Education and Spanish in the Philippines (2)

2. The Spanish Language in Hispanic Philippines

A more enlightening view was that of Carlos Palanca, the most prominent Chinese in the last two decades of Spanish rule. He submitted a memorandum to the Schurman Commission about the main products and languages in the different provinces, Palanca listed 18 provinces as Spanish-speaking with 5 provinces as speaking little Spanish. The rest of the provinces speak the regional language. The Spanish-speaking provinces, the most prosperous provinces, were deeply influenced by the friars and had a significant concentration of Spanish-speaking Chinese and their mestizos. Yet, in the other provinces not classified either as Spanish-speaking or speaking little Spanish, one could find several headmen who spoke fluent Spanish, according to Stephen Bonsal, an American war correspondent who traveled widely in the Philippines. Still another revealing source on the widespread use of Spanish at the time of the American invasion was the fact that American soldiers had to speak crude Spanish, dubbed "bamboo Spanish", to make themselves understood by the native Filipinos. An important reference on the widespread literacy and, by inference, the wide use of Spanish in the Country, is the 1903 Philippine census. The Census, although deliberately - it seems - not answering Spanish-speaking and writing inhabitants in the country at that time, stated the literacy rate of the Philippines at 20.2% including those who could read and write in any Philippine language. However if the figure includes those who could read but could not write, the same figure jumps to 44.5%. Surely this literacy rate had little to do with the Americans who came to the Philippines only in 1898 and did not start their public school system until 1900. Agoncillo's statements downplaying the extent of education and the widespread use of Spanish during the end of the Spanish era are debunked by contemporary historical accounts on the subject matter and by even the 1903 Philippine census. Philippine history textbooks give the impression that the transition of the medium of instruction in the public school system from Spanish to English occurred smoothly. By the first decade, American bureaucrats in the Philippines were informing the American authorities in the USA that the Filipinos by the middle of the first decade were already English-speaking. Actually, Spanish grew even more during the 1900-1920 period. Professor Henry Jones Ford of Princeton University in his 1913 secret report on his six months travel and research about the Philippine situation to President Woodrow Wilson, had this to say on the use of Spanish in the country at that time:

"There is however, another aspect of the case that should be considered. I had this forcibly presented to me as I traveled through the Islands, using the ordinary conveyances and mixing with all sorts and conditions of people. Although on the basis of School statistics the statement is made that more Filipinos now speak English than any other language, no one would think of the testimony of one's own ears. Everywhere Spanish is the speech of business and social intercourse. For one to receive prompt attention, Spanish is always more useful than English and outside of Manila, is almost indispensable. Americans travelling about the Islands, use it habitually. What is more, they discourage the use of English. This was a development that took me by surprise. I asked an American I met on an inter-island steamboat why he always spoke Spanish to the stewards and waiters, and whether they could not understand him in English. He said that probably many of them could but one would not be treated with as much respect using English and not Spanish; that Filipinos seem to loose their manners using English, becoming rude, familiar and insolent."

Professor Ford further underscored the widespread use of Spanish in the country by writing about the existing press thus: "There is unmistakable significance in the fact that there is not in all the Islands one Filipino newspaper published in English. All of the many native newspaper are published in Spanish and in the dialect. The Vanguardia, the Manila newspaper of largest circulation, has a Spanish section and a dialect section, and most of the native papers throughout the Islands follow this practice. The Philippine "Free Press", the periodical of largest circulation under American control, is published in English and Spanish, and all the American newspapers use Spanish to some extent in conjunction with English. The only purely Filipino paper that uses English at all is the Revolutionary Organ, "The Philippine Republic", published in Hong Kong. It is in Spanish and English. The avowed purpose being to reach American readers in the interest of Philippine Independence." It is relevant to mention here that as late as 1930, the Spanish dailies had a much bigger circulation than either Tagalog or English dailies. Noteworthy also is the fact that in the 1930's there were a few Chinese periodicals in both Chinese and Spanish.

