Nationalism and the School during

the American Regime

• When America proclaimed the separation of the Church and State as one of the cardinal principles of American democracy, the public schools assumed a significant role in training of citizens. • They aimed to develop loyalty to

the State not devotion to the Church.

• Democratic ideals became the paramount objectives of the government.

• The announced policy of the American occupation of the Philippines was “to develop the people into a self-governing people and in doing that, popular education . . . . Is the first and most important means” Thus the school became the most important agency for the training of a self-governing people.

• When American education was transplanted almost totally to a foreign soil and imposed the English language upon the people, there was silent resentment on the part of some Filipinos. • This was natural, for language is

the soul of the people and to ignore their language is to ignore their aspirations.

• Administration of Educational System• The textbooks and the

teaching materials adopted for use in Philippines Schools were those prepared by American authors primarily for American children.

• Teachers and Students• Thomasites- is a group of about

five hundred pioneer American teachers sent by the U.S. government to the Philippines in August 1901.

• When the use of the vernaculars was prohibited in the schools and the young children were penalized for speaking their native tongues in the classrooms and in the playgrounds, questions were raised in the minds of the people as to the true intentions of the Americans.

• There developed the idea that the schools were trying to train Filipinos to be American citizens.

• Curriculum• Filipino children were taught

American songs and were required to memorize literary masterpieces like Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address.” Schoolrooms were decorated with American paintings and the portraits of American heroes, like Lincoln’s Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, etc.

• After a decade of instruction in the English language in schools patterned after the American system, directed by American administrators and using American textbooks and American songs, the Filipino children who were the products of the public schools came to know more of American poems and to admire American heroes.

• In brief, they came to know more of America than of their own country and culture.

• In 1930 Speaker Manuel A. Roxas charged that the public schools were training the Filipinos to become American citizens. He said:

“I tell you, gentlemen of the commission, that the present system of public education is carrying on a subtle propaganda to kill the nationalistic sentiment of the people of the Philippines.

Perhaps that was the original purpose of the American administration in the hope that the Filipinos will forget their aspirations for freedom.

Shall we let our children grow under the influence of such a system? We can never permit that our children grow under the influence of such a system? We can never permit that our children will grow and become more American than Filipino.”

• The English language was adopted as the best solution to the problems presented by the diversity of Philippine language. And with its use as a medium of instruction it was natural that the material of instruction should follow the means.

• Today the Filipinos should look back with gratitude to the sacrifice and interest of the Thomasites and the rest of American educators who left their native land in order to spread the light of democracy in the farthest frontier of democracy in the Far East.

Presented by:

Joge Christopher V. Ambos

Sheena Purisima

Cholo Caliwagan