The triumph of tagalog and the dominance of the discourse on english language politics in the philippines during the american colonial period 4

CHAPTER FOUR FROM OFFENSE TO APATHY: THE CHANGING AND UNCHANGING FACE OF THE DISCOURSE ON ENGLISH IN THE PHILIPPINES An examination of the annual reports of the Department of Public Instruction251 that span more than thirty years provides a opportunity to track the changes in the discourse on English Close inspection of these annual reports yields different findings from the study of the various statements, speeches, histories, ethnographies, letters and journals discussed in the previous chapter The speeches, histories, etc are directed toward an American readership; they were published in the United States generally for U.S distribution The annual reports, as annual reports go, were written for the immediate superior, for posterity, and probably with the most aggressive threat or critic in mind The language and reasoning expected of annual reports is different from that expected of histories and ethnographies The annual reports are concerned with producing a unified picture principally of success The air of detachment, rigor, and thoroughness expected of histories and ethnographies leads us to expect analysis that does not cower from showing contradiction, conflict and failure In this respect, however, there is slight difference between the annual reports of the Department of Public Instruction and the discussions of the education, language and culture found in most American histories and ethnographies of the Philippines.252 Both display an unflagging confidence in the logic and ethics of the English language policy However, because the annual reports are “closer to the ground”—that is that they are more in a position to address or defend themselves against local concerns and criticisms and because they are written annually, one is able to glean from them the changing topography of the 251 The name of the institution in charge of public instruction during the American colonial period changed through the years Some of the names given to this office were the Bureau of Public Instruction of the Department of Education, the Bureau of Public Schools, the Department of Public Instruction, and the Bureau of Education The titles for the heads of the bureau/department also changed Some of the titles were the General Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Secretary of Public Instruction, and the Director of Education For the purposes of consistency, the titles of “Department of Public Instruction” and “Director of Education” will be used here 252 This is probably so because colonial officials often went on to write the histories and ethnographies or, in the case of Dean Worscester, the ethnographer became the colonial official 93 language debate Reading through the thirty or so annual reports, one sees when the officials at the Department of Public Instruction felt the English policy was under attack (and from whom it was under attack), what they did to address these attacks, and when they felt the place of English in Philippine society was secure From following these annual reports one gets a sense of the malleability of the discourse on English and glimpses the tiny fissures within the seemingly (but in many respects, real) firmness and immovableness of the discourse on English To be sure, as numerous directors of educations were the authors of these reports, there would obviously have been changes and differences in the educational policies, pet projects, attitudes toward local culture, pedagogical methods, etc.253 Yet, in the defense of English and in the campaign for its central and permanent place in Philippine society, the discourse is, yet again, uniform The Establishment and Restatement of the Discourse on English The first declaration of the English policy was made in 1899 (but published in 1900) by the Shurman Commission which had been tasked by Present McKinley to study the “existing social and political state of the various populations” in order to “recommend such executive action as may from time to time seem to them wise and useful.”254 The report, made just two months after the U.S legislature had formalized the annexation of the Philippines, notes that English education had already commenced and that the Filipinos had an aptitude for learning foreign languages and a willingness to so On this basis, the Commission recommended that the practice of teaching in English be continued as they believed that English could “within a short time be made the official language of the archipelago.”255 The discussion of English and its place in the Philippines in the Suchrman report is relatively spare but within a year, the Taft report would come out with a lengthier description of the education system under the Spanish (characterized as poorly instituted and undemocratic) and the contrast of the American 253 See for example Glenn May’s Social Engineering of the Philippines which discusses the focus of three of the directors of education May describes David Barrows as the champion of liberal education and his successor, Frank White as the champion of industrial education 254 Report of the Philippine Commission to the President, Volume 1, (Wahington: Government Printing Office, 1900) 255 Ibid, 34 94 achievements in education accomplished just over the past year The Taft report also contains the first comprehensive justification for the English policy, premised on three points: the impracticability of translating textbooks, the limited use of Spanish among the Filipinos, and their desire to learn English This justification, as the previous chapter demonstrated, will become increasingly sophisticated and increasingly prevalent in the following years The education reports reflect the growth of this discourse as well The first of the school reports256 read very much like typical school reports that list problems (lack of teachers, lack of appropriate textbooks) and some gains (interest in the local population in learning English) It is clear from this report that the education bureaucracy was still a fledgling institution: English instruction could not yet be instituted universally as there were not yet enough teachers competent enough to teach in English.257 There were a few American teachers who had arrived aboard the transport ships Lawton and Sheridan258 but it was not until the arrival of about five hundred American teachers aboard the Thomas in August of that same year that the education bureaucracy was going to be able to really establish a foothold in the whole of the Philippines In this first report, there is hardly a discussion of the English policy except for a brief mention of the interest in English among the local population By the Second Annual Report of the Secretary of Public Instruction, however, there is a noticeable change This report contains a rather lengthy description of public instruction policies and efforts undertaken during the Spanish period and characterizes it as concerned principally with religious