The triumph of tagalog and the dominance of the discourse on english language politics in the philippines during the american colonial period 3

CHAPTER THREE THE AMERICAN DISCOURSE ON ENGLISH IN THE PHILIPPINES At the turn of the century, when America was just about to embark on its first real colonial adventure with the annexation of the Philippines, the publishing industry seemed to have hit a jackpot With the great interest in “our new possessions” (and since these new possessions were so far away and exotic), the numerous travel picture books and travel narratives on the Philippines that were churned out would ensure publishers of healthy profits in years to come Through these books, ordinary Americans could seemingly participate in the activities that only a handful of those involved in the colonial project were allowed The result of “the almost endless production and replication of images in books and postcards,” Benito Vergara tells us, is the “dissection and dissemination of a colony.”121 These photographs play an important part in the colonial project because they perform the function of surveillance that every state finds imperative to display its power of; the display of which requires that knowledge be obtained and displayed.122 The display not just of knowledge but of expert knowledge was claimed by many of these publications, boasting as Carpenter’s Through the Philippines and Hawaii did of numerous “illustrations from original photographs.”123 The claim of “originality” was important as these books emphasized both the contradictory promises of authority and of a new, frontier experience Read within the context of the recurring declaration of American officials that the Philippine venture was exceptional, a singular project like none the world had ever seen, the claim of originality in these books are especially symbolic One such photograph, a very nondescript pastoral scene of a dusty street with a tree in the foreground and a native house in the background appeared in an 1899 publication called Our Island and Their People as Seen with Camera and Pencil by William S Bryan, with the caption 121 Benito Manalo Vergara, Displaying Filipinos: Photography and Colonialism in the Philippines in the Early Twentieth Century, (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1993) 122 Ibid 123 Frank G Carpenter, Through the Philippines and Hawaii, (Garden City and New York: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1929) 57 “A Visayan Village, Island of Panay.”124 The exact same image appeared a year later in a similar publication, Ebenezer Hannaford’s History and Description of the Picturesque Philippines: With Entertaining Accounts of the People and their Modes of Living, Customs, Industries, Climate and Present Conditions The caption for the photo in this second publication identifies the scene as being in Tarlac, on the island of Luzon, more than six hundered kilometers away from Panay the place which Bryan had, in the first book, said the picture was of The second publication assigns special historical value to this generic photograph by identifying it as “A Street in Tarlac, The Village that was Aguinaldo’s Capital during the summer of 1898.”125 The place that Aguinaldo was operating out of in the summer of 1898 would indeed be a curiosity as it would have been the place where Aguinaldo, with American reassurance of aid, relaunched his attack against the Spanish The false claims made by both Bryan and Hannaford are interesting in of itself for insights into the veneer of authority necessary in the colonial project and present in most colonial discourse However, there is yet one more image, the exact same one (same angle of vision, same position of tree, street and house, same placement of small details like stones and leaves) but this one a “copy from a photograph” which appeared in an 1891 issue of Ilustracion Filipina This one is captioned Paisaje-Carcanias de Manila, copia de un cuadro tomado al oleo de la Señorita Carmelita Zaragoza.”126 This version identifies the pastoral scene as being in Manila This 1891 version was drawn from a photograph when Aguinaldo was not yet a General but a trader and a petty government official in his small town of Cavite Ilustracion Filipina was part of the Illustrado campaign to illustrate and make known what they believed was already formed and already there—a Filipino people, who were modern, well-educated, equal to the Spanish and therefore capable of participation in public life The American project, began eight years after this 124 William S Bryan, editor Our Island and Their People as Seen with Camera and Pencil, (St Louis: N.D Thompson Publishing Company, 1899), 735 125 Ebenezer Hannaford, History and Description of the Picturesque Philippines: With Entertaining Accounts of the People and their Modes of Living, Customs, Industries, Climate and Present Conditions, (Springfield, Ohio: Crowell and Kirkpatrick, 1900), 36 126 Ilustracion Filipina, November 7, 1891 This minutiae is known to me because Carmen Zaragoza is my great grandmother; she is the mother of my maternal grandmother An uncle of mine, Tonypet Araneta, brought these details to my attention 58 illustration was drawn, was to picture the Filipino people as splintered people, still incapable of running their own government, still in need of lessons and experience in democracy The contrast could not be more stark—between one project to name and expose what was already formed and another to supposedly form by naming and exposing The confusion created by this image reminds us not just of the impossibility of discovering the “truth” about the image as much as the irrelevance of it, especially in the face of these gestures of misidentification and misrepresentation In understanding colonial relations, the task at hand becomes both the understanding of how this image has been conscripted into the mammoth enterprise of producing knowledge for the justification of the colonial project and to the identification of possible spaces of resistance and the assertion of identity and even nationhood In understanding colonial relations, many studies approach their projects from the perspective of American objectives and policies Such studies differentiate themselves from older colonial histories that “exaggerate the accomplishments of the U.S rule and deal with the Filipino actors somewhat superficially.”127 Instead, their projects are seen (by themselves) as more sober accounts of the course of American colonialism Their conclusions are not necessarily laudatory, in fact, quite the opposite of the older colonial histories, these histories are not afraid to identify failure An example of this is Glenn May’s Social Engineering in the Philippines which declared that American colonial policies that were aimed at revolutionizing Philippine society actually “brought about little fundamental change.”128 Such studies evaluate the whole colonial project within the rubric of efficiency and within the very terms, conflicting as they were, set by the very colonial project itself May himself sees his project as assessing whether “the announced goals of 127 Glenn Anthony May, “The State of Philippine American Studies,” in A Past Recovered, (Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1987), 182 May cites as examples the histories written by Dean C Worcester, W Cameron Forbes, and Joseph Ralston Hayden 128 May, Social Engineering in the Philippines, xvii Other works of this vein are Lewis E Gleek’s American Institutions in the Philippines and Peter W Stanley’s A Nation in the Making Gleek situates his project in between the two streams that either “exhault or condemn” American policies and record of performance Stanley focuses on documenting the different and sometimes conflicting motives and styles of the various colonial officials and concludes that the American record in the Philippines is ambiguous 59 the policy-makers were achieved.”129 The function of the scholar, in May’s model, is equal to that of an external auditor, who checks the business establishment’s books and analyzes