The triumph of tagalog and the dominance of the discourse on english language politics in the philippines during the american colonial period 7

187
CHAPTER SEVEN
IN DEFENSE OF TAGALOG, IN ENGLISH

Though it probably had began earlier, the story of the Filipino language campaign carried
out in English will begin here in 1916. This is the year of the passing of the historic Jones Law in
the American legislature. It was the law that granted the Philippines its autonomy, formally and
officially committed the United States to Philippine independence, and set into place the
Filipinization of the Philippine bureaucracy.
The story begins in October of 1916. Manuel Quezon had just returned from America,
having been there for several years as the resident commissioner campaigning for the passage of
the Jones Act. Quezon returned a hero in October of that year having successfully secured a
promise of Philippine independence through the Jones Law. He was met by hordes of people; the
crowd, described by Quezon himself was a throng made up of “old and young alike, including
children [who] stood for hours, waiting to cheer me when I landed.”
485
Meetings, banquets, and
parades were held to mark the historic occasion and celebrate Quezon’s success.
In one such banquet, held at the Hotel de France, on October 28, 1916, Jorge Bocobo, a
professor at the University of the Philippines, possibly in reaction to a speech Quezon made
where he had declared his support for the English policy but toyed with the possibility of using
the Philippine language as the medium of instruction, outlined his own position on the language
issue. In his speech, Bocobo warns about the dangers of Filipino children losing their identity in
the tidal wave of American thought. Unlike most who were lauding the passage of the Jones
Law, Bocobo was wary of it, fearing that Filipinos would be complacent with mere autonomy.
“It would deaden the aspirations for national freedom in our children and dull the edge of love of
country if their meat and drink shall be the English language and American thought,”
486
he
argued. His solution to this was the scrapping of the policy of English as the medium of

485
Manuel Luis Quezon, The Good Fight, (New York: Appleton-Century, 1946), 132.
486
Quoted in Cecilia Bocobo Olivar, “Jorge Bocobo—His Life and Ideas as Educator and Jurist”
(Ph.D. diss., University of the Philippines, 1975), 669.

188
instruction and in its place the use of “the local dialects” as the basis for instruction in primary
schools.
Bocobo’s position was not the majority position among the Spanish speaking and English
proficient power elite—the lawmakers and government leaders, the professionals, businessmen
and university professors. Neither was his position a completely radical and alien one. Less than
ten years before, the Corrales bill
487
, which provided for the use of the local languages as the
medium of instruction, was passed by the Philippine Assembly (a body of elected officials
working as the lower house) but then vetoed by the Philippine Commission (a small body of
officials appointed by the American colonial government and which functioned as the upper
house). Many from the older generation who had participated in the revolution had, from the
outset, called for Tagalog as the medium of instruction. By 1916, however, English would have
many supporters among the Filipinos. Quezon, who, in 1916 was seen as the one who would lead
the Philippines to independence, was ambivalent about the language policy and would change his
position several times over the next few years.
For this new generation who had been educated in English under the American public
school system (many, Bocobo included, had even been educated in America itself) and who
would use English as their primary medium of expression, 1916 would be the turning point at
which they could more confidently articulate their understanding of the Philippine nation and the
role of the different languages in it. Bocobo’s testimony would be among the first rendered in
English that would give its support to the Philippine languages.

With Woodrow Wilson’s election to the presidency of the United States in 1913, the
mood in the Philippines shifted with the feeling that independence was just around the corner.
Wilson was a Democrat and had always been liberal regarding his views on the Philippines.

487
Many sources that mention this bill mention it as being filed by Manuel Corrales. In 1907, the
Philippine Assembly had two representatives from Misamis, Manuel Corrales and Carlos Corrales; they
were brothers. The Diario de Sesiones de la Primera Asemblea Filipina (November 6, 1907, page 104),
however, reports that it was Carlos and not Manuel who filed this all-important and historic bill. The title
of the bill is: “Ley que reforma al articulo 14 de la Ley No. 74 de la Comision de Filipinas, ser le de 1901,
en el sentido de que, juntamente con la enseñanza del idioma ingles se de tambien en la Escuelas Publicas
Primrias la enseñanza en la dialectos mas mas generalizado en la region pertenezcan; autorizado el Director
de Bureau de Instruccion Publica para que invierta, de los fondos destinados a este Bureau, la cantidad
necessaria a los efectos se esta ley, y sobre otros extremos.”

189
Wilson’s new appointee as governor general of the Philippines was Francis Burton Harrison who,
upon his arrival in the Philippines, read Wilson’s message to the Filipino people that
independence was to be their prime concern: “Every step we take will be taken with a view to the
ultimate independence if the Islands and as a preparation for that independence.”
488
Thus, with a
democratic government in place, the Jones Act was passed into law in August of 1916.
Without designating a date, the Jones Law officially proclaimed the Unites States’
intention to grant the Philippines its independence. The central feature of the Law was the
provision for a Philippine Senate (to replace the Philippine Commission) thus allowing for a full
Philippine legislature. The new Philippine Senate was also going to be able to appoint virtually
all the heads of the executive offices. While the Jones Law provided for the beginnings of
Philippine control of its own laws, it still had the imprint of American control especially with
regard to trade tariffs, timber and mining lands and public education. America still held the right

to appoint its governor general and its vice governor general who, according to section 23 of the
Law, “shall be the head of the executive department known as the department of public
instruction, which shall include the bureau of education and the bureau of health.”
489
The
American colonial government was still unwilling for Filipinos to set their policies regarding
public instruction. It is evident that for them the English policy was non-negotiable. This would
be proven, confirmed, and “carved in stone” twenty years later when, written into the law that
would finally give Filipinos their independence was the imperative that the Philippine constitution
stipulate English as the medium of instruction in public schools. In 1934, the Americans would
promise to finally grant the Philippines their freedom within ten years but it was not granting the
Filipinos the freedom to decide what language Filipino school children would receive instruction,
In 1916, however, the medium of instruction policy, though under the control still of the
United States, was technically not yet “carved in stone.” Thus, this period between 1916 and
1934 saw some of the most exciting debates regarding language. 1916 itself was a decisive
moment when Filipinos felt that they were now finally taking the reigns of nation building.

