The attitude of extreme hands-off adopted by the government in regard to religious questions in the public schools has resulted in an almost anti-Christian sentiment therein." 2 At the present time a large percentage of the young generation are without religious anchorage. If this remains a permanent condition the blame will fall upon the Protestant churches. Students, J. L. McLaughlin, American Bible Society Report 1917, p. 385. torn away from their old religious moorings, are wholly open to the truth, are indeed seeking it with great eagerness. Here is an opportunity and a responsibility the like of which can perhaps not be paralleled elsewhere in this generation. "Whatever we may have to neglect in our program of redeeming the Philippines," says Dr. M. A. Rader, "it is certain that failure to care for the student class would be the most serious mistake we could make. . . . The public schools are putting forth a multitude of English-speaking youth anxious to be friends with Americans. We meet them in every town. These students love discussion and accept instruction. Some are proud of the fact that they have no religion. All ask eagerly the difference between Romanism and Protestantism." It is encouraging therefore to find that Protestantism is attracting the educated young people in greater proportion than the uneducated. Seven times as many Protestants are teachers proportionately to the total membership as are found in the Roman Catholic Church. One Protestant member in every 74 is teacher. One Roman Catholic member in every 533 is a teacher.3 The well-known fact that the Aglipayan Church is failing to secure the educated classes is indicated by the startling proportion of only one teacher for every 898 members in that church. The Protestant Church has proportionately twelve times as many school teachers in its membership as the Aglipayans. About one school in twelve is sectarian. Religious schools are not, as a rule, popular; some of them find it almost impossible to get students. They average only 19 pupils for each teacher, whereas the public schools have an average of 44 pupils to each teacher. There are some religious schools, however, which are among the most popular in the Islands. A few of them will be described later. The above figures may be verified by comparing the Protestant and Catholic membership as given in the 1918 Census, with the following table: Number of teachers in the Islands Protestant Teachers |