its decisions based on a shared standard and a shared objective Some of the more recent studies, however, approach the understanding of colonial relations with a strong sense of wariness Instead of seeing and evaluating the American colonial project on its own terms, it sees it as one that masks conquest, rule, and exploitation Their project, therefore, becomes one of unmasking In particular, these studies examine the knowledge and meanings, seen now as established and largely inexorable, created by the American colonial order, through affiliation with the universal forces of science, progress, rationality, and modernity These new meanings and knowledge scripted not just the Filipinos but other colonial projects as immature and fledgling and “other” to what they projected themselves as: modern, scientific, benevolent The result is the creation of a discourse of the American colonial project as not only necessary but also part of the natural order of human development An example of this kind of study is of course the work of Renato Constantino, particularly his essay “The Miseducation of the Filipino,” which was discussed in length in the first chapter Constantino, more than any other Philippine scholar, successfully melded the discourses of historical scholarship and advocacy and this of course has been used to denigrate his works as being more advocacy than scholarship The works of Reynaldo Ileto on American health policies depart from the depiction of these policies as altruistic, a notion that even nationalist historians like Agoncillo have found impossible to get away from 130 Constantino and 129 May, Social Engineering, xv Reynaldo C Ileto, “Cholera and the Origins of the American Sanitary Order in the Philippines,” in Discrepant Histories: Translocal Essays on Philippine Culture, ed Vicente L Rafael, (Manila: Anvil Publishing, Inc., 1995), 51-81 Ileto’s own interrogation of this issue has demonstrated that the institution of health campaigns is far more complicated than a matter of just bringing in vaccines and teaching the “ignorant natives” the basics of sanitation His study of the cholera outbreak in 1902 detailed haphazard, unscientific, and experimental methods used by the Americans to control the epidemic and thus exposed the inaccuracy of the idea of a neutral and scientific project He also suggests that these sanitary measures were carried out alongside efforts to suppress a growing popular resistance to American colonialism See also Rodney J, Sullivan and Reynaldo C Ileto, “Americanism and the Politics of Health in the Philippines” in Philanthropy and Cultural Context: Western Philanthropy in South, East and Southeast Asia in the 20th Century, ed Soma Hewa and Philo Hove, (Laham and Oxford: University Press of America, 1984), 39-64 Here Ileto and Sullivan show how the emphasis placed on the scientific methods of state health services aided in the justification of colonial rule and that the policies of American health 130 60 Ileto (and Agoncillo), are often considered “nationalist” historians, the suggestion being that their studies are deeply rooted in a nationalist agenda and therefore lack the much demanded scholarly objectivity The very category of “nationalist” and therefore “nationalist historian” will be interrogated and recast (through the nuances of Tagalog) in Chapter Seven There are a good number of other scholars who have examined the enterprise of knowledge production, and in particular in the construction of the idea that Filipinos were uncivilized and in need of tutelage Michael Salman focuses on how the slavery issue was recruited for this purpose; Paul Kramer looks at the shifting uses and projection of race in this particular period that was becoming increasingly sensitive to race issues Both these works stand out for their dynamic portrayal of the slipperiness of these concepts/issues and how their employment changed in response to changing policies and political terrains Vicente Rafael looks at knowledge about the colonial subject and how this was generated through the census in order to create a system of surveillance and a colonial subject that would colonize itself 131 The project of constructing knowledge and identity was not confined to the Filipino subject The Spanish were implicated as well A recent study, documents the systematic attempt to distort the history of Spanish occupation in the Philippines and the American attempt to place the Spanish in a perpetual medievalism.132 officials served as a venue for reiterating the binary of the oriental and the occidental mind and asserting the idea of the “ignorant native 131 Michael Salman, The Embarrassment of Slavery: Controversies over Bondage and Nationalism in the American Colonial Philippines, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Paul A Kramer, Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Vicente L Rafael, “White Love: Surveillance and nationalist Resistance in the U.S Colonization of the Philippines,” in Cultures of United States Imperialism, ed Amy Kaplan and Donald E Pease, 185-218, (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993); and of course Benito Vergara’s book on photography its uses in the colonial project, mentioned earlier Of particular interest is Salman’s discussion in Chapter 10 of his book of the slavery controversy of 1912-14 where he shows the contentious issue of the existence of slavery Salman shows how the issue was used by the Americans to put into question the Filipino ability for self-governance and by the Filipinos as a trope for highlighting American enslavement of the Philippines Kramer discusses of how the issue and idea of race was carefully handled because of the contradiction that was created by America’s entry into the colonial field during a time of burgeoning liberal ideas about race This resonates with some of the discussions in this thesis that look at the growth of American liberal philosophies and its influence on colonial policies See the discussion in this thesis of the growth of public education in the United States in Chapter Two 132 Maria Gloria Cano Garcia, “The ‘Spanish Colonial Past’ in the Construction of Modern Philippine History: A Critical Inquiry into the (Mis)Use of Spanish Sources,” Ph.D dissertation, National University of Singapore, 2005 The study examines the enterprise carried out by such colonial officials and academics as James LeRoy, Emma Blair, and James Alexander Robertson, as one of methodical depiction of the Spanish period as medieval in order to create a contrast between the backward and benighted Spanish 61 The current chapter takes off from these studies which interrogate the manufacture of America’s other It focuses, in particular, on the logic of American colonial officials and scholars in implementing English throughout the Philippines It was a specious logic that claimed rigorous scientific study and empirical knowledge as its basis but was sometimes contradictory and sometimes irrational The aim in this chapter is to show, through the colonial officials’ own words, the almost robotic repetitiveness of the discourse, symptomatic of the attempt to create a powerful and unified rationale for the presence of English in the Philippines This discourse will be portrayed in this chapter as an almost impenetrable fortress built on the steadfast belief in the ideas of exceptionalism, altruism and Anglo-Saxon superiority To be sure, there are small spaces within the discourse that endure not a breach but reveal its slight pliability They are infinitesimal chinks in the armor that hardly render the armor anything but a commanding force but may nonetheless, through equally infinitesimal causes, consequences, and chains of events alter the course of the battle These little chinks, as the next chapter will show, tolerated minor modifications that conspired to effect major changes Yet, these accommodations were made only when the position of English in Philippine society was firmly assured There have been recent calls for the study of colonial discourses to investigate “hegemonic operations” and to problematize