488
Francis Burton Harrison, The Corner-stone of Philippine Independence, 50.
489
Philippines Free Press Supplement, “The Jones Act: Full Text of the Act Which Gave the
Filipino People the Senate Whose Inauguration was Celebrated Last Monday,” 21 October 1916, VII.

190
Harrison says of this time: Anyone who was present in the Philippines during those days will
forever remember the outburst of wild enthusiasm of the people. In every possible way,
demonstration was made of their pride, satisfaction and gratitude for the self-government
granted.”
490
Writers, linguists, educators, politicians, and public intellectuals, all had a position

on the language question and since many of the positions were contending, the debates were
lively, sustained, and compelling.
The positions made between 1903 and 1907 in the Muling Pagsilang essays were not part
of a debate. They were statements of identity, cries of desperation, and sometimes a call to arms.
However, maybe because as Chapter Four tried to show, during the first decade of the century,
the language debates were focused more on whether it was English or Spanish that was going to
become the lingua franca. No one was openly engaging the Muling Pagsilang writers in a debate
over the worth of the local languages. It was as though the Muling Pagsilang writers were
speaking to and among themselves and were mostly agreeing with each other. In 1916, however,
Filipinos who were schooled under the American public school system and were therefore more
exposed to American values and rhetoric were now the leaders of Philippine society. Even the
“old guards” of the revolution were taking on positions within the establishment. Now, there was
to be real debates about language even if the debates were ultimately to be made moot by the
uncompromising colonial language policy.

The Bocobo-Osias Debate
The Bocobo-Osias debate on language is mentioned in a number of linguistic histories as
an important event in Philippine linguistic history.
491
Not one of these studies, however, reveal

490
Harrison, The Corner-stone. . ., 195.
491
See Cecilia Bocobo Olivar, “Jorge Bocobo—His Life and Ideas. . .,” 669-670. Olivar takes this
information from an article written by Jorge Bocobo himself which appeared in The Manila Times in 1953.
She quotes him as saying “Way back in 1916, Senator Osias and I had a friendly debate in a series of
articles in the Manila Press over the question of whether or not the local vernacular should be used as the
medium of instruction.” The name of the publication and the exact dates of publication are not mentioned.
This information is repeated in Emma J. Fonacier Bernabe, Language Policy Formation, Programming,

Implementation and Evaluation in Philippine Education (1565-1974), (Manila: Linguistic Society of the
Philippines, 1987), 38. Bernabe cites Olivar as the source of this information. It is also repeated in Pamfilo
D. Catacataca and Clemencia C. Espiritu, Wikang Filipino: Kasaysayan at Pag-unlad, (Manila: Rex Book

191
the precise bibliographical information for the debates nor describe the contents of the debate
much less offer an analysis.
492
The debates are a manifestation, not so much of new and unique
ideas about language and its relation to the nascent nation as much as it is an expression of the
new discourses that were present during this period. It is the manner of the telling much more
than what is actually said that reveals far more about the politics of language during this moment
in history.
It is no small coincidence that this debate started in 1916, the year the Jones Law was
passed. The debate was triggered by an editorial written by Bocobo in October of 1916 for the
Philippine Columbian Notes, of which Bocobo was editor. The October edition of the Philippine
Colombian Notes was focused on the passage of the Jones Act and Quezon’s return to Manila and
in fact, the banquet held at the Hotel de France for Quezon was sponsored by the Philippine
Colombian Association. In the brief editorial, Bocobo calls for the use of “the local dialects” as a
medium of instruction as students could not properly absorb the subjects taught because of a lack
of proficiency in English. “Common sense and pedagogical principles,” Bocobo argued would
lead one to see that English was not suitable as the medium of instruction in Philippine schools.
He criticized the current system for making English the ends and not the means of education.
493

After a series of very polite letters
494
between Camilo Osias who was then Division
Superintendent of Schools and Bocobo that contained a proposal (by Osias) and an acceptance
(by Bocobo) of a debate, the first article appeared in the Manila Daily Bulletin on December 27,

1916. The principal question of the debate, stated by Osias in this first article was “What

Store, 2005), 21. Catacataca and Espiritu cite no one for this information. It is interesting to note, though
admittedly maybe only for the purposes of accuracy, how small factual errors are transmitted and
perpetuated through these studies. Bocobo himself, recounting the incident forty years later, wrongly states
that his position in these debates was that even English was to be taught in the local languages. Although
this was to be his position later, in these debates his proposal is that all subject except English be taught in
the vernacular languages. Bernabe wrongly names Bocobo as the Dean of the College of Law. Bocobo
was, in 1916 only a Professor and was to become Dean in the 30s. This error is repeated in Catacataca and
Espiritu.
492
I found copies of the debate first by looking through Osias papers at the National Library.
Among his papers, I found some of the typscripts of his side of the debate. They were, however, untitled
and undated but reading through them I realized what they were. The typescripts contained a single
reference to the newspaper that carried the debates, The Manila Daily Bulletin, and a single date. From this
information, I was able to find copy of the full debate, which ran from December, 1916 to March, 1917.
493
Editorial, Philippine Columbian Notes, October 1916, 18-19.
494
The letters are among the Camilo Osias papers at the Philippine National Library.