education and with creating “a good not a learned people.”259 This is, of course, in contrast to the “good intentions of the United States and the serious purpose of the administration to benefit and advance the inhabitants [of the Philippines].260 These good intentions, as the explanations show, is principally to bring about development by gifting the Filipino people with a common language The lack of common language, according to the logic of this report, is “one of the fruitful sources of trouble for Spain,” 256 Report of the General Superintendent of Public Instruction for the Period from May 27, 1901 to October 1, 1901 The annual reports from 1901 to 1905 were taken from Republic of the Philippine, Annual School Reports, 1901-1905 (Reprinted), (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1957) 257 Ibid, 258 Ibid, 259 Second Annual Report of the Secretary of Public Instruction (1903), 227 260 Ibid, 231 95 “one of the principal causes which precipitated the insurrection against our own country,” and an “obstacle today to a complete understanding of our motives and purposes in these islands.”261 The explanation for how a lack of a common language is detrimental to the workings of domination and efforts at squelching resistance is absent Although the lack of a common language is actually one of the reasons given in popular explanations for the weakness of local resistance movements, this report links, without much explanation, the lack of a common language with “trouble.” The solution to the trouble is therefore not just a common language but English itself The report then makes an ominous statement about the singular role of the Bureau of Education: If, therefore, the Bureau of Education accomplishes nothing more than to make English the tongue commonly spoken and commonly used by the people of the Archipelago, it will more than have justified its existence and all the expenses it incurred 262 The statement is a revelation of the essence of the massive efforts at public education The be all and end all of the work of the Bureau of Education was the establishment, not a common language, but English itself A common language could have been Spanish or one of the local languages but the discourse on English that was developing during these first years of occupation and becoming increasingly sophisticated erased the possibility of even discussions on a common language being anything other than English As these lines show all else, even learning, was subordinate to object which was the firm establishment of English in the Philippines It is significant that such a critical and almost desperate statement is found among the first of the annual report as it actually frames the discussions, the pleadings, attacks, justifications, and prognostications of language that are to follow in the coming years The urgency comes, as this report states, from a feeling that the spread of English as the common language would help Filipinos to “understand our motives and purposes.” Indeed, in as much as English was seen as the vehicle for understanding these motives and purposes, it was itself the motive and purpose 261 Ibid, 233 Philippines, Second Annual Report of the Secretary of Public Instruction, (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1903), 233 262 96 The idea of public education being built around English is reflected as well in subsequent annual reports The annual report of 1904, written by David Barrows, the Secretary of Public Instruction, however, has an addition to the discourse in the assertion of the ability of English education to bring about social equality Barrows, as Chapter One, explained, was depicted by historian Glenn May as one of the heroes of the colonial administration whose liberal ideals on education which were based on the “Jeffersonian tradition” propelled him toward a “radical” plan for Philippine education: “the weakening of the power of the elite and the creation of a class of independent, literature peasant proprietors.”263 This is evident in the master plan that lays out in the 1904 report: the attendance of 400,000 children in the primary schools is the standard toward which the Bureau of Education is aiming; and if it can reach this standard and maintain it for a period of ten years, there will be, broadly speaking, no illiterate youth among the Filipino people, but the entire coming generation will be able to speak, read, write the English language with a fair degree of accuracy and fluency…264 Barrows, impressed with the grandeur of his project, equated its effect to that of Christian conversion: public education, he declared, “will produce an effect upon the Filipino people surpassing any previous experience of this race, with the exception of its conversion to Christianity.”265 A few pages on, Barrows continues with this theme of religion when he describes the function of English literature (which would be an important subject in the high school curriculum) as “giving breadth of mind and depth of intellectual and moral insight” and to impart the “essentials of education, both in disciplinary and spiritual aspects.”266 This confidence in the ability of English to function almost like a religion267 that would bring about a change in the Filipino mind, values and morals is a new feature of the discourse Whereas in earlier annual reports, English was projected as a fairly innocent or disinterested language that would simply 263 Glenn Anthony May, Social Engineering in the Philippines, 104 Annual Report of the General Superintendent of Education (1904), 595 265 Ibid 266 Ibid, 624 267 Gauri Viswanathan provides a comprehensive account of how the British in India, constrained by the state from openly engaging in any proselytizing activities for fear of local reprisals from anger at attempts to erase their religion and culture, turned to English literature as the apparatus for conveying and implanting British values and morals See Chapter One and Two of Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989) 264 97 function as a common language, here it is projected as having the power to bring about a conversion of morals, values, and worldview It was in these first few years that the rather sophisticated discourse in English is established and propagated It will be the next few years, though that will be the witness to the most vigorous defense of English in these annual reports and the most severe and statements and predictions will be made about the local vernaculars David Barrows and the Prediction of the End of Philippine Languages Although virtually all of the annual report up to around 1920 contained some explanation or defense of English, only four of these reports (1908, 1909, 1915, and 1920) contained separate and lengthy sections devoted to the discussion of the language issue The Eighth Annual Report of the Director of Education (covering July 1907 to June, 1908)268 stands out because it, unlike the three others that have one or two sections devoted to the defense of English, it has four sections, one each to discuss