omitting a comma, although he understood scarcely any part of them. But at length he became resigned, noticing that among the three or four hundred in his class only about forty merited the honor of being questioned, because they attracted the professor's attention by their appearance, some prank, comicality, or other cause. The greater part of the students congratulated themselves that they thus escaped the work of thinking and understanding the subject. "One goes to college, not to learn and study, but to gain credit for the course, so if the book can be memorized, what more can be asked—the year is thus gained."[1]
Basilio passed the examinations by answering the solitary question asked him, like a machine, without stopping or breathing, and in the amusement of the examiners won the passing certificate. His nine companions—they were examined in batches of ten in order to save time—did not have such good luck, but were condemned to repeat the year of brutalization.
In the second year the game-cock that he tended won a
- ↑ "The studies of secondary instruction given in Santo Tomás, in the
college of San Juan de Letran, and of San José and in the private schools,
had the defects inherent in the plan of instruction which the friars developed
in the Philippines. It suited their plans that scientific and literary
knowledge should not become general nor very extensive, for which
reason they took but little interest in the study of those subjects or in the
quality of the instruction. Their educational establishments were places
of luxury for the children of wealthy and well-to-do families rather
than establishments in which to perfect and develop the minds of the
Filipino youth. It is true they were careful to give them a religious
education, tending to make them respect the omnipotent power (sic) of
the monastic corporations.
"The intellectual powers were made dormant by devoting a greater part of the time to the study of Latin, to which they attached an extraordinary importance, for the purpose of discouraging pupils from studying the exact and experimental sciences and from gaining a knowledge of true literary studies.
"The philosophic system explained was naturally the scholastic one, with an exceedingly refined and subtile logic, and with deficient ideas upon physics. By the study of Latin, and their philosophic systems, they converted their pupils into automatic machines rather than into practical men prepared to battle with life."—Census of the Philippine Islands (Washington, 1905), Volume III, pp. 601, 602.
