Were we ever scared of the past tense? Apparently, we were. In this book "Philippine Public Schools" there is a note about the use of past tense. "First-grade teachers should not be afraid to use the past tense form from the very beginning," the note says. The American teacher who is observing the English teaching method says that past tense forms can be learned easily in early language period." This was the January issue.
We talk about our colonial experience but what was it really under American teachers? To what degree were we moulded in their image and their image of what we should be?
This nondescript book in the Rizal Library of the Ateneo de Manila University titled "Philippine Public Schools" and the notes within them partly answer these questions. Published in 1929, the compendium of journals is an amazing journey to the realities of the period. Trivia - as these items are usually called by formal historians and chroniclers - abound and they all seem to show to potentials that were not developed, goals that were much ahead of their time, and just bits and pieces of charming insights about how we were then.
The journal has many sections but what engage me more are those under "New Rules and Regulations" "Personnel Notes" and "Observations and Suggestions."
In the same January issue are circulars and memorandums that seem to be odd from our present perspective. There is Memorandum No. 80, which announces the distribution of 15 match sticks to each pupil in the first grade. From that seemingly small concern about household and fire, Memorandum No. 84 is about the supply of Webster's Elementary-School to fifth-grade pupils.
From the General Office Supervisors come the observations and suggestions. In February 2009, Albay is praised because "all schools visited were provided with drinking water." This is significant given the present problem of the province about maintaining a good and stable water system. During the inspection, the visitor expresses that he is immensely pleased because when he asked the pupils to show him their hygiene kit, "every little child took out and laid on his desk a small towel, a little bar of soap (guest size) and a collapsible aluminum cup." I do not know about the "collapsibility' of aluminum cup in the 1920s but I can understand the critical eye of the visitor who soon says: "Those in charge of supervision are now tackling the next phase of the problem - to get every child actually to use these articles." I grin upon reading this. I would not be surprised if those kids - our lolos and lolas really - just borrowed the soap and the small towel. Showing them is easy; using them is another matter.
The March issue of the journal writes, among many things, "a great deal of reading" was being accomplished by the elementary teachers "and that they are making use of their wide professional reading."
The same issue is quite flattering to the Bikolanos. In Sorsogon, two schools visited show how in two grade-school classes, a dictionary project is done by pupils. The children are made to cut out and paste in their dictionary booklet the words that they see in old magazines.
How did our colonizers view us then? If this project be one of the basis, we see a colonial administrator helping out young children to learn the language of the colonizers even as they continue to doubt the ability of these brown kids. He comments: "I had an idea that the children could not read anywhere nearly all of the words they were pasting in their booklets." The colonizer would be proven wrong: "However, on testing some three or four children in each class doing this type of seat work, I found out that they could read nearly all of the words in the long lists in their booklets."
The isolation of Bikol does not escape the eye and humour of the colonial administrators. In the December 1928 issue of "Philippine Public Schools," something about the October visit of Mr. Bordner and Mr. Summers to Camarines Sur is talked about. The announcement says: We are glad to note that Manila folks have discovered the trail leading down to Camarines, and no longer dread to take it."