The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898; Volume 46, 1721-1739: Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century
History
The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898; Volume 46, 1721-1739: Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century
Demarcation line of Alexander VI; Missions -- Philippines; Philippines -- Discovery and exploration; Philippines -- History -- Sources
It results, therefore, quite evidently, both from the context of the
latter ordinance and from ordinance 17 of Arandía, and 25 and 93 of
Raón, that in the Filipino provinces and districts there were no
means of establishing instruction in Castilian; and that the only
schools which were ordered to be paid from the communal funds were
those which should be established with that instruction. Consequently,
neither the alcaldes and other justices threatened with very severe
penalties, and "the anger of the superior tribunals" nor the teachers
"condemned to make restitution of the pay which they had received,"
and punished according to the order of the alcaldes, could make in
their promises and villages those laws, given in the Peninsula and
in the official residence of the first authority of the islands,
viable or practicable. How many laws are there which are very
good and of elevated ends, but barren and unpractical, as they lack
practical meaning! However, in the midst of so many contradictions and
difficulties, in the midst of a work so toilsome and without rest,
in spite of the penury and scarcity which God alone can, and knows
how to, appreciate, in constant struggle with the elements and the
Moros, having to create it and conserve it all, it can be no less than
contemplated with pride by every good Spaniard that those heroic and
humble sons of España attended from the beginning of the conquest to
teaching with a zeal worthy of all praise.
A precious testimony of this is that mentioned by the erudite father
Augustín María, O.S.A. in his Historia del Insigne convento de San
Pablo de Manila [i.e., History of the glorious convent of San Pablo in
Manila], which is preserved unedited in the archives of said convent,
when he says: "In the same year (1571) was founded this convent and
church of San Pablo, which is the chief one of this province, the
capitular house for novitiates, and of studies in grammar, arts,
theology, and canons for Indians and creoles, until the Jesuits
came and opened public schools." Passing by those teaching centers
created in Manila by the religious orders scarcely yet born in those
islands, omitting the introduction of printing, a powerful means for
progress, by those orders, some decades after their establishment in
the islands, and limiting ourselves only to the creation of schools
and the progress of primary instruction, we do not fear to affirm
that before our legislators occupied themselves in giving laws for
teaching in Filipinas, laws had been proclaimed in the assemblies of
the religious orders. Before the famous ordinances of Obando and of
Raón had been published, the printing houses of the said orders had
already printed works entitled: Práctica del Ministerio que siguen
los religiosos del orden de N. P. S. Agustín en Philippinas [i.e.,
Practice of the ministry followed by the religious of the order of our
father St. Augustine in Philippinas]; and the Práctica de párrocos
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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