the “unity and coherence” of colonial undertakings.133 The astonishing sameness of the logic and language of these colonial officials and scholars, as this chapter will show, suggests that the discourse of hegemony cannot as yet be put to rest In numerous histories, ethnographies, travel narratives, personal letters, and official documents the justification for the English language policy is rehearsed over and over to uniform to the modern, liberal, and benevolent Americans This project, Cano argues, was carried out through a wholesale erasure of certain facts regarding reforms undertaken by the Spanish colonial government during the last thirty years of their occupation and through the appropriation of certain Spanish political terms that were injected with negative connotations in order to support their campaign to create knowledge that would justify the American colonial project 133 Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, “Between Metropole and Colony,” in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, ed Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, (Berkely: University of California Press, 1997), 20 62 perfection till a discourse is created Such a discourse becomes not only the only rational solution but even plain and simple common sense In these specimens of the colonial mindset, the discourse, repeated, drone-like, was predicated on an insistence on the American duty to educate and centered on a six-point justification First, was the argument of the importance of a common language for national development, unity, and progress The Philippines, according to this reasoning was linguistically divided and no indication existed that one of the local languages functioned as a lingua franca; neither was there any indication of language fusion Second, was the contention that Spanish, which at the turn of the century was the language of educated Filipinos, could not be promoted as the lingua franca because it was already associated with a kind of elitism the Americans were supposedly interested in eradicating Third, was the infantilizing of Philippine language and culture The claim was that local languages, referred to as “dialects,” were underdeveloped and that no literature in these local languages existed or if they did, it was of poor quality Fourth, was the claim that even if there were reasons to use the local languages or a local language as the medium of instruction and as the official language, this would be an administrative nightmare The logical conclusion therefore was that, fifth, there was no other option but to institute English which, according to their reasoning, was fast become the world language, was already anyway the language of commerce in the Orient, was the language of great literature, and according to some of these proponents, the language of democracy Finally, the claims of eagerness on the part of Filipinos to learn English abounded, erasing any objections to the allegation that the English policy was an unwanted imposition In a very short amount of time, the logic of this justification, unrelentingly replicated, persistently pushed and peddled, became common sense A good example of this is the Monroe survey of 1925 The survey, more formally known as the Board of Education Survey of 1925 was the output of a commission tasked with surveying 63 the educational system of the Philippines The survey, controversial during its time134 and analyzed in variant ways today135, was critical of the state of Philippine education and by implication the educational achievements colonial officials touted The Survey reviewed and reaffirmed the existing English language policy and repeated what numerous officials, journalist, and scholars had been rehearsing over the past quarter century The survey’s treatment of the language issue, quoted here in length, is significant for its sustained discussion and presentation of the problem and of the solution of English as having been thoroughly examined from all possible dimensions and for its seemingly respectful regard for the local languages Nowhere else in the world is found a racially homogenous people numbering no more than 12,000,000, operating a large public-school system, and having a language situation anything like as complex or as difficult of solution The Philippine situation is unique in three respects: First, in place of one language, there are numerous dialects Second, there seems to be no immediate prospect of any one of the local dialects becoming supreme or driving out the other dialects Third, there is little or no tendency toward building up a common language through a fusion of all or several of the dialects Such a tendency may appear in time; but if so, several generations must elapse before one language can be produced There exists in no one of the local dialects any great amount of cultural literature There is no anticipation and no desire [for English] to replace the native dialects as a common medium of communication among the masses of the people This can only come about as a natural process through the course of time By a common language is meant a language for common intercourse in business, professional, intellectual, political, and cultural affairs Not only because of the multiplicity of the dialects and the lack of a common medium of communication, but because of the meagerness of culture material and of world-wide contacts, such a medium is required Without this there is no possibility of building up a stable group or a national culture Two other considerations lead to the conclusion that English should be maintained as the language of instruction In the first place, the introduction of the dialects as the language of instruction would be a divisive influence Wherever the question of the possible universal use a dialect has been raised unless the suggested dialect was the local one, the suggestion has been pronounced impossible At present teachers and school administrators are transferred freely from one part of the Islands to the another This intermingling of the school staff among peoples of other regions and dialects is one of the most important social forces making for 134 In reaction to the Monroe report, the Philippine Legislature also ordered a committee to study it The committee eventually questioned many of the findings of Monroe Fonacier-Bernabe notes that the committee report was an evaluation of an evaluation of the educational system and argues that the controversy surrounding these two reports of 1925 opened the debate for the place of the vernaculars in Philippine society See Emma J Fonacier-Bernabe, Language Planning in Philippine Education, 15651975, Dissertation, University of the Philippines, 1978 135 See for example Elizabeth Camp, Benevolent Colonialism?: A Reading of the 1925 Survey of the Philippine Education System, Thesis, James Cook University of North Queensland, 1994 which argues that the Monroe survey systematically “othered” Filipinos See also Andrew B Gonzalez, Language and Nationalism: The Philippine Experience Thus Far, (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1980) which includes the Monroe survey among those who agitated for a change in the language policy The Survey actually only recommends the use of the vernaculars in moral education 64 progress and for the ultimate social and political unity of the Islands Furthermore, in view of the difficulties of teacher training, textbook preparation, creation of cultural materials, organization of supplementary materials, and many related problems the administration of a system of schools in many dialects or even several would be so complicated as to be impracticable The cost of such a system would be much greater than that of the present There remains one other suggested solution of the problem—the possibility of a common Philippine language made by a fusion of the dialects As a matter of fact, no such language now exists, nor does there seem to be a steady tendency towards its formation If such a language were created, it would be an artificial product Its use in the schools would be