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

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 i

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

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 do 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

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)

“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

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

264 Annual Report of the General Superintendent of Education (1904), 595

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)

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)

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

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

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

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 do so as other people have done, by absorbing and fitting to its own purposes the common civilization of the western world.282How “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)

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)