192
language should be the basis of instruction in the primary schools, the local dialects or
English?”
495
The debate ran in several issues through the months of December, 1916 and January,
February and March of 1917, with Osias turning out eight articles and Bocobo turning out three.
What is really striking about these articles is how very little, maybe only ten or fifteen
percent, of what is said in these articles actually directly addresses the question of language.
Most of it is made up of demonstrations of debating flair, the identification of poor reasoning in

the opponent, exhibitions of a mannered civility that was probably characteristic of its time,
remonstrations about misconstruing what was really meant and about taking words out of context
and lots and lots of discussions around rather than about the issue.
What is actually said about language can be briefly summarized in a paragraph. Bocobo
reasserts the points he raises in the Philippine Colombian Notes editorial asserting that children
would profit a great deal more if instruction were in the native dialects and arguing that it was
common sense and good pedagogy that made it so. To explain his assertion of “common sense,”
Bocobo merely states that it is “axiomatic.’ To explain his assertion of “good pedagogy” he goes
a little further by saying that the most important objective in primary education is to generate
interest in the subject matter and that this was virtually impossible to do in a foreign language.
496

Osias, on the other hand, focuses on answering sub-issues raised, denying accusations made by
Bocobo or charging Bocobo with some breach in logical argument. The meat of his arguments,
which focus on the administrative nightmare of having an education system based on several
languages (textbooks in several languages, the central teacher’s college staffed according not to
expertise but by regional languages, etc.), is reserved only for the last two of the eight articles.
An example of the quibbling rhetoric in this debate may be seen in the issue of the
Philippine legislature’s support of the English policy. In the January 6 issue, Bocobo answers a
point Osias previously makes by saying that the Philippine legislature regularly approves funding
for the education program only because it has not seen any studies about the effectiveness of the
system. Osias answers on January 10 by quoting an unnamed legislator throwing his support for

495
Camilo Osias, “The Importance of the Language Question,” Manila Daily Bulletin, 27
December 1916, 2.
496
Jorge Bocobo, “The Two Systems Further Compared,” Manila Daily Bulletin, 6.

193

the English language policy. Bocobo writes in his February 2 article about the impropriety of
quoting someone without identifying who they are. Osias counters in his February 27 article that
the source and the essay from which the quoted lines were taken were also published in the
Bulletin. Nothing in this exchange actually talks about the worth of either position and yet it took
up paragraph upon paragraph of these articles. It is both in what they don’t say about the
language issue and in the flair of what they do say that illustrates to us not just how far Filipinos
had gone in a matter of just ten years. Bocobo’s and Osias’ rhetorical flair point to us the stark
difference of where they were in 1916 from the writers of ten years before.
What Jorge Bocobo and Camilo Osias say about language is only mildly interesting.
How they carry out their debate, however, tells us more about how they saw language and its
place in nation building. It reveals to us a generation of English speakers and writers who were,
at worst, writers who were interested in the polemics of the debate rather than the issues
themselves or, at best, committed to pedagogical principles rather than to a particular language
and culture. In the end, both Bocobo and Osias were committed to efficiency rather than to a
particular culture and history. At no point in these pages and pages of arguments is there a
mention of that which is the principal concern of the Muling Pagsilang writers: that language, and
particularly Tagalog, was the soul of the race and the nation and was tied to our history of
resisting the foreign colonizers.
In this debate, Osias is ever more the good colonial who buys into American rhetoric
about the English policy. His chief argument for retaining the English system rests principally on
a belief in the wisdom and goodness of those who institute it: “The men who have occupied the
position of secretary of public instruction or who have acted in that capacity did not revolutionize
the system. . . all the directors of education, all the superintendents, have up to this time labored
not to revolutionize the system but to carry it on.”
497
For Osias, the word of American directors of
education, both past and present, about the merits of the English system is proof enough for him

497
Camilo Osias, “Should the Present System Be Condemned?” Manila Daily Bulletin, 1 January

1917, 14.

194
and he quotes them in tedious length
498
as though their explanations for the English policy were,
to use Bocobo’s own term, “axiomatic.” When Bocobo points this out to him—that colonial
officials have motives other than efficiency and that modern nations desire to have “’their
language spoken in a strange land [and] their customs and institutions acknowledged as superior
by other races’”
499
—Osias cries fowl. He calls for the “putting aside all sentimentalism as much
as possible and trying to inject nothing that tends to provoke any prejudice, racial or sectional.”
500

Osias will suffer no moves to link the language issue to any political, economic, or military
motives. For him, the language issue is autonomous of other considerations and must be judged
solely on what will work most efficiently in running the educational bureaucracy. Finally, Osias
exposes himself as the good colonial in his central argument (regarding the administrative
impossibility of using several languages as the medium of instruction). This argument was
invented soon after the commencement of American occupation and was repeated over and over
in the many justifications put out by the American colonial officials for the English policy.
The more interesting debater of the two is Bocobo who demonstrates a more
sophisticated flair for debating in the English language. He deftly uses sarcasm (“the statement
does not come in good grace from the pen of so progressive and enlightened a gentleman as Mr.
Osias.”
501
), eruditely references Shakespeare with such ease (“I wish to tell him, in the words of
Jacque to Orlando: ‘You have a nimble wit: I think ‘twas made of Atalanta’s heel.”
502

), and
confidently, almost arrogantly calls out errors in logic (“He has not only evaded the central point
of this controversy, that is, whether English is a better medium of instruction than the local
dialects. . . but he has made a scarecrow, then knocked it down to show what he can do.
Bravo!”
503
).
Beneath all this glibness, one inferred that Bocobo’s “end” was really not that different
from Osias’s. Efficient education was what they were both aiming for—that the students learn

498
Camilo Osias, “s the Adoption of English a Serious Blunder?” Manila Daily Bulletin, 25
January 1917, 2.
499
Bocobo, “The Two Systems. . .,” 6.
500
Camilo Osias, “Is Instruction in English Justified?,” Manila Daily Bulletin, 10 January 1917, 5.
501
Bocobo, “The Two Systems. . .,” 6.
502
Jorge Bocobo, “Is Instruction in English Justified?,” Manila Daily Bulletin, 2 February 1917, 2.
503
Ibid.