English, Spanish and the local languages and one to discuss the relation of language to “racial characteristics.” It is significant that the most strident defense of English and the most engaged discussion of the language issue appear in mid-1908 Several radical changes had taken place in Philippine politics in 1907 The sole legislative body in the Philippines from the institution of the civil government had been the Philippine Commission However, in 1907, elections were held for the Philippine Assembly, which was going to function as a kind of lower house to the Philippine Commission Although the Sedition Law of 1902 had outlawed all expressions of a desire and agitations for Philippine independence, this law was loosened in 1906 with the lifting of the ban on political parties advocating independence The 1907 elections saw a surprising upset It was a resounding victory for the Nationalistas who campaigned under the platform of independence and a categorical defeat for the Progresistas (formerly the Federalistas) who had once advocated statehood and had been closely associated with the American administration The victory of the 268 The annual reports from 1906 to 1910 were taken from Republic of the Philippine, Annual School Reports, 1906-1910 (Reprinted), (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1957) 98 Nationalistas was clear proof of the sentiments of the Filipino people for independence and an indication also of their sentiments about the American colonial government and their policies On the issue of English policy, this sentiment would be no more clearly expressed in January, 1908 when the Assembly passed one of its first bills, the Corrales bill which provided for the use of the vernacular for primary education The bill would eventually be vetoed by the Philippine Commission and would never be implemented but it was clear that many Filipinos had not yet been convinced by the discourse on English in the Philippines and that there was very strong opposition to the English policy The response to this on the part of the American education bureaucracy was one of the most sustained and engaged discussions of the language issue with a strong defense of English and an equally strong attack on Spanish and the local languages The Eighth Annual Report of the Director of Education contains the first mention of opposition to the English policy, coming from two quarters: those who envision Spanish as the language of the Philippines and those who advocate for the local languages David Barrows, the author of the report, addresses this opposition in relation to what he identifies as recent and much discussed concerns of the past two years over what the “ultimate language” of the Filipinos will be.269 Barrows defends the choice of English as the medium of instruction as a “matter of joint agreement” (between which specific parties is not indicated) and as “a political concession.” Barrows argues that it had been asked for because of a feeling among the Filipinos that Spanish had previously been wrongly withheld Barrows insists that “if there is dissent now in some quarters from making English the language of instruction, there was none then.”270 Barrows begins with a discussion of both Spanish and the local languages and their place in Philippine society in which he attempts to assemble a vision of the linguistic future of the Philippines His vision is one that sees only the imminent domination of English in the Philippines His prediction for Spanish and the local language is bleak: the use of Spanish will wane271 and the Philippine languages will disappear272 269 Eighth Annual Report of the Director of Education of the Philippine Islands, 94 Ibid 271 Ibid, 96 272 Ibid, 99 and 100 270 99 The persistence of Spanish in the Philippines is blamed on bureaucratic difficulties: lack of funds for adult education, a delay in the declaration of English as official language of the court His prediction that the use of Spanish in the Philippines will wane is based on his claim that its use is limited to a few enclaves in the Philippines and to the fact that English is widely used in the region, especially in commercial transactions Barrows continues his discussion of Spanish in the 1909 Annual Report where he reveals an increasing apprehension about the continued importance given Spanish by Philippine society His confidence of the year before that the use of Spanish would wane wavers a bit here where he contradicts his description of it in the annual report of the year before and declares that “it is wonderful how widespread the use and understanding of Spanish became in half a century.”273 Barrows’ confidence in the eventual triumph of English is, in the 1909 report, diluted to a confidence in Western languages in general: “I am fully convinced that the language finally to be spoken by the people of these Islands will be a European tongue.”274 In both annual reports, Spanish is configured as a threat to the security of English’s central, even solitary position in Philippine society Barrows uses this threat to campaign for more funds for English education and for the quick passage of bills that increases the role of English such as the bill determining the language of the courts If Spanish is seen as a threat to English, local languages are seen as a feeble non-threat His discussion of the “native dialects” in the 1908 report is rife with the motif of erasure He theorizes that there are only two ways through which a Philippine language can develop: selecting one and suppressing all the others or fusing the languages into one Barrows does not discuss the second option but his ideas relating to the first option equate language “ascendancy” with growing populations and land occupation through migration In his opinion, Tagalog had no chance of becoming the Philippine language because, although it is seen as “the ultimate Philippine language,” the Tagalogs had stopped extending their territory and influence Although he ascribes here to a kind of organic model for the creation of a common language, it is a model that is used only for Tagalog The Tagalog people are not extending their territory and thus the 273 Philippines, Ninth Annual Report of the Director of Education of the Philippine Islands, (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1909), 203 274 Ibid 100 language has ceased to spread The model, of course, does not apply to English, which is spread solely by state force Barrows also devotes two pages to a rather random and tangential discussion of the moves of “Tagalog purists” to purge Tagalog of foreign words and to the 1907 Corrales bill.275 His personal opinion on the matter is that instruction in the vernacular is acceptable as long as vernacular instruction is only an addition to the curriculum and that the English curriculum is not touched It is a mystery though that Barrows would bother to devote a few pages to discussing why Tagalog will never be the common language of the Philippines when a few paragraphs later he announces his jarring prediction of the eventual