a far more artificial procedure than in the present use of the English, for English is a living language and the one in most general use throughout the world.136 Many of the features of the rationalization for English as the medium of instruction are present here: exceptionalism (“no where else in the world”), the iteration of lack (common language, literature), the reassurance that local culture was not to be erased (“no anticipation or desire to replace the native dialects”) and the appeal to efficiency (use of several vernaculars is “complicated and impracticable”) The process through which this logic becomes common sense is done not simply through constant reiteration of the rhetoric but also through the unquestioned premising of the motives and objectives of the policy on the idea of progress Progress is the trump card and the standard recommended panacea and almost anything in the name of progress becomes acceptable The call in the Monroe Report for “social and political unity” and for a “stable national culture” actually implies the triumph of a dominant order Given the heterogenic and dynamic nature of all social, political, and cultural formations, the idea of “unity” and “stability” can only be possible with either the erasure, silencing, or marginalization of lessdominant forces Such a call and other similar calls for progress (like the call “to tutor Filipinos in democracy” and “to prepare for self-government”) that are attached to the generation of the common sense discourse that English be the medium of instruction and official language in the Philippines is resounding only if one already accepts value-laden concepts such as capitalist markets, elections, democratically-elected leaders, and national development Worcester and the Origins of the Discourse 136 Board of Educational Survey, A Survey of the Educational Systems of the Philippine Islands (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1925) 24-28 65 The idea of English education in the Philippines was, by some accounts, a matter of course, i.e it was unimaginable that education would take place in any language apart from English Within two months of the commencement of the Spanish-American war and even before Spain surrendered Manila (in August, 1898) a general superintendent of public instruction for Manila had been chosen and preparations had started for school opening in September When schools did open in Manila, over four thousand Manila school children started to receive instruction in English Though the fate of the Philippines at that time was officially still uncertain, American military officials had began the first steps toward building American-style state institutions such as public, nonsectarian schools where the medium of instruction was English Even if provisions for a thorough investigation into the Philippine condition and for informed recommendations that would guide American supervision were made, action often preceded inquiry “There was no time to think or plan or select What the great American people wants done at all, it wants done at once,”137 is Mary Helen Fee’s description of the implementation of English in the Philippines This eagerness to act, possibly coupled with a strong and solid confidence in the righteousness of the action resulted in the misrecognition and miscalculation of Filipino responses and, in the case of the implementation of English, in the creation of a discourse to explain and rationalize the belated decision The first official statement regarding the use of English in schools and as official language was made in the report of the first Philippine Commission This commission, constituted by President McKinley in 1899, was composed of Jacob Schurman, president of Cornell University (and president of this first commission); Admiral George Dewey, General Elwell Otis, the ranking army and naval commanders; the Honorary Charles Denby, an American diplomat; and Dean C Worecrster, faculty member of the University of Michigan and acknowledged expert on the Philippines The commission arrived in the Philippines in April, 1899 armed with a message to the Filipino people that was altogether a veiled threat, a declaration of the United States’ right over the Philippines, and (mostly) an olive branch saturated with statements about the loftiest of American intentions—“uninterrupted devotion,” “noble ideas,” 137 Mary Helen Fee, “Growth of English,” The Cablenews-American, 28 August, 1911, 76 66 twenty-five years we have accomplished more toward giving the Filipinos a common language than the Spaniards did in three centuries.183 The very obvious disregard for a fuller and more accurate picture about the language situation in the Philippines, the perpetuation of a lie, was an essential element of the logic to explain why English had to be made the medium of instruction Historical Evolution and Medieval Spanish Social Formations The contrast to the medieval and benighted state that American colonial officials scripted for the Spanish occupation of the Philippines184 was, of course, the enlightenment of their own Atkinson describes an “awakening” after a crisis that brings new ideas and understandings about the condition of man and the role of education to a civilization For examples of enlightenment he gives the United States after the Civil War and Germany after the treaty of Westphalia.185 The examples, symptomatic of how the Americans envisioned their enlightenment, refer to the ideas of the equality of the races (the Civil War) and of the separation of church and state (Westphalia) Civilization is achieved principally when these advanced ideas are to be conveyed to a population through popular education This assumption is indicated most forcefully in the first sentence of the Shurman report “It is evident that the fitness of any people to maintain a popular form of government must be closely dependent upon the prevalence of knowledge and enlightenment among the masses.”186 It is by following this logic that the numerous colonial officials, academics, and travel writers who constructed the discourse of English in the Philippines argued for the connection between language and social formation Following their arguments, Spanish came to represent a medieval feudal structure and English came not only to represent but actually be the language of democracy 183 Frank G Carpenter, Through the Philippines and Hawaii, (Garden City and New York: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1929), 49-51 184 See Maria Gloria Cano Garcia, “The ‘Spanish Colonial Past’ in the Construction of Modern Philippine History: A Critical Inquiry into the (Mis)Use of Spanish Sources” for voluminous examples of this strategy and for an explanation of how the strategy was carried out with systematic precision 185 Atkinson, The Philippine Islands, 380 186 Report of the Philippine Commission (Schurman), 17 78 Unable to deny the material evidence for public instruction that had been instituted by the Spanish, the Americans launched a two-pronged attack on the nature of Spanish efforts at mass education First, was the claim that this education had been merely religious and superstitious The second claim was that Spanish occupation of the Philippines fostered the foil of democracy, caciquism Caciquism is described by Leroy as a kind of “rural bossism,” that is reminiscent of “the South before the war.” He identifies it as the “prime feature of the village life of the Filipinos during the entire three hundred years old Spanish control” and as “the chief drawback to the effective working of the autonomous municipal code which was put into operation by the Taft Commission.”187 Early on, the first two Philippine Commissions endeavored to investigate education under the Spanish The first commission, the Schurman Commission, provided a four-page description of lack in its report of education under the Spanish The report became the basis for recommendations to improve the situation The Taft Commission reprised the same description of a pathetic Spanish attempt at public education in order to contrast it to the