195
their hygiene, math, geography, civics as efficiently as possible. The content of what it is that
these students learned was not, at least in these debates, a relevant point. Though Bocobo
charged the English policy and Osias with seeing English itself as an end; Bocobo and Osias were
actually quite similar in the end they envisioned for the new Philippine nation: a citizenry
equipped with a modern education. They had their eye on the same prize, though the positions

from which they viewed it, one conservative and one liberal, were different.
If Osias looks to the education directors as the final word and the ultimate source of
wisdom, Bocobo looks to American pedagogists. In the most substantial section of his argument,
where he argues that generating interest is the most important task of a teacher (and that the use of
the local languages will help to generate interest), he quotes from four different American
textbooks on education. If this concern for what interests a child is made parallel to the concern
of ten years before for what was important to the identity of Filipinos, we find, in Bocobo that the
meter stick for assessing relevance has become, not Philippine history, but Western scholarship.
The source of this dramatic paradigm shift, these antipodean perspectives between ten
years was, of course, American education itself. Both Bocobo and Osias were educated in the
United States.
504
Bocobo, in particular, was part of the first batch of pensionados—promising,
young men who were sent to the United States as government scholars as part of a grooming for
leadership. His early life and education is an example of how his generation, the most visibly
influential of the period leading up to independence, would be set on a course that will lead them
to a new and different understanding of nationhood and identity.
Bocobo, born in 1886, was too young to participate in the revolution, though he was
witness to it. He was ten when open combat began between the Filipino revolutionaries and the
Spanish in his native Tarlac town and over the next two years would always be part of the throng
that would greet any of the heroes of the revolution who would go through his town. His
participation in the Philippine-American war as a young boy of thirteen or fourteen was as
innocent as it could possibly have been for a boy in a time of war. He was made to gather the

504
Osias has an LL.D, degree from Oberlin College in Ohio and Bocobo has an LL.B. from
Indiana University and an LL.D. honoris causa from the University of Southern California.

196
thorny plants that were used as raw materials for gunpowder for the bullets being manufactured

for the Philippine soldiers.
505
With the American pacification campaign, Bocobo’s education
became an illustration of the very essence of education for pacification. First, he was educated by
an U.S. Army sergeant and then a year later by a Thomasite couple. In the provincial high school
one of his teachers was Frank White who would later become the director of the Bureau of
Education. It was White who recommended Bocobo for the pensionado program and by 1904
Bocobo was off to the United States to start his law degree.
506

In Indiana, Bocobo distinguished himself as an orator and debater and won several prizes
at oratorical contest. In one contest in particular, Bocobo won a prize for pleading his case for
Philippine Independence.
507
Bocobo may have had the seeds of his political education planted
while he was still in Tarlac but it was honed and nurtured in America under American democratic
ideals and the American tradition of the two party-system. His biography tells us about his
political education and involement while in the United States:
Throughout those three years, 1904-1907, in Indiana University, the four Filipino
pensionados
508
advocated Philippine independence in conversation with fellow
students and their professors. They belonged to the Jackson Club (Democratic),
the opponent of the Lincoln Club (Republican), because the Democratic Party
was for Philippine independence but the Republican Party was against it. At a
political rally in Bedford, Indiana in 1904, the Filipino students spoke eloquently
in favor of Philippine independence while awaiting William Jennings Bryan, an
ardent advocate of Philippine independence.
509

In Indiana, Bocobo learned to comprehend phenomena (even the self and nationhood) using
principally one’s rational faculties. There he also learned to engage the colonial power in its own
language and within its political worldview of two positions: liberal and conservative. He was
educated in the logic of American democratic ideals and the ideas of progress and, as was
expected of him as a scholar of the American government, was poised to transmit all this to
Philippine society. Bocobo’s biographer tells us of Bocobo’s own eagerness to become an agent

505
Cecilia Bocobo Olivar, Aristocracy of the Mind: A Biography of Jorge Bocobo, (Quezon City:
New Day Publishers, 1981), 5.
506
Ibid, 7-8.
507
Ibid, 13.
508
About a hundred Filipinos went to the United States as pensionados in 1904 but they were
placed in various universities through the U.S. Only four Filipinos were sent to Indiana University.
509
Olivar, “Jorge Bocobo—His Life and Ideas. . .,” 53.

197
of development and progress: “having been exposed to American democracy, he and his co-
nationals could not help but wish everything fine about it for their mother country.”
510

It has been said that English had the ability to “symbolize Filipino hopes of social,
economic, and political progress” and that it was projected, especially by the University of the
Philippines during the 1920s as “the principal language of Philippine nationalism.”
511

Indeed,
Bocobo shows, this could be done and done elegantly and intelligently. For the Tagalogs, ten
year before, nationhood was found in the history of resisting a foreign oppressor. Ten years later,
Bocobo would find it in a position that was operationally different from a conservative position
but inevitably aspired toward the same goal of a citizenry made competent by a modern education
that was based on the values of American democracy.

The Filipino Soul
Bocobo showed he could express his nationalism and eloquently carry out a campaign for
the Philippine languages in English. The Osias-Bocobo debates, however, forgrounded Bocobo’s
concern for pedagogical principles and how learning was to happen. What was to be learned was
never really discussed . The issue of Philippine identity and nationhood was absent, or at least
sublimated, in these debates.
However, even before 1916, another debate had started concerning “the Filipino soul.”
The debate had started as far back as 1906 when Trinidad Pardo de Tavera wrote an essay entitled
“The Filipino Soul” (originally written in Spanish, entitled “El Alma Filipina” and published in El
Renacimiento on May 17, 1906) which defended the English policy. The popularity of the debate
was based on a fear that Filipino identity was being drowned by new, modern, American values.
In his autobiography, Teodoro M. Kalaw, who wrote for El Renacimiento and was its editor from
1907-1909, lists among the periodical’s campaigns, “the slow disappearance of the ‘Filipino Soul’

510
Olivar, Aristocracy. . , 14.
511
Barbara Gaerlan, “The Politics and Pedagogy of Language Use at the University of the
Philippines: The History of English as the Medium of Instruction and the Challenge Mounted by Filipinos,”
(Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1998), 129.