demise of all Philippine languages “If we may judge by what is taking place in all parts of the globe, the Philippine languages will disappear from use.”276 Citing a linguistic study about the disappearance of a great number of spoken languages at the close of the nineteenth century, Barrows concludes that the “multitudinous dialects of the Philippines will likewise disappear.”277 The only thing that will remain of the local languages, Barrows predicts, will be names of trees and plants which will be incorporated into English which he sees as eventually becoming the common language The theme of eradication makes an appearance again in his telling figuration of the relation between language and the soul or character of a people Barrows’ discussion addresses the recent “extensive discussion in the native press upon the ‘Filipino soul278’” and the fear that “the adoption of the English language would produce an aping of foreign character and manners.”279 His logic in this discussion is one that deftly navigates and avoids prickly charges and manages to actually turn annihilation into preservation He begins by defining the assimilation policy, which he associates with French colonial policy, as the adoption of the culture of the occupying power by the occupied In this manner, he 275 Barrows does not discuss the bill and refers to it only as “the proposed laws of the last session of the Legislature.” 276 Eighth Annual Report, 99 277 Eighth Annual Report, 100 278 See Chapter Seven for a discussion of “the Filipino Soul” debate 279 Eighth Annual Report, 100 101 insists, the education policy in the Philippines is not a policy of assimilation Assimilation is not easily accomplished, he argues, as there are many profound differences among the races with each race having “particular qualities of strength or serviceability.”280 As “the great work of civilization is to be accomplished not by force but by persuasion,”281 the English policy is not an attempt to Americanize or Anglo-Saxonize the Filipinos but rather an effort to make better Filipinos He says: The triumph of English as the common speech of these Islands does not compel the suppression of the native character nor the sacrifice of any of its excellencies On the other hand, the Filipino people, if it is to develop its own qualities and to make progress in common with the peoples with whom it hereafter will be associated, must so as other people have done, by absorbing and fitting to its own purposes the common civilization of the western world 282 How “absorbing the common civilization of the western world” is any different from “Americanizing” and “Anglo-Saxonizing” is confoundingly unclear However, his distinction between assimilation and improvement seems to lie in the manner of contact: it is only Americanization if is forced and it is not if it is consented to The ability of Barrows to argue for the preservation of a culture within the same breath that he argues that the fate of the culture’s languages is annihilation stems from an “atomist” view of language, an uncomplicated view of language as simply a tool for conveying a message In this view, a language can be erased and replaced with a foreign one without much effect on the culture, indeed, with the possibility of even improving the culture This effect is achievable because the American colonial discourse on language is based on the idea of language being autonomous, as being independent of culture, moral values, and worldview This logic, staunchly upheld when arguing for the central role of English in Philippine society, is however, easily abandoned when arguing against the hindrances to the implementation of English (as will be discussed below) 280 Ibid, 101 Ibid 282 Ibid 281 102 The contradiction present in the idea of erasing a language and yet preserving a culture is possible if it is based on the view of language as seemingly neutral and value-free.283 In this view, language is composed of words that simply correspond to components of the world Words are not obscure and mysterious; they are ordinary, self-evident, and prima facie Ontologists often refer to this as an atomistic view of language—that words-meanings are like atoms and that sentence-meanings are like molecules In this sanitized view of language, words are seen as having uncomplicated and unnuanced relationships with what they signify Languages themselves are not valuable in of themselves and thus can easily be replaced, erased, or suppressed without there being any effect on the culture When Barrows argues that in the quest for “progress,” “absorbing and fitting [the Filipino] purposes [to] the common civilization of the western world” does “not compel the suppression of the native character nor the sacrifice of any of its excellencies,” he creates a false distinction not only because “Americanization” and “civilization of the western world” are synonymous but because the very concept of “improvement” and “progress” as Barrows and other American colonial officials saw it was an idea richly invested with a specific idea regarding the direction of that progress All discourse on the colonial project in the Philippines was premised on the reified ideas of progress and modernization All policies were justified because “modernization” became a norm Who could argue against the project of instituting modern health systems or of establishing democratic political systems or creating a literate and informed citizenry? The terms “progress” and “modernization” (and concepts associate with it like “science” and “democracy”) worked like trump cards; everything was justified in their name This idea of “progress” was so effectively conveyed to the young such that public school students, in the very brief period that they had American-style public education, would be quiet proficient with the discourse of progress as they were with the English language In 1911, for 283 See for example Gilbert Ryle, “The Theory of Meaning,” in The Importance of Language, edited by Max Black (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1962), 147-169 Ryle argues that the first influential discussion of the notion of meaning by a modern logician was John Stuart Mill in System of Logic (1843) The idea of the denotation and connotation of words has its origins in System of Logic Ryle explains that a misappropriation of Mill’s theory, a misappropriation that focused only on the atomistic view, “that to mean is to denote,” that became “gospel truth for the next fifty or seventy years.” (156) 103 example, the major dailies (The Manila Times the Manila Daily Bulletin, the Mindanao Herald) proudly reprinted the valedictory address of a young boy from Zamboanga The boy, who wrote and delivered the address in English, expressed the desire for continued English education and looked forward to the time when English would unite the country The address was replete with references to poverty and ignorance that the Filipinos had to pull themselves out of It imagined a day in the future when progress, in the form of the English