strides and successes the Americans had made in a matter of a year Both focus their descriptions on the extreme emphasis placed upon religious education and on the utter lack of facilities The Schurman report reads: “education in Christian doctrine is placed before reading and writing, and, if the natives are to be believed, in many of the more remote districts instruction began and ended with this subject and was imparted in the local native dialects at that.”188 The Taft report reads: “in the typical provincial school at first a kind of religious primer was read in the native language, and that later a book on Christian doctrine was taught The text-books found in the schools were crude, and provided a large amount of religious instruction.”189 The Schurman report makes much of how instruction in Spanish was withheld: “It is further and persistently charged that the instruction in Spanish was in very many cases purely imaginary, because the local friars, who were formerly ex officio school inspectors, not only prohibited it, but took active measures to enforce their 187 188 189 James Leroy, Philippine Life in Town and Country, (New York: Putnam, 1905), 172-173 Report of the Philippine Commission (Schurman), 31 Report of the Philippine Commission (Taft), 106 79 dictum.”190 The Taft report, however, explicitly makes a charge of Spanish education producing a kind of elitism: “a few persons have stood out prominently as educated Filipinos, while a great mass of the people have either not been educated at all or furnished only the rudiments of knowledge.”191 This depiction suggested that Spanish education policies were based on the idea that the objective was to keep the public superstitious and separated from the Spanish It also suggested that the objective was to withhold Filipinos from progress and to keep them benighted This presentation contrasts to their own presentation of the American project which was focused only on the upliftment of the masses LeRoy repeating this two-pronged attack and affirming American exceptionalism says, The education of the former regime had, though a majority of the Christian population could read or write, been woefully deficient and inefficient from five to ten per cent of the Christianized population could speak Spanish sufficiently to conduct real conversation in it, and those who could so speak it were, in the main, the wealthy few of the villages and the better-class Filipinos of Manila The masses were unreached (except by religion, and in that carried little beyond superstition) and ignorant No plan which did not primarily aim at reaching below and bringing aim at reaching below and bringing them up could be worthy of the American name 192 David Barrows, Director of Public Instruction from 1902-1909, refrained the exact same sentiment in 1907: Popular education, while by no means wholly neglected under the Spanish government, was inadequate, and was continually opposed by the clerical and conservative Spanish forces, who feared that the liberating of the Filipino people would be the loosening of the control of both Spanish state and church the American government is as anxious to destroy ignorance and poverty as the Spanish government and the Spanish church were desirous of preserving these deeply unfortunate conditions.193 Atkinson, likewise, expresses a similar argument: “ in the Philippines the masses have learned little else than the catechism Spain justified her conquest here only on religious grounds and failed because she did not take upon herself in addition, just that moral obligation which we have accepted.”194 Carpenter poetically delivers a similar sentiment: “It is often said Spanish conquerors came with a sword in one hand and a cross in the other We may have gone into the 190 Report of the Philippine Commission (Schurman), 31 Report of the Philippine Commission (Taft), 105 192 LeRoy, Philippine Life in Town and Country, 216 193 David Barrows, History of the Philippines, (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1905), 314 194 Atkinson, The Philippine Islands, 11-13 191 80 Islands with a gun, but we also carried a schoolbook.”195 The discourse here is certainly one of evolution: Spanish colonization effected some improvements but also created antiquated formations America, however, possessed the newer, more modern, and more superior culture This superiority was inextricably linked to the nobility and altruism of upholding democracy and equality for all Probably no statement about the American commitment to progress and its own democratic principles is as dramatic as that made by travel writer John Bancroft Devins Contrasting the American mindset to that of the Spanish, Devins argues that the Spanish held that “it was unwise to teach the native a common tongue; to keep them tractable it was necessary to keep them divided.”196 The American thinking was that “a common tongue may bring rebellion and war, even that is better than a peace maintained only by denying the Filipino people the first requisite to national progress; and therefore the introduction of American schools and American school-teachers.”197 This exact same sentiment is repeated by Williams: “we propose to at once what Spain never did in all her sovereignty; i.e., teach the people one language—English— throughout the entire archipelago Although this policy may create a single tongue to criticize us and to demand our withdrawal, we are big enough to take this risk and meet it when it comes.”198 American dedication to the betterment and progress of the Filipino is depicted as selfless, unassailable and would be defended even to the detriment of their own security In this discourse, the ideas of education, language, progress, and democracy are brought together and thus English becomes the logical solution to the problem created by the Spanish The foil to the Spanish language that promoted caciqueism, was English English was what Atkinson called “the great equalizer.”199 Historical Evolution and Modern American Social Formations 195 Carpenter, Through the Philippines and Hawaii, 48 John Bancroft Devins, An Observer in the Philippines or Life in Our New Possessions, (Boston: American Tract Society, 1905), 191 197 Ibid 198 Williams, The Oddysey of the Philippine Commission, 133 199 Atkinson, The Philippine Islands, 408 196 81 The claim of colonial officials equating the English language with democracy was an interesting one Some of the other tacks that were part of the scripting of the common sense logic of English in the Philippines were the tacks of extolling English and assigning it almost mystical powers Barrows called it “the mighty English tongue.”200 Quoting an American school superintendent, Devins described its role in Philippine society as being “the medium of transmission of modern currents of thought—in short, modern civilization.”201 It was promoted as the world language: “English is to-day the most widely spoken and is most rapidly spreading,”202 and “English had already become the lingua franca of the Far East.”203 It was also marketed as the language of commerce: “It is the language of business and diplomacy,”204 the “trade-language of the Orient,”205 “rapidly becoming the common language of commerce, science and diplomacy,”206 the “language of the commercial and industrial world,”207 and “the business language of the Orient.”208 Forbes identified the language problem as “the great number of Filipino dialects, the absence of a common language or literature, and the very moderate acquaintance with Spanish by any except the educated class.”209 Forbes’ bold and brave solution is English: “The American government had no fear of danger arising from welding the Filipinos into a united people by putting them in understanding contact with each other.”210 Filipinos wanted it and needed it In language both lofty (“The Filipino people, so eager to participate in all the busy life of eastern Asia, so ambitious to make their influence felt and their counsel regarded, will be debarred from all this unless they master this mighty English tongue.”211) and blunt (When we