Manila and English

...But with so many dialects there seemed no possibility of agreement among the natives as to which one should be chosen...

...They vary only slightly from the groups which existed during the Spanish regime: the well-educated "illustrados" forming a little larger and perhaps a more politicalminded aggregation than were found when we took possession of the country, but just as cultured then as now...

...For one thing, they were greatly influenced by the attitude of the Americans who had remained in the Islands after the close of the war, and who were bursting with a spirit of uplift generated by their first actual contact with a primitive people...

...It will be years before the Philippines can be accredited as a nation capable of controlling its affairs without protection and supervision...

...But to those who have viewed the situation from the vantage point of Manila, rather than in perspective from any one of our United States, it is obvious that the main reason for the failure of the Filipinos to measure up to the standard of citizenship demanded by Congress is to be found in the despotic language restriction imposed upon them from the first by the government of the United States...

...In 1901, when the United States made its arresting dramatic gesture to bestow our mother tongue on a benighted people, articulate only in a jumble of Malayan dialects, I went to Manila on the same transport which carried the 1,000 young college graduates from this country, who were to put into effect the educational program of reconstruction endorsed by the authorities at Washington...

...In its second stage it is continued as education in the school in the language of public instruction, and after school it is carried on in the vernacular which is the language of the community...

...It fell on my ears whereever I turned in Manila...

...It is also true that there would be fewer "educated" Filipinos seeking "white collar" jobs in Manila, and a larger number of intelligent farmers in the provinces and articulate laborers in the barrios...

...Our system of education did not create the three distinct classes found in the Philippines today...

...and Tagalogs, Malays and Javanese of the better class find much in common in their language and folk-lore...

...the second class, unintelligent, semi-illiterate natives, with a smattering of English acquired in the primary and secondary schools...

...In fact, outside of Manila a very small minority of the natives either spoke or understood it...

...My conclusion from what I saw, and more particularly from what I heard, is that the Islands are now a veritable linguistic battleground where English —still an alien tongue—is struggling for supremacy with Tagalog, the one husky Filipino dialect which has risen to combat it...

...But it is the opinion of educators in Manila, who thoroughly agree with Congress in denying them independence, that they would have been better prepared to meet the test of citizenship by this time, if Tagalog had been the language of public instruction, instead of English, during these thirty years of American occupation...

...But what has happened up that alley has nothing to do with the fact that the Filipinos are still unfit for self-government...

...Spanish had never become the universal speech medium of the Islands though Spain had ruled them for three centuries...

...This argument—decked out in the usual habiliments of patriotism—influenced the military commanders and members of the Philippine Commission to a superlative degree, but they were also convinced from an academic survey of educational conditions under the Spanish regime that the dialect situation in the Islands was hopeless...

...My embarrassments were frequent when the Filipino houseboys used English terms so unfamiliar that I had to look them up surreptitiously in the dictionary...

...The choice of one might create ill-feeling among the tribes, and cause resentment against their American conquerors...

...Through the fortunes of war, 10,000,000 Filipinos had become our wards...

...It was dedicated for the most part to visiting schools, interviewing teachers and assembling educational data...

...Many of them suffered incredible privation in primitive environments, miles from the capital of Manila...

...The first rudiments of learning are acquired in childhood in the home, through the vernacular or mother tongue...

...But be that as it may, the experiment of using Tagalog in the public schools has never been tried...

...Less than two years ago I returned from another trip to the Islands...

...Those best acquainted with conditions in the Islands are agreed that Congress is absolutely right...

...However, I departed with a feeling that, so far as pronunciation, grammatical construction and inflection were concerned, English in the Philippines was faring very well indeed...

...Three regional vernaculars for elementary and secondary instruction with our democratic literature translated into each, and with our teachers trained to interpret the ideals of democracy through the medium of these dialects, would have been the logical method of combating ignorance, abolishing illiteracy, and inculcating the principles of government, when we took over the Philippine Islands...

...the third class, which has no political significance, and has been entirely unaffected by our intensive educational campaign made up of millions of pagans and Christians scattered through all the islands of the archipelago, totally ignorant from the point of view of the other two groups, and still speaking in the vernacular of their tribes...

...An educated Tagalog from Batangas and an educated Visayan from Cebu can understand each other in a short time and without much effort...

...It is axiomatic that the vernacular is the ideal instrument of education because it is the tongue of the home and the community, so when the United States insinuated a foreign language into the second period by making English the sole medium of instruction in the primary and secondary schools in the Philippines, it broke the normal continuity in the evolution of learning...

...But 2,000,000 people speaking a dialect as good as Tagalog has proved to be, were deserving of more consideration than they received on this occasion...