language, health (“Filipinos eating good, nourishing food”), efficient agriculture (“every foot of tillable soil under perfect cultivation”), and trade and manufacturing (“Filipinos rich enough to afford foreign luxuries but industriously producing their own necessities”284) would reign If David Barrows and the American education officials were worried about dissent from older politicians, they must have been reassured that the new generation of Filipinos, or at least some of them, were going to be advocates of the English policy These ideas of progress and modernity functioned as discourses of exclusion by creating false dichotomies Whatever was equated with America was modern and whatever was Philippine was not In the area of language, for example, as the previous chapter demonstrated, English was often equated with the language that would bring the Philippines into the modern world while the local languages were depicted as underdeveloped and, in the case of Barrows and the Eighth Annual Report, undeveloped to the point of impending extinction Nowhere in the annals of colonial theorizing on the local language has there been a harsher verdict of Philippine culture It is not difficult to understand how a colonial official like Barrows is often depicted as the champion of social justice whose objective was to “create an intelligent, independent yeomanry and to undermine the position of the elite.”285 As Barrows’ horizon of possibilities were limited to his own ideas of progress which were elemented on the idea of the normativeness of Western culture, the policies he envisioned naturally affirmed American cultural superiority and disavowed local culture These horizons, or what Reynaldo 284 285 “Another Message to Garcia,” The Manila Times, 27 April 1911, Glenn Anthony May, Social Engineering in the Philippines, 112 104 Ileto explains is Barrows’ “metanarrative, the overarching story, is that of Progress”286 could only always locate Filipinos “in an evolutionary ladder that featured the most advanced (or European) at the top to the most primitive (as found in areas like ‘the Far East’) at the bottom.”287 Depictions of Barrows as the protagonist in the struggle to bring the Philippines out of the benighted state and into the modern, democratic world are depictions that are themselves also premised on the metanarrative of the hierarchy of races and on the discourse of the West as the pristine model of progress, modernization, science, and democracy The Education Bureaucracy Responds Of late, there has been no greater symbol of American attempts to convert Filipinos into good colonials through education than the school textbook Scholars have almost uniformly targeted the textbook as the agent through which the transformation of your Filipino minds took place Here is Renato Constantino on the introduction of alien concepts through the textbooks: With American textbooks, Filipinos started learning not only a new language but also a new way of life, alien to their traditions and yet a caricature of their model The new Filipino generation learned of the lives of American heroes, sang American songs, and dreamt of snow and Santa Claus 288 Here is Agoncillo and Guerrero on the erasure of Philippine culture: Filipino materials of instruction were almost non-existent in the curriculum; young Filipinos were taught American songs, American ideals, the lives of American heroes and great men in complete indifference to Filipino patriots, ideals and culture.289 Here is Lumbera and Lumbera identifying the channel through which “America-envy” was created: English opened the floodgates of colonial values through the conduits of textbooks originally intended for American children; books and magazines beamed at an American audience familiarized Filipinos with the blessings of economic affluence in a capitalist country.290 286 Reynaldo C Ileto, “The Philippine Revolution of 1896 and U.S Colonial Education,” Ibid, 288 Renato Constantino, The Miseducation of the Filipino, 289 Teodoro A Agoncillo and Milagros C Guerrero, History of the Filipino People, 5th edition, (Quezon City: R.P Garcia Publishing, 1977), 340 290 Bienvenido Lumbera at Cynthia Nograles Lumbera, Philippine Literature: A History and Anthology, (Pasig: Anvil Publishing, Inc., 1997), 109 287 105 Here is Raul Casantusan Navarro on the songs included in primary school textbooks: They included songs like ‘A Sleigh Ride,’ ‘Jacky Frost,’ ‘The Apple Tree,’ and others, which introduced concepts that were not part of the vocabulary of the locals The desire for an American life and the elements of it were strengthen within their identities.291 Here Isabel Pefianco Martin argues that, despite the fact the American education bureaucracy was aware of the many foreign references that were irrelevant to children: Despite much criticism regarding the kind of textbooks used in public schools, these textbook continued to be used in the classroom Students and writers of this time relate give testimony that they still read Matthew Arnold’s Sohrab and Rustum, Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha and Evangeline, and Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and The Alhambra and other AngloAmerican authors.292 Textbooks and the content of what is taught in schools have always been the center of the much fought-over debate of how colonial education is to be interpreted Whereas one or two older generations of Filipinos were trained to think only of the blessings of the American period and of the great advances instituted by American public school education, today, Filipinos have come full swing and often equate American education with irrelevant textbooks The backlash to this is the depiction of “nationalist thinkers” as rabble-rousers who did bad scholarship in order to assert colonial malevolence As one recent scholar claims, “Americans, orthodox ‘nationalist’ wisdom would have us believe, are the source of every evil.”293 Indeed, apologists for American colonialism like Lewis Gleek are often bewildered by how “Filipino intellectuals during the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies inveighed against the American authorship and American material 291 Raul Casantusan Navarro, “Ang Musika sa Pilipinas: Pagbuo ng Kolonyal na Polisi, 18981935,” Humanities Diliman 2:1 (2001), 53 The original lines written in Filipino read: Ipinasok ang mga awwit katulad ng ‘A Sleigh Ride,’ ‘Jacky Frost,’ ‘The Apple Tree,’ at iba pa, na naghatid ng mga konseptong wala sa bukabularyo ng mga katutubo Sa kaloob-looban ng kanilang sujektibong katauhan ay pinatindi ang pagnanasa sa buhay-Amerikano at sa mga sangkap na ito.” 292 Isabel Pefianco Martin, “Istratehiyang Idelohikal ng Kolonyalismong Amerikano sa Pilipinas: Pagsusuri ng Kanong Pampanitikan sa Paaralan, 1901-1941,” 138-39 The original lines written in Filipino read: Sa harap ng maraming puna at batikos hinggil sa uri ng teksbuk na ginamit sa mga paaralang pampubliko, nagpatuloy pa rin ang paggamit ng mga ito sa lasrum Sa mga panayam ng mga mag-aaral at manunulat sa panahong ito, pinatotoo na binasa pa rin ang Sohrab at Rustum ni Matthew Arnold, The Song of Hiawatha at Evangeline ni Longfellow, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow at The Alhambra ni Washington Irving, at ilan pang mga akdang Anglo-Amerikano.” 