consulted them they preferred English.”212), the English policy 200 Barrows, A History of the Philippines, 315 Devins, An Observer in the Philippines, 193 202 Ibid 203 Elliott, The Philippines to the End of the Commission Government, 228 204 Barrows, A History of the Philippines 315 205 LeRoy, Philippine Life in Town and Country, 218 206 Elliott, The Philippines to the End of the Commission Government, 228 207 Atkinson, The Philippine Islands, 408 208 William Henry Taft’s address before the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, November 19, 1913, qtd in William Cameron Forbes, The Philippine Islands, v.2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1928) 501 209 Barrows, A History of the Philippines, 315 210 Forbes, The Philippine Islands, 439 211 Barrows, A History of the Philippines, 315 212 Taft, qtd in Forbes, The Philippine Islands, v.2., 501 201 82 was rationalized as justified ad populum Other officials reprised: “There is no doubt that English is much desired by the Filipinos;”213 “The Americans encountered no difficulty in initiating instruction in English Their efforts were met with enthusiasm and cordiality on the part of almost the whole population of the Philippine Islands;”214 “efforts to teach English were generally met with enthusiasm on the part of almost the whole population in every garrison town.”215 English had the power to emancipate, liberate, and unify Bernard Moses argued that English “will contribute materially to the emancipation of the dependent classes and to the development of that personal independence which is at present almost entirely wanting in the great mass of people, but which is necessary to the maintenance of a liberal government.”216 Atkinson warned that denying the Filipinos English would “restrict them to their own dialect would continue the condition of isolation in which we found them, stunt them in their growth, and deny them material and the intellectual possibilities.” English, he argued, “with its wealth of literature and ideas and its value in the common intercourse of life in the Orient,”217 was the solution Stuntz used the metaphor of fractions to argue for a common language: “The first step in adding fractions is to find a common denominator The sixty or seventy fractions of the Filipino people will never be added into one total for social or political ends until a common language denominator is found in the English speech.”218 English, concluded a 1921 report, “will form a bond of union for the numerous and more or less distinct language groups and establish a common medium of communication.” It will “make for efficiency in government and tend to build up a spirit of solidarity It will also result in a more widely circulating press and the creation of an instructed public opinion, which is important.”219 Finally, corollary to the logic that the English policy was needed and wanted was the eternal reference to American benevolence 213 Atkinson, The Philippine Islands , 404 Forbes, The Philippine Islands, 41 215 Ibid, 423 216 qtd in Forbes, The Philippine Islands, v.2, 440; repeated verbatim (but not attributed to Moses) in United States, Bureau of Insular Affairs, War Department, Description of the Philippines, (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1903), 227 217 Atkinson, The Philippine Islands, 408 218 Stuntz, The Philippines and the Far East, 210 219 Report of the Special Mission on Investigation to the Philippine Islands, October 8, 1921 Qtd in Forbes, The Philippine Islands v 2, 529-30 214 83 These statements are infused with proclamations of Amercian good intentions as demonstrated by this one from Taft that personifies the colonial enterprise and the language policy as good Samaritan: “It was the language of the government that had put its arm under the Filipino and was helping him on to better things.”220 Born out of the need to defend themselves against the very same charge of medievalism and wanton disregard for Filipino culture, American colonial officials were forced to assert the inextricable link between modernity, democracy, and the English language Charles Burke Elliott explains his defense of the English policy as one that answers “the charge of forcing the language of the conquerors upon a defenseless people.”221 Blair and Robertson likewise argue that the claim that the “Filipino thought, desires, aspirations which are to be ‘squelched’ by this new campaign of instruction in English” is “entirely gratuitous.”222 Atkinson similarly records and rebuts a criticism, probably from the Anti-Imperialist movement, of the English language policy in the Philippines In response to the criticism of “’the destruction of their national literature and tongue by foisting the English language upon these people,’”223 Atkinson argues “the Filipinos will become Americanized only in the sense that they will speak English and adopt American innovations as they are introduced; the character of the people and their stronger, more individual characteristics will be retained.”224 Eager to convince themselves, the American public, and the Filipinos who were also beginning to launch a campaign against the systematic erasure of Philippine culture, American colonial officials created a discourse for the English language that carried with it a basic contradiction English had to be invented as both neutral and value-laden Throughout the course of Western civilization (with an interruption coming only in the beginning of the twentieth 220 qtd in Forbes, The Philippine Islands v.2 501 Elliott, The Philippines to the End of the Commission Government, 227 222 Blair and Robertson, "Education Since American Occupation,” 366 223 Qtd in Atkinson, The Philippine Islands, 403 Atkinson does not identify the origin of the 221 quote 224 Ibid, 84 century225 ) language was by and large seen as the functional and unproblematic signifier of reality Working with this paradigm, colonial officials were comfortable in reassuring their critics that the implementation of English would not in any way endanger the existing culture Since language is neutral, education in English would not threaten local culture However, in order to justify why it was English and not Spanish or one of the local language that was to be used as the medium of instruction, English had to be made not neutral; it had to be imbued with democratic superpowers and thus it became “the great equalizer” and the “language of free institutions.”226 This is evident in the Monroe Survey and its definition of a common language Careful to distinguish between the relation of English (the policy’s intended common language) to the local languages, the survey defines a common language as “a language for common intercourse in business, professional, intellectual, political, and cultural affairs” while simultaneously assuring the reader that “there is no anticipation and no desire to replace the native dialects as a common medium of communication.227 This line of argument allows for a win-win solution that both permits progress and respects local culture Yet, even within this seemingly airtight contention rests the contradictions of this common sense discourse It predicts and reveals the superior status of English despite the ubiquitous claims for English as the bearer of democracy However, unlike with Atkinson and Taft who position English as instilled with democracy, the Monroe Survey does not assign English any intrinsic value Instead, it articulates a vision for English as the language of the educated and powerful It inadvertently exposes the exclusive social status English was fast taking in Philippine society that was quite different from how the earlier promoters of English had claimed it was and envisioned it could The contradiction here is not 225 This interruption is often referred to as “the linguistic turn.” It is associated with such figures as Russell and Wittgenstein The turn refers to a greater consciousness about the connection between language, thinking, and meaning-making Whereas language used to be simply the medium through which meaning was constructed, the