...I found that during the fifteen years which had elapsed since I had last heard my native tongue in the Philippines, it had become mutilated to such an extent that it was well-nigh unrecognizable, and the natives were speaking a mongrel language referred to jocularly throughout the Orient as "bamboo English...

...The suggestion that American teachers should first learn a native dialect through the medium of which they might impart the precious knowledge inherited from Anglo-Saxon ancestors and forebears who had created democracies was scorned because it would necessitate delay...

...Their desire to make a great English-speaking race of what they supposed were savages was irresistible, and their eagerness to educate Filipinos was like that of missionaries clamoring to save heathen souls...

...For a considerable period after the expiration of the contracts of the original 1,000 teachers, others were sent out regularly to take the places of those returning home...

...In consequence the scholastic requirements for instructors in the insular schools were gradually lowered...

...The American insular government realized that the first step toward national organization must be the development of a common tongue, as without it no solidarity, intellectual growth or economic progress would be possible...

...I was a bit surprised, however, to find it oratorical rather than conversational, even on the lips of the humblest native...

...Also, those volunteering their services as teachers demurred at the handicap of having to use a strange tongue for exposition in the classroom...

...The study of English as a foreign language could then have been made compulsory in all grades...

...But serving the masses in so simple a manner was not the idea uppermost in the minds of American uplifters in 1899...

...some of them died as the result of hardship...

...A Cebu student living in Manila can acquire a working knowledge of Tagalog in three months...

...It was this phase of the situation, more than any other perhaps, which caused the Commission to decide that English should be the language of public instruction...

...There is little doubt that it would have been more difficult to impose Tagalog on the teachers, so they could use it as the medium of instruction in the classroom, than to have converted the Visayans, Ilocanos and other tribes to its understanding and use...

...It is my contention that if, from the time of our occupation, Tagalog instead of English had been made the basis of public instruction, the Islands would not still be completely lacking in an educated public opinion, and the natives would not still be unprepared to assume the responsibility of national independence...

...On this occasion I was thrilled by the sound of my native tongue...

...It is an entirely different story, and simply furnishes the reason why "bamboo English," as mongrel a dialect as either pidgin English or babu English, for which the British are responsible in China and India, is now being spoken in the Philippine archipelago instead of the pure Anglo-Saxon tongue with which we planned to endow them...

...The logical evolution of learning meant nothing to them...

...Our legislators at Washington are of the opinion that they have not yet reached their majority politically and economically...

...And it is altogether probable that if there had been any impassioned leader, with vision approximating the dead patriot Rizal, or even with the oratorical ability of the native statesmen now pleading for their country's independence in Washington, to stand out for the adoption of Tagalog, their claim might have been recognized...

...Tagalog, the Visayan, the Ilocano, the Malay and the Javenese are sister tongues, closely related, like the Romantic group—Italian, Spanish and French...

...After returning to this country my interest in the educational situation in the Islands was continued through correspondence with these teachers who had remained, and in 1913 I revisited the scene of their early labors...

...And even normal graduates and those holding special certificates became more and more reluctant about dedicating two years of their lives to teaching English in the Philippines...

...For several years I shared the vicissitudes of these pedagogic pioneers...

...There were several reasons why the American executives of the new insular government decided that English and not the vernacular should be the language of public instruction...

...But as time went on it became increasingly difficult to recruit college graduates who were willing to go as far and endure so many hardships for the small salary appropriated by the insular treasury...

...Why the Filipinos still fail to qualify as citizens of a self-governed country, when for thirty years their American guardians have been diligently instructing them in the principles and ideals of democracy, puzzles those who are academically or sentimentally interested in the question of their independence...

...but the majority gave uninterrupted service during the term of their contract with the Insular Department of Education, and a few are still there wrestling with the present problem of maintaining our language policy in the face of a Filipinized teaching personnel out of sympathy with it...

...In accounting for the retarded political and economic growth of the Filipinos, which shows them still as citizens in embryo, there is never any suggestion in this country that our arbitrary language policy has handicapped them...

...To begin immediately on the work of educating the natives of the Philippines along the lines of American standards and ideals was the insistent demand of these zealots...

...Divided as they were into about forty tribes, each speaking its own dialect, they had neither national unity nor a common tongue...

...That this knowledge has been imparted in the public schools of the Philippine Islands solely through the medium of English would seem to them the last reason in the world for the retarded political and economic growth of the natives...

...The shopkeepers and carromato drivers had an amazing assortment of words obviously chosen because of their length, and though they employed this heterogeneous vocabulary with commendable correctness of pronunciation and inflection, it was with a grandiloquence demanding gestures and with far more interest in cadence than in meaning...

...This shrinkage in the supply and deterioration in the quality of the American teaching personnel would never have reduced English speech to the low estate to which it has fallen in the Philippines if other disintegrating forces had not been at work...