293 Judy Celine A, Ick, “Ilonggos, Igorrottes, Merchants, and Jews: Shakespeare and American Colonial Education in the Philippines,” Humanities Diliman 1:1 (2000), 109 106 which they alleged dominated the textbooks on which Filipinos had been raised”294 because textbooks, since 1905, had Filipino content and because “Americans had long been urging the preparation of additional [Filipinized] material.”295 The objective here is not to establish that the American colonial government was aware of its own shortcomings in the production of its textbooks296; neither is it to pass judgment on the effectiveness of its response in addressing these problems—the intermittent critiques coming from within the American bureaucracy itself297 or the many assurances given of the presence of American culture within Philippine textbooks298 lends insight to the contradiction and impossibility of the project of ridding the textbooks of irrelevant cultural references when the reigning objective was undoubtedly to initiate Filipinos into the “modern world.” Certainly, the objective is not to further extend any bifurcated evaluations of the American colonial project (nor those who would study it) using the simplified categories of “good” and “evil.” Instead, it is to investigate the logic of the American discourse created about their project This discourse depicts the education bureaucracy as responsive and not insensitive to the needs of the citizenry and certainly not “evil,” having no plan to erase local culture The Tenth Annual Report self-satisfyingly recounts how the Bureau of Education had rectified the problem of schoolbooks that were full of material that was foreign to Filipino children The report makes a full listing of this foreign material that was present in the first school books:299 the changing seasons in a temperate zone, fruits, flowers and birds strange to Filipino children, American life and social customs, weights and measures “unknown in the Orient,” geography based on North America, histories of America and Europe “making no 294 Lewis R Gleek, American Institutions in the Philippines, 1898-1941, (Manila: Historical Conservation Society, 1976), 109 295 Ibid, 111 296 Pefianco Martin has a lengthy accounting of the numerous critiques raised by both Americans and Filipinos regarding these textbooks on pages 131-139 of her dissertation See footnote 42 297 See, for example, George S Counts, “Education in the Philippines, The Elementary School Journal, 26.2 (1925): 105 Counts says “the efforts made to adopt the textbooks to Philippine experiences but argues that “the changes effected have been superficial in character [and are] ill suited to the needs of the nation.” See also Board of Education Survey, A Survey of the Educational System of the Philippine Islands, (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1925), 374-78 The Board, for example, says that “it is not sufficient to change John to Juan, Mary to Maria, and cow to carabao.” 298 See footnote 49 in Chapter Two—Osias’s testimony to the American legislature regarding the presence of America in Philippine textbooks 299 Tenth Annual Report of the Director of Education of the Philippine Islands, 277 107 mention of the Philippine Islands, and little of China, Japan, and Malaysia.” Corrections were made in earnest and “the Bureau has finally secured a consistent system of primary texts, well printed, well illustrated, strongly bound, attractive in general appearance, and admirably adapted to the experience and needs of the Filipino children.”300 The issue for these American colonial officials (and for Lewis Gleek as well301) seems to be limited to identifying Western cultural references and replacing them with Philippine ones Yet the defense that Philippine culture was being preserved (or the alternate argument that there was no move to eradicate Philippine culture) is impossible within the English language policy Anglo-American culture is inscribed within English as Philippine culture is inscribed within the local languages When it suited them, the American education officials would fall back on the theory of language as disinterested means of communication and argue that the problem of relevance goes away as soon as a few cultural references are either removed or included This contradiction is rather ominously reaffirmed in the paradox of the proud declaration in the Tenth Annual Report of the “removal of references to fruits, flowers and birds strange to Filipino children” and the declaration in the annual report of two years earlier that “The multitudinous dialects of the Philippines will likewise disappear” and that what will be left will be “an enormous number of place names names of trees and plants.”302 Whereas one retains a token of Philippine culture but supplants the whole culture itself with the language and world-view of America, the other predicts the erasure of the language and world-view of the Philippines, but also retains a token of it Those who would defend the American education officials on the textbook issue (and those who would ridicule “nationalist wisdom”) are right in riling against the picture of American colonialism as an evil monolith because there was indeed a good amount of accommodation as the textbook issue shows However, these small gains must always be 300 Ibid The limit of Gleek’s contentment at the presence of Philippine culture in these textbooks is illustrated in the following lines, now almost humorous for its tokenism: “One selection, [from the First Osias Reader] “Honey,” is taken from an American source, but the cupboard on which an upset honey jar appears is made of bamboo.” From American Institutions, 111 302 Eighth Annual Report of the Director of Education, 100 301 108 seen in the context of the larger project of bringing “progress” to the Philippines; and an examination of the shape-shifting logic and discourse of English in the Philippines signals to us the limits of these accommodations and how much the language policy, though seemingly flexible, was actually relatively immovable A Renewed Attack The Fifteenth Annual Report of the Director of Education once again contains a sustained defense of English It rehearses the usual rationale for the premiere position of English in the Philippines: need for a common language, English is the commercial language of the world, etc It is outstanding however for its emphasis on the argument that English will put the Filipinos “in contact with the ideas compatible with democratic government.”303 This statement implies an attitude about language opposite to that which the discourse usually invokes: that language is simply a medium of expression that does not have inscribed within it any value Here, language is now imbued with value Opposition to English is declared “a serious obstacle in the