lingustic turn allowed for language to be the medium, the source, and the subject-matter of meaning-making 226 Taft, qtd in Forbes, The Philippine Islands, v.2 501 227 Board of Education, 26 Ironically, defining the role of the common language in this manner reinvests English with very same high status associated with Spanish earlier 85 between neutrality and value but between two competing values and between the fast-becoming reality of its elitism and the dream of its egalitarianism American Counter-Discourse and the Reaffirmation of Dominant Discourse The birth of the Anti-Imperialist League in 1898 was occasioned by the SpanishAmerican War and by America’s impending entry into the colonial field The League whose members were politicians, businessmen, academics, writers, activists, and ordinary citizens agitated against US occupation of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines The reputation of the Anti-Imperialist League has been an especially positive one and they have been represented as an organization that was concerned with upholding democratic principles.228 Yet, as Sullivan and Ileto have argued, these anti-Imperial articulations are the twin, or doppelganger, if you will of the imperial logic; both perspectives being separate streams from the same root of “Americanism.”229 The articulations of those who opposed imperialism are witness to the complex and often conflicting character of resistance; they reveal a resistance that is at once oppressive and kind, stridently ethical and viciously practical In terms of the language issue and the discourse of English in the Philippines, these statements reveal, sometimes in their silence, the deeply held certainty in the superiority of Anglo-Saxon culture The range of positions among the anti-imperialists is wide The positions represent the interest or address the concerns of industrialists, labor, xenophobes, upholders of the American democratic tradition, and defenders of a kind of deontological ethics of benevolence.230 228 See, for example, Jim Zwick’s description of the league’s view of the creation of an empire as “a threat to the country’s democratic and anticolonial principles” and of its first priority which was “to defend their own democratic republic from the new ‘un-American’ policy of imperialism.” In “Introduction,” Mark Twain’s Weapons of Satire: Anti-Imperialist Writings on the Philippine-American War, (n.p.: Syracuse University Press, 1992), xix 229 See Rodney J, Sullivan and Reynaldo C Ileto, “Americanism and the Politics of Health in the Philippines” in Philanthropy and Cultural Context: Western Philanthropy in South, East and Southeast Asia in the 20th Century, ed Soma Hewa and Philo Hove, (Laham and Oxford: University Press of America, 1984), 39-64 230 See William Jennings Bryan, et.al., Republic or Empire? The Philippine Question, (Chicago: The Independence Company, 1899) which contains over fifty speeches, letters, sermons, and articles representing the various positions among those who opposed the annexation of the Philippines by the United States 86 The industrialists represented by the likes of Andrew Carnegie were against imperialism because they believed it was a recipe for catastrophic commerce Citing issues like a forced open-door policy, the monetary cost of war, the distance between the Philippines and the United States, freight costs and equal tariffs, this block opposed annexation on the sole ground of it being bad business Labor, represented such figures as John W Daniel, senator from Virginia, Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor, and Horace Chilton, senator from Texas opposed annexation based on a fear of an open immigration policy and the Filipino competition with American labor.231 Some of the counter-discourse was unabashedly racist and openly xenophobic; its own discourse peppered with terms like “semi-savage” and “half-civilized,” half-clothed,” “semibarbarous,” and “degraded races.” Their argument was a two-way argument: that those of the Anglo-Saxon races were unsuited for life in the tropics and those from the tropics were unsuited to participate in life in America David Starr Jordan, president of Stanford University used an argument reminiscent of the Joseph Conrad novel Heart of Darkness by claiming that the AngloSaxon in the tropics will suffer from “race decline, personal degeneration, and social decay.”232 On the other hand, Carl Schurz argued that the Amercanization of tropical people was an impossibility; tropical people would never become assimilated in Anglo-Saxon culture For Schurz, the very idea of tropical people participating in Anglo-Saxon life was abominable and he argues that the prospect of “Malays and Tagals” participating “in the conduct of our government is so alarming that you instinctively pause before taking a step.”233 The idea of the American democratic tradition is the most powerful and prevalent of all the ideas and thus makes an obligatory showing in their polemics The discourse of this tradition is essential to their worldview as air is essential to the act of breathing and thus will necessarily appear, whether as a mere forensic flourish or as crucial argument, albeit reconfigured and 231 Ibid, 395-6 Senator Daniel, for example argues that the Philippine annexation will “enable them to scramble over or crawl under or get in, any way that they please to come in…It will put the goods and manufactures and products of the Philippine Islands and all of its workmen into competition with those of the American workmen.” 232 Ibid, 277 233 Ibid, 336 87 reshaped to fit their particular interest or worldview Thus David Starr Jordan calls for noninvolvement in the Philippines because America must first and foremost adhere to these democratic ideals which would be impossible to in the tropics His is a logic that melds the belief in the existence of inferior races (who can only be administered through a military government) with the argument that the American people cannot morally maintain any other kind of government other than a democratic government.234 If these discourses are based on the idea of difference, a variation, one based on sameness of the discourse and on the idea of equality of all people, is present in some of the most powerful, and memorable treatise on the subject William E Mason, senator from Illinois, movingly argued: “Are human homes less sacred in the Philippines? Are human hopes and aspirations any less sacred there? Does the father love his family less? Does not the mother sing her lullaby as well there?235 Mark Twain, the most prominent opponent of the American occupation of the Philippines and of the Philippine-American war, makes good use of the discourse and symbolism of this tradition of American democracy by satirizing it He talks, for example, of a “Trinity of our national gods each bearing the Emblem of his service: Washington, the Sword of the Liberator; Lincoln, the Slave’s Broken Chains; the Master [McKinley], the Chains Repaired.”236 His works embody a particular kind of critique that focus on the negative of what these symbols represent Twain’s position is one that disapproves of the moral high-horse of those who bandy around the benevolent assimilation policy or what he calls the “Blessings-of-Civilization Trust.” Twain calls into question the morality of advocating civilization when one’s own civilization is dubious and uncertain or when one stands to gain materially His “most influential and controversial essay on imperialism and the Philippine-American War,”237 “To the Person Sitting in the Darkness,” is a long tirade on the deceptiveness of the call to Civilization In it he calls for an end to the conferring of Civilization upon others and calls 234 Ibid, 282 Ibid, 495 236 Mark Twain, “To the Person Sitting in the Darkness,” in Mark Twain’s Weapons of Satire, ed By Jim Zwick, (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1992), 38 237 See the introduction to the essay by Jim Zwick Ibid, 22 235 88 instead for “get[ting] our Civilization tools together.”238 Twain is also critical of the profit that