198
under the seductive wiles of Anglo-Saxonism” and also adds that “we were against the use of

English, the language of the American conqueror, in the schools.”
512

The debate must have been still very relevant over twenty years later as
“The Filipino Soul” and essays written in response to it were translated into English and
published in a popular book of representative Filipino essays in English which went to two
editions (1924 ad 1928). The book, Thinking for Ourselves, was first published in 1924 for use
by Filipino college students, “especially for those in the University of the Philippines.”
513
Of this
particular debate, the editors selected three essays, all by Pardo de Tavera, in order to depict the
“uncompromising defense of Anglo-Saxon and stern opposition to Spanish or Latin culture or
traditions.”
514
They also explain the inclusion of nine other essays on the grounds that they
presented the opposite position, against Pardo de Tavera’s position. The editors of this collection
contrasted the styles of the essays originally written in Spanish with their “ornate diction and long
sentences” with the “blunt directness and the prosaic ruggedness”
515
of the essays originally
written in English. Nevertheless, they claimed that the essays in their anthology were important
not for their prose but because they were “though-provoking examples of Filipino thought
expressed in English.”
516
This contrast in style was evidence of the way in which writers of this
period saw the tug of war that Philippine culture and the Filipino soul was undergoing: the
principal protagonists were Spanish and American culture. It was an issue the editors saw as a
very significant one and they apportioned twelve essays (out of a total of forty-one) to it.
Although there were few Saxonistas
517

, their minority position was obviously a powerful
position during its time as it defended the American colonial project and portrayed American
culture as superior. These Saxonistas were mostly politicians and lawyers and, over the years, it
became Pardo de Tavera, the most prolific in the group who came to represent them.

512
Teodoro M. Kalaw, Aide-de Camp to Freedom, translated by Maria Kalaw Katigbak, (Manila:
Teodoro M. Kalaw Society, 1965), 43.
513
Vicente Hilario and Eliseo Quirino, Thinking for Ourselves: A Representative Collection of
Filipino Essays, (Manila: Oriental Commercial Company, 1928).
514
Ibid, from the introduction to the second edition, viii.
515
Ibid.
516
Ibid.
517
“Saxonista” is the term used to refer to people like Pardo de Tavera who would uphold Anglo-
saxon culture as the superior culture that Filipinos were to aspire to.

199
From the three essays of Pardo de Tavera included in Thinking for Ourselves,
518
one gets
a very clear picture of his dichotomized image of Philippine culture and society and a clear
picture of his vision of the proper course for its future. For Pardo de Tavera, “progress” is the be
all end and end all. Its worst enemy, “tradition,” is characterized by the superstitious beliefs
forwarded by the church and a kind of blind patriotism advocated by the nationalists. In “The
Heritage of Ignorance,” he lists the particulars of this progress: “the democratic form of

Government, the English language, the lay schools, co-education, and Anglo-Saxon
civilization,”
519
and rails against the idea that these are, according to his rivals, the causes of the
growth of immorality in Philippine society.
It is instead, he argues, the superstition promoted by the church that is the problem. He
discusses in quite a bit of length, the novenas, religious booklets devoted to one saint, and the
belief that fervent prayer of novenas will cause the granting of favors asked of God. These
superstitious beliefs, imposed by the Spanish, complements very well the “enchantment, magic,
and sorcery of the primitive Filipino.”
520
He argues that such church practices reinforce the idea
of man as helpless, whereas, for the cause of progress and development, the idea of self-reliance
should be emphasized. Against this backwardness he posits the idea of the need to develop a
“logical mentality” which is to be developed through lay education.
Pardo de Tavera also reserves his disdain for those who “resorted to revolution and
rebellion to free themselves from a regime opposed to their progress and happiness” and for their
policies “which will only produce dissension among the Filipinos.”
521
Several years later, Camilo
Osias, who, like Pardo de Tavera, has been caricatured as the mouthpiece of the Americans, also
railed against those who would “sacrifice efficiency on the altar of a narrow and superficial

518
“The Heritage of Ignorance,” “The Filipino Soul,” and “”The Conservation of the National
Type.”
519
Pardo de Tavera, “The Heritage of Ignorance,” in Thinking for Ourselves: A Representative
Collection of Filipino Essays, Vicente Hilario and Eliseo Quirino, ed. (Manila: Oriental Commercial
Company, 1928), 6.

520
Ibid, 9.
521
Ibid, 6.

200
nationalism.”
522
Both Pardo de Tavera and Osias counterpoint these nationalist ideas to their own
ideas of progress. Pardo de Tavera’s ideas, however, are remarkable in their insistence on the
thoroughly modern idea that logic, above all, comes first. He argues that patriotism cannot be
taught in school “simply by means of songs or by fomenting sentiments which are aggressive
against foreigners or protective of the home” and instead calls for teaching students to comply
with their duty and the strengthening of morals through “a knowledge of self and humanity as a
whole.”
523
Here, Pardo de Tavera resorts to setting up the binary of the emotions and
“sentiments” of the nationalist versus the “knowledge” that he himself calls for.
Education, for Pardo de Tavera had to be “free from all religious, political, or
philosophical restrictions” and had to be “completely scientific.”
524
It was through this type of
education that Filipinos could develop a moral sense as “sane morals are founded upon the basis
of reason.”
525
He parallels this new method of education to the American colonial project of
developing “the hygienic consciousness.” In the same way that Filipinos had imbibed the new
and modern consciousness for hygiene and sanitation, promoted by American health officials, so
should they also imbibe this new and modern consciousness in education. The vision was for a
total transformation, both mental and physical. This squares with Resil Mojares’ description of

Pardo de Tavera’s project as “the transformation of Filipino mentality along the lines of Western
science.”
526

For Pardo de Tavera, the task of the Filipino, therefore, is to reject all forms of thinking
and all practices that “erect barriers to the free exercise of our faculties.”
527
With the objective
being “progress” and the method to that objective being “reason,” Pardo de Tavera argues that “a

522
Camilo Osias, “Nationality and Education,” Thinking for Ourselves: A Representative
Collection of Filipino Essays, Vicente Hilario and Eliseo Quirino, ed. (Manila: Oriental Commercial
Company, 1928), 244.
523
Pardo de Tavera, “The Conservation of the National Type,” Thinking for Ourselves: A
Representative Collection of Filipino Essays, Vicente Hilario and Eliseo Quirino, ed. (Manila: Oriental
Commercial Company, 1928), 340.
524
Ibid, 332.
525
Pardo de Tavera, “”The Heritage of Ignorance,” 18.
526
Resil Mojares, Brains of the Nation, 218.
527
Pardo de Tavera, The Conservation,” 346.

