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

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 “br

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)

“A Visayan Village, Island of Panay.” 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

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

the policy-makers were achieved.” 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

130

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 20 th 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

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

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

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

the educational system of the Philippines The survey, controversial during its time 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,

1565-1975, 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

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 dominant forces Such a call and other similar calls for progress (like the call “to tutor Filipinos

less-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

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

“pure intentions,” etc The statement lists eleven areas of concern “deemed of cardinal

importance” (civil rights, civil services, justice, infrastructure, trade, etc.) and one of these concerns was education Provision number ten reads: “Effective provision will be made for the establishment of elementary schools in which the children of the people shall be educated Appropriate facilities will also be provided for higher education.”138 The message contains no mention of what language education should take place in; however, the official report which is the output of the Schurman Commission, recommends English It reads:

The introduction of the teaching of English into these schools was received with great satisfaction by the natives The young Filipinos display a considerable aptitude for learning new tongues, and it is believed if this policy is followed out, English can within a short time be made the official language of the archipelago The commission strongly recommends that it be done.139

This and the many other recommendations arrived at by the Schurman Commission

was submitted to McKinley after a seven-month investigation of the Philippines The

recommendations, contained in a voluminous, three-volume report were the result of the

numerous hearings held by the Commission where key Americans, Spanish, Filipinos, and Europeans were interviewed regarding their knowledge of specific areas of Philippine life The recommendations were also the result of the observations made by the Commission during their travels throughout the Philippines

The chapter on education in this report that contained this recommendation was written

by Dean C Worcester, the member of the Commission who was the “Philippine expert.”

Worcester was, as his biographer describes him, “the most influential American in the Philippines

140

Rodney J Sullivan, Exemplar of Americanism: The Philippine Career of Dean C Worcester,

(Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1992, first published in 1991 by the Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies of the University of Michigan), 67

American War Worcester was unlike them and was, from the outset, enthusiastic about

America’s engagement in the Philippines.141 Worcester’s engagement with the Philippines occurred through two biological expeditions (the first in the mid-1880s and the second at the beginning of the 1890s) that brought him into the forests and mountains of Palawan, Basilan, Iloilo, Cebu, Samar, and Mindoro It was during these expeditions that Worcester encountered the various indigenous Philippine people and formed his belief that “real” Filipinos were found among these “savage” people

He returned in 1893 to his life as an instructor at the University of Michigan and may have continued on in a career in the academe if not for the Spanish-American War which piqued America’s interest in the Philippines and created the need for an American expert on the

Philippine Worcester was invited on numerous occasions to speak on the Philippines in venues

throughout the United States and by October, 1899, he had published The Philippine Islands and their People which went through several reprintings in a matter of months

Worcester parlayed his position as the Philippine expert to arrange a meeting with President McKinley At the meeting, Worcester and McKinley found that they were in agreement over the idea that the majority of Filipinos were in sympathy with the Americans and would easily acquiesce to an American takeover Several historians have noted the blunder of

McKinley’s miscalculation of the Filipino resolve to resist American occupation142 which

resulted, of course, in a bloody and drawn-out Philippine-American war Worcester himself

justified this misrecognition in Philippines Past and Present (published in 1914) by arguing that

his previous experience was centered in the Visayas and not in the Tagalog region which, he argued, was where the center of the revolution against the United States was.143

It was in this very meeting that McKinley offered Worcester a position as a commissioner and which was to be the start of Worcester’s career as a colonial official It was a career that was

141

See chapter 8 of Response to Imperialism: The United States and the Philippine-American War,

1899-1902 by Richard E Welch, Jr (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1979) which

centers on the response of scholars and writers Worcester is briefly mentioned on page 119

eventually to end in him being remembered in Philippine history as the caricature of colonial oppressiveness.144 It was a career also in which he was to play a key 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

To a certain extent, Worcester recalls Thomas Babington Macaulay who famously argued for English education in India Both men are the identifiable source of the campaign to have English used in the education of colonial subjects Both shared an utter belief in the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon culture which can be connected to their belief in the suitability of English for colonial education The Philippine Commission report, the writing of which Worcester had a considerable influence in,145 concludes with a prediction that “the Filipino will be more American than the American.”146 This recalls Macaulay’s now notorious statement from his 1835 “Minute

on English Education” which argued: “We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.”147 One considerable

difference between the Macaulay and the Worcester projects was that Macaulay’s advocated English education for a select group who would “be interpreters” between the British and their Indian subjects; Worcester’s advocated English education for a whole population