way of the inculcation of democratic ideals,”304 an astounding claim, especially when read against the claim, made in the Eighth Annual Report that the “triumph of English [through the erasure of local languages] does not compel the suppression of native character.”305 In effect, the dominance of English will not erase local ideals, knowledge, worldviews, attitudes, meanings and practices but the hindrance of English will hinder democratic ideals, knowledge, worldview, attitudes, meanings and practices The statement is testament to the slippery and often contradictory logic of the discourse It also, however, a symptom of the threats to the English policy, some of which were coming from within the American colonial system itself The Fifteenth Annual Report covers the calendar year 1914 The year before, 1913, was a remarkable one in that the American presidency went, for the first time since McKinley decided 303 Fifteenth Annual Report of the Director of Education, (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1915), 68 Ibid, 69 305 See footnote 30-32 304 109 to annex the Philippines, to a democratic president, Woodrow Wilson The democrats had always campaigned under the platform of independence for the Philippines (although the actual positions among the Democrats actually differed) Not only was there a Democratic president, but the Democrats had held the majority at the legislature since 1911 Many radical changes seemed to be at the offing William Atkinson Jones, a Democrat who favored Philippine independence was made Chairman of the House Committee on Insular Affairs and was about to introduce a bill that would actually provide for independence Francis Burton Harrison, Wilson’s choice for Governor-General was tasked with undertaking a rapid Filipinization of the government bureaucracy Though Wilson and Harrison had not made, in the early years of their administration, openly explicit, the feeling that independence was just around the corner must have been palpable Wilson and Harrison would later take the position of that the Philippines needed further training in self-government but in these early years all the pervious policies that had been deeply entrenched were all of a sudden tenuous Filipinization (which was a definite policy), even without independence could potentially mean an end to the English policy An additional threat to the education bureaucracy and the English policy also came in the form of Professor Henry Jones Ford of Princeton, a close associate of President Wilson’s Ford was tasked with traveling throughout the Philippines and writing up a report His report, which was released in September of 1913, devoted a considerable attention to the issue of education Although Ford was critical of some aspects of the English policy, he generally affirmed it It was, however, widely perceived as a direct threat to the policy William Cameron Forbes (whom Harrison had replaced), for example, incorrectly wrote that “his general conclusion was that the schools should conduct their instruction in the vernacular.”306 The shift in the discourse to an emphasis on English being “compatible with democratic government” also reflects the new political terrain of 1913 All the other elements of the discourse on English in the Philippines were either losing currency or proving to be wrong The reason used that Filipinos wanted English education was demolished in 1907 with the Corrales 306 W Cameron Forbes, The Philippine Islands, Volume 2, (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1928), 206 110 bill that provided for primary education in the vernacular The supposed weakness of the local languages, which led Barrows to predict their demise in 1908, was an erroneous prediction; the local languages were in fact gaining strength (see discussion in Chapters Six and Seven) The idea that English was going to be the common language that would unite the Philippines was losing its currency as the Monroe Report of 1925 would later concede.307 The claim that Philippine culture and languages were not under any threat by the English policy would not hold water among those who were inclined toward Philippine independence: this point had actually been one of the major objections raised by the Democrats and the Anti-Imperialist League during their campaign against McKinley at the turn of the century It was this last element in the discourse of English in the Philippines that was left to help defend the English policy It was a logic that was well suited to this period The Jones Bill had started out as a bill that would grant immediate independence but this soon evolved into a bill that would promise independence within two to five years Its final form provided for eventual independence but with time designation Harrison, at least officially, assigned blame to the Republicans and the few Democrats who were not convinced that a stable, democratic government was possible among Filipinos Harrison quotes Warren Harding’s sentiment at the time that it was wrong “to renounce [the] guardianship of a race of people and leave them alone when they had not been taught to fully creep.”308 Either because it fed off or fed into the predominant American sentiment of the time that independence was to be postponed because of a need in the Philippines for further democratic tutelage, this logic about English was clearly the logic for 1913 When the Jones Bill was finally passed it assured American presence in the Philippines indefinitely Significantly, it also assured firm American control of the education of the Philippines and of the English policy: the bill had provided for the Filipinization of the top position all the government departments except the Department of Education, which was to remain under American control Despite the apparent threats to the English policy, there were sign that American colonial 307 See footnotes 14 and 15 of the previous chapter Quoted in Francis Burton Harrison, The Corner-stone of Philippine Independence, (New York: The Century Co., 1922), 194 308 111 officials could only have taken as positive, that English would play a central role in the lives of the coming generation Students were beginning to become comfortable with English, comfortable enough for them to embark on literary production By 1916, the Normal College would boast of the first ever drama in English written by a Filipino The play, entitled “A Modern Filipina” tapped into the American discourse regarding the neutrality of English in that it prided itself in “the thought and treatment [that was] essential Filipino” even as it was written in English.309 Filipinos were beginning to write, converse, and debate in English Within a few years, for example, Jorge Bocobo and Camilo Osias would hold a well-publicized debate on the language issue (see Chapter Seven for a full discussion) The language register of the debate would be extremely high, verging almost on the bombastic, with perfect grammar and many references to English literature Despite the fact that one party (Bocobo) challenged the English