has been gained from imperialism “Extending the Blessings of Civilization to our Brother who sits in Darkness has been a good trade and has paid well there is more money in it, more territory, more sovereignty and other kinds of emolument.”239 Twain reassures “the person sitting in darkness” that America is trained in morals, principles, and justice and that it “cannot an unright thing, an unfair thing, an ungenerous thing, an unclean thing.”240 In this essay and in others, Twain calls attention to the falsity of the discourse of Benevolent Assimilation through the verbal devices that focus on contradiction: sarcasm, satire, verbal irony Two lengthy works against American occupation that are suggestive of Twain’s concern for the farce of Benevolent Assimilation are The American Occupation of the Philippines, 18981912 by James H Blount 241 and Our Philippine Problem: A Study of American Colonial Policy by Henry Parker Wills In these works, the principal opposition to the occupation of the Philippines is that it is motivated by profit and in the use of the benevolent assimilation policy as a false faỗade Blount and Wills contest the manipulation of the policy to mask the real reason for the occupation which, they argue, was the pursuit of profit For these two, the concern is not the idea of Benevolent Assimilation per se but rather its misuse Neither is the issue really that of corruption (although that too is discussed as a consequence of the of pursuit of “special interests”) as much as it is the misrepresentation of and therefore inevitable dishonesty in the discourse of benevolence by the American officials They also indicate, through what they concede and uphold, the strength of the dominant discourse of English in the Philippines Blount’s critique, written in 1912, is a thorough account of the administration of each of the six governor generals from Taft to Forbes (and including colonial officials like Worcester) In it he takes to task their policy decisions which he sees as mostly motivated by the desire to protect American commercial markets Blount, unlike Wills, does not discuss the features of the colonial 238 Ibid, 28 Ibid 240 Ibid, 38 241 This work was actually commissioned by Manuel Quezon The Filipino nationalists had very early and throughout the campaign for independence found allies in members of the anti-imperialist league 239 89 government (judicial system, education, health system, political parties, etc.) and thus actually says virtually nothing on education policies and nothing at all on the language issue He does acknowledge that the public education system established throughout the Philippines is one of their achievements This altruistic success must be weighed against the profit made by American business Calculating that the American hemp trust fleeces the Philippine hemp industry by half a million dollars a year, Blount argues that “it follows that each Filipino child pays the hemp trust a dollar a year for the privilege of going to school.”242 Henry Parker Wills offers a much more engaged analysis of the American education policies in the Philippines.243 His evaluation of it is two-pronged: he focuses on what he identifies as defects in the details of implementation (which he concedes may be caused by the unfamiliarity of the foreign country) and the defects of theory and organization, the most serious of which is the English policy For the first defect he lists unsuitable schoolbooks, discrepancy in pay between American and local teachers, school tables and chairs made of wood not suitable for the tropics, etc His discussion of the English policy, however, is more detailed and involved as Wills himself identifies the problem as more serious His arguments on the English policy are a testament to the power and pervasiveness of the dominant discourse—Wills addresses in his discussion four of the six points in the justification for English.244 He argues that despite the official proclamations of the eagerness of Filipinos to learn English this is actually a myth and that the supposed eagerness stems only from a desire to pass civil service examinations.245 Addressing the charge that Spanish evolved into the language of the elite, he describes the use of English as actually being confined to a special class; he argues that “the truth is that an adequate knowledge of English is possessed by very few even of the 242 James H Blount, The American Occupation of the Philippines, (New York and London: G.P Putnam’s Sons 1913), 566 243 Henry Parker Wills, The American Occupation of the Philippines, (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1905), 228-241 244 The two points in the 6-point rationale for English in the Philippines that Wills does not address is the rationale that the use of any language other than English would be an administrative nightmare (probably because he sees this problem as a problem of implementation rather than of theory) and the grounds that English is the most developed of the languages 245 Ibid, 239 90 educated classes.”246 To the justification of English becoming the common language he argues that “where children of the poorer classes are compelled to receive their instruction in a foreign language, they get no real knowledge of that language.”247 Finally, of the charge of the primitiveness of the local language, Wills unequivocally identifies this as an error that needs to be corrected immediately He states that there are, in fact, a body of printed literature in all the local languages and that experts are “emphatic” in their belief that the local languages can be used for textbooks and for instruction.248 Except for Wills, none of the anti-imperialist discourse addresses the issue of language and culture In most of their arguments, there is no denial of the need to help civilize an inferior culture Though not foregrounded, the basis of their arguments is a belief in a hierarchy of culture that places Anglo-Saxon culture at the highest rung Blount, for example, identifies the problem of American occupation as it being perpetrated in part by do-gooders whose philanthropy that is “hopelessly callous to domestic duties, expenses, and distresses.”249 Wills distinguishes between the justifications of those who would annex the Philippines from those opposed to it who believe that annexation is never a legitimate exercise and “if permanently assumed, can never avoid the taint of selfishness.”250 This logic is based on an inherent faith in the supremacy of American culture It does not negate that the act of civilizing a semi-barbarous culture is a benevolent act; but instead acknowledges the tragedy that doing so harms America, either financially (Carnegie’s and Blounts’s argument) or morally (Wills’ and Twain’s argument) The strength and potency of this intrinsic trust in this hierarchy is witnessed in how colonial officials regarded the enemies of the English policy The firm, insistent and consistent agitation for recognition of local languages and in some cases for the call for the elimination of English from Philippine society was for American colonial officials apparently a non-threat This is seen in the annual reports of the Department of Public Instruction, which are also good yardsticks for understanding how secure English was in Philippine society 246 Ibid Ibid, 240 248 Ibid 249 Blount, The American Occupation of the Philippines, vi 250 Wills, The American Occupation of the Philippines, 247 91 92 ... role in shaping important policies on the Philippines, in molding the colonial discourse of Philippine culture and civilization, and in initiating the discourse to explain English in the Philippines. .. righteousness of the action resulted in the misrecognition and miscalculation of Filipino responses and, in the case of the implementation of English, in the creation of a discourse to explain and rationalize... Description of the Philippines, (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 19 03) , 227 217 Atkinson, The Philippine Islands, 408 218 Stuntz, The Philippines and the Far East, 210 219 Report of the Special Mission on