The project—mass education of a whole population in a foreign language—was so large and complex and yet Worcester seems to have taken such a surprisingly blithe attitude toward it His sole rationale for the recommendation of English in the Philippines in the 1899 report is the positive Filipino reception of it This is in sharp contrast to Macaulay’s minute which runs over ten pages The beginnings of this apparently unexamined decision to implement English in the Philippines parallels the McKinley/Worcester misrecognition of Filipino reception of American occupation

144

This is because of his role in the El Renacimiento court case of 1908 which will be discussed in

the succeeding chapters

Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Minute on English Education,” in Macaulay: Prose and Poetry,

ed G.M Young, 729, (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1952)

This early misrecognition serves as a kind of foreshadowing of one way to view of the Philippine career of Worcester He began his career as an expert on the Philippines and Filipinos who had survived the recesses of the Philippine jungles As Philippine commissioner he saw himself as the defender of the “non-Christian tribes” who he saw as the “real” Filipinos He was, however, unpopular among the majority of the Filipinos Manuel Quezon had called him “the man most hated by the Filipinos”148 and history has retained this villainous image Filipino students study him now only as the corrupt and vengeful colonial official bent on silencing the brave Filipino journalists who spoke against the American occupation With an element of dramatic irony, Worcester seems to have misconstrued his role in the Philippines

In his role as a protagonist, Worcester imagined himself the champion of the Christian tribes”149 Worcester had been interested in tribal people even during his expedition days

“non-and his first book, The Philippine Isl“non-ands “non-and Their People, records this Sullivan tells us that

this concern stemmed from “his personal predilections, not any directive from his superiors.”150Worcester’s understanding of the indigenous people was, as was the custom of the time, that they were savage and barbarous Worcester, however, prided himself on his scientific and thorough ethnography151 and on his precise understanding of these groups’ uneven social development He divided the “non-Christian tribes” into two (excluding the violent “Moros”)—the Negritos, who

he described as having a low level of intelligence and incapable of civilization152 and the Malays, who he acknowledged had varying degrees of civilization (semi-nomadic, agriculturalists, head-hunters)153 Worcester was particularly interested in the practice of head-hunting and his

narratives included many incidents involving them What these groups had in common,

Worcester argued, was their hatred of the Christian Filipinos who, according to him had for

Worcester, The Philippines, Past and Present Worcester claims to use Blumentritt as a source

but that he suspected that his statements were very inaccurate.” (from page 534.) “As a result of these personal investigations I was able to reduce to twenty-seven the eighty-two non-Christian tribes said by Blumentritt to inhabit the Philippines.” (page 557)

152

Ibid, 660

153

Ibid, 661

generations inhumanly abused these groups He argues that “the Filipinos are absolutely without sympathy for the non-Christian peoples, and have never voluntarily done anything for them, but

on the contrary have shamelessly exploited them whenever opportunity has offered.”154 This attitude is in direct contrast to his perceived attitude of the American toward these groups The Americans, Worcester claimed, adopted a “firm and kindly policy” and as a result met with

“extraordinary success in winning their good-will and weaning them from the worst of their evil customs.”155 The strong, kind, effective, and crusading protagonist in the Philippine drama, as Worcester saw it, was America and Americans like him

The “non-Christian tribes” plays a central role in Worcester’s argument for continued American occupation of the Philippines.156 His 1921, The Philippines, Past and Present depicts

these tribes as needing protection from “Filipinos;” while the “Filipinos” are depicted as needing protection from the “Moros.”157 Worcester saw Christian Filipinos as children too In his 1899,

The Philippine Islands and Their People, repeated verbatim in his 1921 publication, he describes

“civilized Filipinos” as “utterly unfit for self-government” because they were “’big children who must be treated like little ones.’”158 This framing of the colonial relationship that assigns the lack (puerile people, corruption) to either the Filipinos and the Spanish and casts the Americans in either a neutral or benevolent light makes a constant appearance in Philippine scholarship Worcester, it would seems, is the first in a line of thinkers who structure their analysis of

Philippine history and society in these terms his discourse resonates even today.159