201
new life, based upon a scientific education, is what will complete the union of Filipinos into a
nation, free from prejudices which retard or embarrass our progress.”

528

His prescriptive throughout all these essays remain pretty much on the level of the
abstract. He repeats, over and over, his general call for an end to superstition and a new focus on
reason but offers no specific prescriptions for which educational practice should be scrapped or
which particular part of, let us say, the math or history curriculum should be amended. He does
make one very specific appeal. In the conclusion to the essay “The Conservation of the National
Type,” he makes a call for “three things for perfect harmony,”
529
two of which are still very much,
from a policy perspective, rather abstract: “liberty of conscience” and “the establishment of true
democracy.” The third call, however, is very specific: “English as a common language.”
It was this very program and campaign for English that Pardo de Tavera’s opponents
were most wary of and were most afraid would cause the demise of the Filipino soul.
It is curious that Pardo de Tavera does not define or describe “the Filipino Soul” in his
essay entitled “The Filipino Soul.” Instead, he poses a challenge to those who would “find fault
with the new education now taught in the public schools by denouncing it as inadequate and
inconsistent with the character of the Filipino people.”
530
He asks these people, his opponents, to
define the Filipino soul, and identify the nature of it that requires preserving. He also asks what
of this would disappear because of the new education in English and what kind of education they
would prescribe in its place. He does however, finally define it in the essay “The Conservation of
the National Type” as “a completely foreign mentality which has been given to a small portion of
the Filipino people.”
531
He refers to the Spanish objective when they initially arrived in the
Philippines of eliminating local culture (beliefs, worship, writing system, songs, traditions, dress)
in order to replace it with what is now seen as that Filipino soul and is now defended with great
fervor as patriotic.

528
Ibid, 345.
529
Ibid, 346.
530
Pardo de Tavera, “The Filipino Soul,” Thinking for Ourselves: A Representative Collection of
Filipino Essays, Vicente Hilario and Eliseo Quirino, ed. (Manila: Oriental Commercial Company, 1928),
171.
531
Pardo de Tavera, The Conservation,” 337.

202
Instead, he alludes to “another Filipino soul that has not been destroyed.”
532
This other
Filipino soul is to be found among the “uneducated classes in our country, which ought,
apparently, to have preserved a spirit genuinely Filipino.”
533
Resil Mojares has argued that, on
this point, Pardo de Tavera is unclear on the problem of cultural formation. Mojares identifies in
Pardo de Tavera a belief in both a better civilization based on reason and a somewhat immutable
soul that endures but can manifest itself differently. Yet, he also believes that it is in the imitation
of other cultures that younger cultures/nations develop their own culture.
534

Though, as Mojares indicates, Pardo de Tavera is “less clear” on this point, it seems of
little importance to Pardo de Tavera himself as he is concerned ultimately not in reviving this
primordial soul or preserving it but with changing it. His tact is to insist that this Filipino soul can
“spring forth in all its vigor . . . by means of proper education”

535
and that the only two options of
uplifting this Filipino soul are through the old, traditional way and through the new, scientific
way.
Pardo de Tavera uses the issue of race in a most polished and sophisticated manner in
order to argue for his position of the new scientific way and against this supposedly old,
traditional way. He seemingly eschews ideas of racial inferiority when he accuses those who
oppose the new education system of “deeming us eternal Indios of inferior mentality” and of
taking us through “the dark path where no others see, but only they who guide or wish to guide
the Indio, the eternal child who ought to allow himself to be led!”
536
His vision regarding races is
a modern one that rejects biological determinism: “I do not believe that race-inferiority is a matter
of permanence or anthropology.”
537
This matches a newer, more modern form of hierarchical
thinking and a more subtle justification for occupation. America is not present in order to
dominate over inferior races but in order to instruct and uplift people who, though of equal
stature, biologically, are at a disadvantage, culturally.

532
Ibid.
533
Pardo de Tavera, “The Filipino Soul,” 177.
534
Resil Mojares, Brains of the Nation, 221-222.
535
Pardo de Tavera, The Conservation,” 338.
536
Pardo de Tavera, “The Heritage,” 6.

537
Pardo de Tavera, “The Filipino Soul,” 174.

203
Thus, he ascribes to the idea of not races but cultures that are superior: “inferiority is not
an inherent or a natural condition of any race but a result of its education.”
538
This difference in
racial ideology and politics reflects new political realities.
539
What was needed was a justfication
for denying full Filipino self-government and for defending American public education in
English. Rather than underscore innate racial inferiority, what was emphasized was the
possibility of improvement through contact with and tutorship by the “superior culture.”
It is in this way that he is able set up a false dilemma: there are only two options in this
much needed education: through the medium of Spanish (and the traditional mindset that goes
with it) or through English (and the modern mindset that goes with it). It is after he sets up this
dilemma of “fear,” “respect,” “inaction,” and “passivity,” instilled through “long submission
under a despotic government” versus “the spirit of work,” “tolerance,” “peace,” “economy,”
“respect for the law,” instilled through “liberal and democratic institutions,”
540
that he can fully
promote “a modern system of education which is based on Anglo-Saxon principles.”
541

Pardo de Tavera’s defense of “Anglo-Saxon” education, though based on the idea of the
need to modernize has to be also defended against the charge that it is being imposed for the
purposes of an insidious plan for world domination. Modernization is a concept that, as the
previous chapter of this study shows, was subscribed to by nationalists. However, Pardo de
Tavera had to address as well the charge that this modernization, and in particular, education in

English, was not in fact related to a plan to retain the Philippines as a colony and to deny Filipinos
independence. “My sentiments and convictions recoil at the notion of the absolute sway of any
race over another,”
542
he argues. It is inconceivable, for Pardo de Tavera, that Anglo-Saxon
education exists for the purposes of subjugation. It “can never beget a mass of people that are

538
Ibid.
539
See Paul Kramer, The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States and the
Philippines, (Chapell Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). Kramer argues that the shift in racial
politics paralleled the shift from the American military government to the civil government. He also argues
that the shift emphasized Filipino incapacity for mature political behavior, morality and intelligence.
540
Pardo de Tavera, “The Filipino Soul,” 173.
541
Ibid, 175.
542
Ibid, 176.

