Page:The National Geographic Magazine Vol 16 1905.djvu/182

policy of the friars, who, from motives of their own, discouraged the learning of Spanish by the natives in order that they might act as intermediaries between the people and the civil authorities, and thus retain their influence over their charges.

A little less than one-third of the Filipino males of voting age are able to read and write.

There were 1,161,925 males who were able to read, constituting 47 percent of all males 10 years of age and over. In other words, nearly one-half of the males could read. The number of females able to read was 1,049,509, or 42 per cent of all the females 10 years of age and over, a proportion considerably less than of males. Of all those who could read, males constituted 52.5 per cent and females 47.5 per cent.

The number of males who could both read and write was 735,564, or 29.8 per cent of the male population 10 years of age and over. The number of females who could both read and write was only a little more than one third as great, being 267,024, or only 10.7 per cent of the females 10 years of age and over.

From the above it appears that, while nearly two-thirds of the males who were taught to read were taught to write, only about one-fourth of the females received an equal degree of education. Far less attention evidently has been paid to the education of women in the Philippines than to that of men. In the United States, Cuba, and Porto Rico literacy, by which is meant the ability to both read and write, was somewhat lower among females than among males—that is, a slightly larger proportion of those who were taught to read were also taught to write among males than among females—but the proportion there was only a fraction of that which prevailed in the Philippines.

The number of males reported as having received superior education was 59,020, or 2.4 per cent of those 10 years of age and over, and of the females 17,607, or seven-tenths of 1 per cent. Education among males was thus nearly three and a half times as great as among females.

The most literate tribe of the provinces is the Pampangan, 48.4 per cent of whose males of voting age were able to read and write. Next to the Pampangans are the Tagalogs, with 43.1 per cent, while the lowest are the Visayans, with only 32.2 per cent. Measured by the proportion having superior education, the Tagalogs are easily first, followed by the Pangasinanes and Zambalans, while the Visayans are still at the foot of the column.

According to Hon. W. H. Taft, Secretary of War and formerly Governor of the Philippine Islands, the "90 per cent of the Christian Filipinos who do not speak Spanish are really Christians. They are capable of education, and they have no caste or arbitrary customs which prevent their development along the lines of Christian civilization. They are merely in a state of Christian pupilage; they are imitative; they are glad to be educated, glad to study some language other than their own, and glad to follow European and American ideals. They differ utterly in these respects from the East Indians, from the Malays of Java, and the Malays of the Straits Settlements, and thus make our problem different from and vastly easier than that of England and Holland."

At the date of the census there were 2,962 schools in the archipelago, an average of three for each municipality. Of these, 55 per cent were public, about 33 per cent were private, and the remainder were under the control of the Roman Catholic Church. Of the total enrollment 6 per cent were reported for the primary schools. There are but two institutions devoted to higher education.