See Salman, The Embarrassment of Slavery, particularly chapters ten and eleven for a detailed

discussion of how Worcester manipulated the anti-slavery issue in the Philippines between 1912 and 1914

157

He describes “their strong adherence to the Mohammedan faith and their inclination to

propagate it by the sword.” Worcester asks: “Who will hold them in check if the Americans were to go? Certainly not the Filipinos They have never been able to do it in the past, and they cannot do it now.” Ibid,

661

158

Dean C Worcester, The Philippine Islands and Their People, (New York: The Macmillan

Company, 1901), p 482 Originally published in 1899

159

See Lewis E Gleek, Jr., American Institutions in the Philippines, (Manila: Historical

Conservation Society, 1976) and Glenn Anthony May, Social Engineering in the Philippines Gleek’s

project in American Institutions is to evaluate the success of American institutions and traditions in the Philippines He documents the far-reaching influence of American institutions and traditions but assigns failures to Philippine values such as compadres, the malakas principle, the lack of national strength, the lack of obedience to the law He says that the question is not per se the appropriateness of American institutions, but the appropriateness of Philippine values to the functioning of their imported democratic

This discourse of the Filipinos (Christian, non-Christian tribal, Muslim) as a

child/children needing protection from itself and from each other is important for two reasons First, it lends insight to Worcester’s misinterpretation of the Filipino response to the imposition of

a foreign language as medium of instruction and official language His discourse of sharply drawn lines between civilized and uncivilized contains the idea that a people who are incapable of thought would be incapable as well of opposition Convinced as he was of the Americans’ protagonist role and of the universal goodness of the project of education in English, Worcester confused his limited encounter for a breadth of knowledge In 1900, his only ground for the implementation of the English policy was that the Filipinos wanted it The aggressive opposition mounted by Filipinos to this and many other American policies was cause for the colonial

officials to create a more sophisticated defense Within a year, this casual and easy rationale for the English policy had to evolve into a more sophisticated three-point rationale160 that eventually evolved into the much-repeated, much-defended, and ubiquitous discourse with a six-point rationale

The discourse of the infantile Filipino is important, secondly, because it became the root

of the corollary discourse of civilizational evolution which progresses from primitive to medieval

to modern and which is in turn also the root of the six-point rationale The uncivilized savage with an undeveloped and primitive language (1) is in need of a common language to unite them toward progress (2) The Spanish language is not an option because it is related to the medieval Spanish formations that promoted an elitism, sometimes called caciqueism (3) The highest rung

in the evolutionary ladder, the most developed, efficient, and democratic rung is represented by principles.” (page 317) Like Gleek, Glenn May lists American achievements: public education, sanitation, freedom of speech, road building, economic policies These he says were “much less self-serving” than those of other colonial powers His conclusions about the effectiveness of social engineering programs instituted by the U.S is that because of the different personalities, different agendas, and different

management styles among the colonial officials, no real and lasting change occurred Evident in his discussion of who he depicts as the heroes of the American colonial government, people like David Barrows, education director from 1905-1909, is a view of the Filipinos as in need of revolutionary

reshaping into citizens who will be capable of independence

160

The second Philippine Commission, the Taft Commission which was an executive body (unlike the Schurman Commission which was an investigative body) mentions three reasons for the policy of English as the medium of instruction They were that, first, the use of English was the most practical (for matters such as textbook production); second, that Spanish was not widely known anyway; and third, that the locals wanted to learn English Reports of the Taft Commission, (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1901), 109

English, brought by the Americans English is an excellent and highly developed language and, it

is sometimes argued, the most democratic of the languages (4) It is also the most efficient and practical choice for the Philippines (5) and finally the most democratic because apart from Filipinos wanting it, it will be the great equalizer that will unite them (6)

Historical Evolution and Primitive Philippine Languages and Culture

The idea of progress is premised first on the idea not just of backwardness but of a direction out of the backwardness as well The discourse to explain English as the medium of instruction traces a linear path similar to the path traditionally used to explain the development of European society from primitive to medieval to modern The narrative of progress and the idea of evolution from primitive to medieval to modern was of course present not only in the justification

of English but in the colonial narrative of the whole of Philippine history.161 In this discourse as

it is used for language, local languages and cultural practices are fixed as primitive; Spanish colonial practices including education and the implementation of the Spanish language on