policy, the decidedly high level of the rhetoric is a minor victory for English itself The last annual report that has a long discourse on English in the Philippines is the Twentieth Annual Report of the Director of Education, published in 1920 The report repeats once again the major points of the colonial discourse on English in the Philippines, however, the sense of threat and agitation present in the previous reports are no longer present in this one But what had happened at around the twentieth year that brought about this change? The Twentieth Annual Report itself supplies the answer In place of the constant threat that seemed to accompany the English policy of the first twenty years is a budding confidence of the secure place of English It proudly reports the usual improvements in methods of teaching English and on an increase in library books It also devotes a long section to discussing the many proponents of English: young Filipinos who had gone through the public school system and who were now in positions of power in government and business, who “are strong in their belief that English should be the national language.”310 The report also describes the Philippines Independence 309 “Normal Class Presents Drama,” The Manila Times, March 1916, Philippines, Twentieth Annual Report of the Director of Education, (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1920), 13 310 112 Commission311 in Washington, the members of whom were in the United States discussing Philippine matters in the English language The report quotes extensively from a memorial presented by the Commission to the United States Congress Part of the memorial reads: It can be asserted without dispute that the English language serves at present time as a common medium of communication among the Islands, who still speak their own dialects The progress of the English language has been the result of the splendid work done by the public schools, and today English is the language most widely spoken in the whole of the Archipelago.312 After twenty years, the public school system had indeed produced Filipinos who had learned the English language and had, as the colonial officials had hoped in the Second Annual Report, not only understood their real intentions but were thankful for it There was other evidence of English’s stable footing in Philippine society at this time In 1921, Manuel Quezon, clearly the leading politician of the day, had made a public declaration that he supported the move “to have the English language declared as the only official language in the Philippines.”313 Literary production in English was also flourishing and the quality of literary production was of a high standard, a mark that Filipinos had mastered not only the nuances of the English language but the dense and difficult Anglo-American literary conventions and AngloAmerican weltanschauung After twenty years of persistent, agitated, almost obsessive, and at times frantic, defense of the English language in these annual reports, its sudden disappearance is somewhat jarring and mysterious After the Twentieth Annual Report, the focus on English abruptly changes from zealous defense to mundane concern for the details of teaching English Over the next fifteen years,314 the annual reports will not once repeat the defensive rationale for English in the Philippines and instead will be filled with concerns such as the use of the phonograph in teaching 311 This mission consisted of forty Filipinos, representing various Philippine interests The members included Manuel L Quezon, Conrado Benitez, Jorge Bocobo, Camilo Osias, and Maximo Kalaw all of whom will later on take a variety of stands on the language question Their positions will be discussed in the following chapters 312 Twentieth Annual Report, 14 313 “Stenographic Report of the Speech of Hon Manuel L Quezon, President of the Senate, in the Third Open Program of the Inter-Alumni Union Held in the Philippine Normal Auditorium, March 12, 1921,” Reel Number 118, Image Number 7, Manuel L Quezon Papers, Philippine National Library 314 The director of education and author of all the annual reports from 1919 to 1935 is Luther B Bewley 113 English, the encouragement of the reading of periodicals, vocabulary building, research on such matters as the use of verbs, the personal pronouns in written work, and errors in mechanics In the Thirty Second Annual Report of the Director of Education the discussion of the methods of improving music instruction is longer than its section on English This loss of the agitatedly defensive position about English, replaced by a relaxed, business-as-usual concern is surely a reflection of the very secure place of colonial officials finally felt they had achieved for English The confidence in the central and permanent place of English in Philippine society and the sense of triumph over having conquered a certain aspect of Philippine life comes, ironically, at a time when the United States was actually relinquishing a lot of its power to the Filipinos The first few years of American occupation was violently repressive The occupation was characterized by a bloody war, the capture, execution and exile of revolutionary leaders, strict censorship of the press and even of the theater, a sedition law that made illegal any discussion of independence, a flag law that banned the display of the Philippine flag The repressive methods were accompanied by persuasive methods as well, the most important of which was English education English education thus became the medium through which American ideas were conveyed; it was, however, the message as well The English language had inscribed within it the very ideas that America wanted Filipinos to be educated in: progress, trade, capitalism, democracy, modernity After around the first ten years, America could slowly relinquish power to the Filipinos By 1906, the ban on political parties calling for independence was lifted In 1907, elections were held for the Philippine Assembly The Jones Law of 1916, brought the promise of independence and the Filipinization of the bureaucracy By 1919, the Flag Law was finally lifted This transfer of power was of course predicated on the Filipino willingness to accept American authority Acceptance was, of course, ushered in through education and education in English If America was exceptional in their willingness to give up power, what did they retain? Among a few other things, it retained language 114 115 ... yet been convinced by the discourse on English in the Philippines and that there was very strong opposition to the English policy The response to this on the part of the American education bureaucracy... in Philippine society in which he attempts to assemble a vision of the linguistic future of the Philippines His vision is one that sees only the imminent domination of English in the Philippines. .. Report of the Director of Education, 100 301 108 seen in the context of the larger project of bringing “progress” to the Philippines; and an examination of the shape-shifting logic and discourse of