204
slaves to foreign influences,” instead “its destiny is to train individuals capable of independent
thinking.”
543

In the same way that the new race ideology rejects “physical” superiority for cultural
superiority, this new thinking about the role of education in the colonial project rejects the idea of
the colonizer’s physical presence even as it acknowledges its desire for the colonizer’s cultural
presence. Pardo de Tavera openly and chillingly fantasizes on the idea that Anglo-Saxon culture

“sow its seeds” among other nations so that “the world may make use of it, without regard to race,
as an object of the common weal,—free as light, air, and water, to which all the world has a
right.”
544
The fantasy, one of the universalization and naturalization of this Anglo-Saxon culture,
reminds one of Marx’s precept that “all that is solid melts into air.” Yet while Marx fantasized
about an old order that would eventually dissolve to make way for a new one, Pardo de Tavera
fantasized on a new order that would dissolve, not so that it would disappear but so as that it
would be breathed in by all and implanted into all as a new universal culture.

Against Pardo de Tavera
This dilemma of Spanish versus English seems to be a view that the editors of Thinking
for Ourselves saw as the principal predicament of Philippine culture. They included in their book
several other essays that were, according to them, “against the uncompromising Anglo-Saxon
culture.” These essays represent a generally unified perspective—that the best and brightest of
Philippine culture comes out of the Revolution and is expressed in Spanish. There were a few
minor variations on this theme: the idea of Philippine culture being a synthesis of oriental and
occidental cultures
545
and the idea of the existence of a true, unified nationalism and a unified
culture brought about by the revolution.

543
Ibid, 177.
544
Ibid, 179.
545
Norberto Romualdez, “Filipino Life and Culture,” Thinking for Ourselves: A Representative
Collection of Filipino Essays, Vicente Hilario and Eliseo Quirino, ed. (Manila: Oriental Commercial
Company, 1928), 19-38. Romualdez’s perspective is different from all the other writers in this collection in

that he was the only one who emphasized the Asian influences of Philippine culture.

205
Most of the writers who wrote against Pardo de Tavera (or what he represented) were in
agreement that the moving force of Philippine culture is what they saw as the “golden age” of the
Revolution. For these writers the Filipino soul was to be found at the moment when, as Fernando
Ma. Guerrero tells us, “the Filipino Muse entered [a] transformation by plucking the heart-strings
to the tune and the ideals embodied in the Revolutions of 1896 and 1898.”
546
Guerrero describes
this period as an epoch that was “the most passionate, the most heroic, and the most clamorous in
the development of lyric fervor of the national poets.”
547
Epifanio de los Santos reprises this
sentiment when he called the revolutionary period “our Elizabethan Age.”
548
Arcensio Luz also
finds the experience of the revolution to be a defining moment in Philippine history. “That
glorious age,” he argued, “[that] untied the chains that bound our heart, gave wings to the
imagination of our writers.”
549
For Luz, as with Guerrero and de los Santos, the Filipino soul is to
be found in our history of struggle. Yet, this soul is best expressed in the Spanish language. Luz
puts it very clearly when he says “our soul speaks in Spanish” and through “its vibrant syllables
we utter our indignation and our protest against any menace to the self-assertion of the Filipino
soul.”
550
Contrary to Pardo de Tavera’s view of the Spanish period as a period when the Spanish
propagated the values of submission and superstition, these writers focus on the Filipinos
themselves who rose up and eloquently articulated their aspirations in Spanish.

It may seem quite strange that these writers worked within a framework of just two
languages, both foreign and that they simply erased the issue of the place and relevance of our
native language. In actuality, these writers did not disavow English nor the Philippine languages.
Unlike Pardo de Tavera whose vision of Philippine education and culture had space only for one

546
Fernando Ma. Guerrero, “Spanish Poetry in the Philippines,” Thinking for Ourselves: A
Representative Collection of Filipino Essays, Vicente Hilario and Eliseo Quirino, ed. (Manila: Oriental
Commercial Company, 1928), 92.
547
Ibid.
548
Epifanio de los Santos Cristobal, “A Short History of Tagalog Literature,” Thinking for
Ourselves: A Representative Collection of Filipino Essays, Vicente Hilario and Eliseo Quirino, ed. (Manila:
Oriental Commercial Company, 1928), 107. Not withstanding the title of is essay what de los Santos gives
us in this essay is really the history of Philippine literature in Spanish. Apart from a brief mention of the
proverbs and riddles that existed from pre-colonial times, this essay does not mention a single literary work
in Tagalog. It is quite clear how he connects “the Filipino soul” to the Spanish language.
549
Arcenio Luz, “ “Tendencies in Philippine Literature,” Thinking for Ourselves: A Representative
Collection of Filipino Essays, Vicente Hilario and Eliseo Quirino, ed. (Manila: Oriental Commercial
Company, 1928), 85.
550
Ibid, 87.

206
language, these writers seem to acknowledge the inevitable presence of both English and the local
languages. As Epifanio de los Santos advises: “Spaniards, Filipinos, and Americans must bear in
mind that the work [of developing Philippine culture] was and will be everybody’s. Nobody is
entitled to claim the exclusive privilege.”