Philippine society (though not the language itself) as medieval; and the American education and language policies as not just modern but exceptionally so Vicente Rafael has described what he calls the “hierarchy of languages”162 in contemporary Philippines At present, English occupies the top of the hierarchy as it is the language of higher education, the language of the professions, the diplomatic corps, multinational business, the legislative and judicial branches of government, etc Spanish, which had always been spoken by a very small minority of Filipinos, has become associated with aristocratic lineage that predated American rule Tagalog, at the bottom of the hierarchy, is associated with the masses.163

161

See Reynaldo C Ileto, “The Philippine Revolution of 1896 and U.S Colonial Education”, in

Knowing America’s Colony: A Hundred Years from the Philippine War, (Honolulu: Center for Philippine

Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1999) Ileto

discusses two Philippine History textbooks that are predicated on the idea of progress and narrate the history of the Philippines “along a medieval-to-modern axis.”

162

See Chapter 1 of Vicente L Rafael, Contracting Colonialism: Translations and Christian

Conversion in Tagalog Society under early Spanish Rule, (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University

Press, 1988)

163

See also Vicente L Rafael, “Taglish, or the Phantom Power of the Lingua Franca,” in White

Love and Other Events in Philippine History, (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2000),

168-169 Rafael’s description here of the three languages is made within the context of “mestizoness and

“The Filipino people, taken as a body, are children and, childlike, do not know what is best for them,”164 declared Fred W Atkinson, the first director of education for the Philippines Contemporary historians depict him as knowing virtually nothing about the Philippines and virtually nothing about primary education165 when he first arrived in the Philippines to take up his post, yet he was confident that he could ascertain what was best for the Filipinos Similarly, Blair and Robertson, commenting on the critique of Leon Maria Guerrero against the Anglo-Saxonization of the Filipinos through the schools, asserted: “The truth is, Filipinos, in the mass, are, as regards the purposes of any real education, virginal material to work upon.”166 The discourse, based on the idea of a genesis or a coming into being, of a blank slate, an innocent and ignorant child, or a feral state poised for evolution, is applied as well to the local languages and culture James LeRoy in defending the decision to use English as the medium of instruction sarcastically suggests the use of a vernacular instead and with the move the need to “polish the dialect…to create in it a literature, to put into the best works of ancient and modern writers, to

Taglish.” The description of Tagalog, therefore, is made from above—from the perspective of the elite Filipino class Tagalog, for example is described as “a language for addressing a mass audience.” The perspective is also made from the position of an outsider, one who does not really use Tagalog and

therefore sees it as a tool for constructing certain social orders like “cultural authenticity,” “the national order,” or “a fusion of interests between those above and below the social hierarchy.” Rafael describes this condition as a contemporary one The argument in this thesis regarding this issue, at least for the American period is that, first, the Tagalog writers saw Tagalog as a witness to the fulfillment of cultural authenticity and the national order rather than a tool for constructing them; and second, that the nationalist elite tapped into this discourse too, albeit sometimes appropriating it in a different way For further discussion of this, see chapter six and seven

164 Fred W Atkinson, The Philippine Islands, (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1905), 6

165

In Social Engineering in the Philippines, Glenn May says this of Atkinson: “Six feet, four

inches tall and thirty-five years old, Atkinson was the principal of the high school in Springfield,

Massachusetts At first glance, he seemed an unlikely candidate Almost all his experience had been in secondary school education, and it was obvious that the Americans would concentrate initially on primary education Although Atkinson had never managed a system of school before, the head of the

Commission [Taft] was willing to take a chance on him ‘The field is so new in the Philippines that

experience in the United States can hardly seem to furnish much of a guide for what must be done here It

will be largely original work.’” (80-81) Compare Stanley Karnow’s description of Atkinson in In Our

Image, published nine years later: “Six feet four inches tall, Atkinson was a Harvard graduate with an

advanced degree from Germany who knew nothing about primary education But Taft named him director

of education for the Philippines, explaining indulgently that the Americans were only experimenting

‘Experience in the United States can hardly seem to furnish much of a guide for what must be done here It will be largely original work.’” (201)

166

Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson, The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898,

Volume XLVI (Clevland, Ohio: The Arthur Clark Company, 1907), 367