Another big proof for the prevalence in Spanish over English in 1913 Philippines cited by Professor Ford is the failure of Act No. 190 enacted by the Philippine Commission mandating English as the sole official language of the courts and their records by January 1, 1906. The law was amended several times to accommodate Spanish as co-official language of the courts with English till January 1, 1920. And Filipino legislators and Constitutional delegates made Spanish still an official language in the Commonwealth. Spanish was also heavily used by American and Chinese businessman. Pacific Commercial Company, the largest American trading corporation in the country had the best Spanish teacher under their employ to teach Spanish to new American employees from the beginning to the time when the Japanese came. Meanwhile, the minutes of the Philippine Chinese Chamber of Commerce were in Spanish from their inception in 1904 to 1924, after which Hokien was used. Truly, Spanish was already deeply widespread at the time of the coming of the Americans. Had it been used together with English in the American-controlled Philippine public school system, Filipinos would be like the Puerto Ricans today, speaking both English and Spanish.

Modesto Reyes Lim in a 1924 issue of the Rizalian Magazine ISAGANI vehemently criticized the imposition of English upon the Filipinos. He wrote: "¿No es acaso de sentido común, que hubiera sido muy fácil propagar más el castellano, que ya se usaba como lengua oficial y se hablada ya por muchísimas familias filipinas dentro y fuera de sus hogares, y del cual contaba entonces el país con muchos literatos, poetas y escritores distinguidos?" (Is it not of plain common sense to know that it would have been far easier to further propagate Spanish, which was already the official language and the mother tongue of so many pure Filipino families, in and out of their homes, and from whom where born so many writers, poets and distinguished men of letters?) "Indudablemente, como dice un ilustre filipino miembro actual prominente de la administración de justicia, que con el mismo tiempo y dinero gastado, sistema y otros medios modernos de instrucción empleados en la enseñanza del inglés, se hubieran dedicado a la enseñanza del español, éste se hubiera propagado en mucha mayor proporción que se haya hoy propagado el inglés." (There is absolutely no doubt, says a Filipino jurist of today, that if the same time and money, and the same teaching system and methods, now employed in the teaching of English were instead dedicated to the teaching of Spanish, the latter would have been propagated in a much larger proportion in which English has been propagated.)

Modesto Reyes Lim's criticism of the teaching of English to the exclusion of Spanish in the Philippines looks overly biased in favor of Español, but the view is the same view of Edgar Bellairs, an Associated Press correspondent, who covered the Philippine-American War and traveled widely in the Philippines. Bellairs, in his book AS IT WAS IN THE PHILIPPINES, criticized the teaching of English over Spanish in Philippine public schools thus: "I lay it down as a proposition that if you start today and teach thousands of children in the Spanish language, in a period of two years, at the expiration of that time, you will have done more good for these people and this country, and the masses of them will have a wider knowledge of their worlds' history and be more capable of assessing this government than they will ever be at the expiration of 5 years under the present English language system". It was a mistake to exclude the teaching of Spanish and its use as a medium of instruction in the Philippine public schools system under the Americans. The exclusion led to the ignorance of Spanish by Filipinos, specially historians and journalists, who could, and should, shed better lights on the distorted Philippine past.

The present ignorance of Spanish by Filipino historians and writers perpetrates the ignorance by Filipinos of many positive and beneficial aspects of Spanish rule in the formation of the Filipino Nation. This ignorance is behind the lack of appreciation for our Spanish heritage and the loss of that precious capital of human hope. It is the task of historians and writers --- a task admirably and effectively played by the late Nick Joaquin --- to disseminate the need of learning the Spanish language to correct the heavily distorted history of our Hispanic past and to destroy the black legend that falsely says that Spanish rule in the Philippines was mostly evil when the contrary was true.

By Pio Andrade, Manila (2001)


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