551
Theirs was a syncretic ideal that found the Filipino
soul in the blend of all influences. This idea is reflected too in Antonio Viterbo’s idea of an
educated Filipino. As being: “proficient, not only in his particular vernacular and in English, but
also in the use of Spanish.”
552
Obviously, it is not that Viterbo (Luz, Guerrero, and de los Santos
as well) wished for the disappearance of the vernaculars and English. The vernaculars were going
to thrive in the homes and English would survive through the schools. Their vexations had to do
with the disappearance of the Spanish language and literary works in Spanish, which in the words
of Viterbo, “have become so woven into the warp and woof of our social fabric and have been
permitted and encouraged so long to permeate and mould our cultural development.”
553
Without
any institutional support for Spanish, these writers feared a cultural decline. In their view,
Spanish was “singularly necessary”
554
for the understanding of our history and our identity.
Despite the linguistic diversity that these writers prescribed to, it has to be stressed
though that there was an implicit (and as we will later see, sometimes explicit) hierarchy of the
languages. Viterbo saw educated Filipinos as people who knew their vernacular. Yet, in the stark
absence of it in these writer’s discussion of language, one is led to surmise that these writers felt
that they would endure as the language of everyday life, but that they did not have much
significance in Philippine cultural, literary, and philosophical life. In this way, these writers who
defended Spanish were very much like Pardo de Tavera in his condescending loyalty to the
Philippine languages. Pardo de Tavera says: “I love the native dialects more than any other
language, but I do not see any propriety in teaching them in the public schools unless the aim is to

551
de los Santos, “A Short History of Tagalog,” 108.

552
Antonio Viterbo, “The Swing of the Pendulum,” Thinking for Ourselves: A Representative
Collection of Filipino Essays, Vicente Hilario and Eliseo Quirino, ed. (Manila: Oriental Commercial
Company, 1928), 123.
553
Ibid, 124.
554
Ibid.

207
retard the progress of the Filipino.”
555
Inevitably, for these writers, like Pardo de Tavera, the
debate about what language was truly significant in Philippine life was a debate that involved two
foreign languages.
Buenaventura Rodriguez would complain about this dismissive attitude toward the
vernaculars in “In Defense of the Vernaculars,” the only essay within the Thinking for Ourselves
collection that discusses the local languages in any great length. He expresses his sadness at the
indifference, maybe even disdain for the vernaculars: “When they are used, they are sometimes
taken as a sign of an absence of culture.”
556
He seems all too aware that those who would defend
the native languages would be accused of nativism, of “advocating the proscription of everything
American in order that the barong tagalog may be adopted.”
557
Yet, like the Tagalog writers who
would defend their own language, Rodriguez seems only to take genuine delight in the beauty of
his language. Rodriguez is a Visayan playwright and what he principally does in this essay is to
describe the charm, beauty and vigor of Visayan and to explain how perfectly is represents the
Visayan experience and how it appeals directly to the senses. His is not a campaign for a Visayan

as the national language. Tagalog and the other Philippine languages, he argues, surely holds the
same treasures Visayan does. “To reach the heart of the people, the native tongue is
unreplaceable.”
558
For Rodriguez, the importance of language is in its ability to reflect ordinary
emotions and lived experience of common people (“pain, love, devotion, hate, a curse, a reproach,
or a request”
559
). Uncannily, the status of the vernacular, of which he has many vexations, is
explained in his very definition of it. “The people” to whom the vernaculars belong to obviously
refer here to the folk, the masses. Thus, whereas English is defended for its ability to bring
progress and Spanish is defended for its role in bringing about a height, a golden age, the
vernaculars, are despised because of its proximity to the commonness of “the people.”

555
quoted in Salvador P. Lopez, “The Social Philosophy of Trinidad H. Pardo de Tavera.”
Philippine Social Science Review 5, no. 3 (1933): 185.
556
Buenaventura Rodriguez, “In Defense of the Vernaculars,” Thinking for Ourselves: A
Representative Collection of Filipino Essays, Vicente Hilario and Eliseo Quirino, ed. (Manila: Oriental
Commercial Company, 1928), 117.
557
Ibid, 116.
558
Ibid, 120.
559
Ibid, 118.

208

Statements in English in the 1920s
The writers in English imagined the Philippine nation and Philippine culture through the
language issue in a number of ways. Bocobo and Osias demonstrated their primary concern as
being what language would most effectively transmit knowledge to the citizenry that would
constitute the nation-to-be. The mode of transmission was more important than what knowledge
would be transmitted or whether the language or the knowledge embodied a sense of Philippine
culture and history. In the debate over the Filipino soul, the concern was over which of the two
languages, English or Spanish could bring the Filipinos toward the objective of progress. English
was defended because it represented a modern perspective, free from superstitions. Spanish, on
the other hand, was defended because it was the language with which the Philippines had
achieved a golden age and was the language with which that aspect of Philippine culture, which
was so rooted in struggle could be articulated. Yet, even here, language is viewed with a certain
eye toward the idea of civilization, evolution and progress.
Although scholars have been concerned about whether English can communicate
Philippine nationalism, the pertinent questions about English should be questions about the
distinct character, if it exists, of the nationalism expressed in essays written in English. If
nationalism is equated with a defense of the local languages or with a desire for independence,
then evidence abounds for the ability of English to express nationalism. However, it would be
interesting to investigate the manner by which the language used to express this nationalism,
English, Spanish or Tagalog is implicated in a particular way of perceiving the Philippine nation
and the Filipino people.
In the 1920s, the language issue had become one of the principal issues that concerned
Filipinos. The lawmakers in the all-Filipino legislature were filing bills that covered every
position in the language debate. In 1922 alone, three bills were filed that represented the
conflicting language interests. Senator Vicente Sotto of Cebu filed a bill which provided for the
teaching of Spanish in the intermediate and high school levels; Senator Hermenegildo Villanueva
of Negros filed a bill providing for the creation of a language committee that would look into the

209
fusion of the Philippine languages; while Senator Haji Butu of Mindanao, supported by

congressmen from Cebu, Bicol, and Bulacan, called for the institution of Tagalog as the national
language. Two years later, these bills which did not pass in 1922, would be refilled and debated
over again, only to go unpassed again.
Those who would write extensively, in English, on the issue of the local languages did so
from two fronts: as a medium of instruction and as a national language. Though many of the
Tagalog language organizations such as the Kapulungan Batangas and the Ilaw at Panitik called
for both Tagalog as a national language and for its use as a medium of instruction in schools
throughout the Philippines, the writers on English were tackling the issues separately. It was not
until the 1930s that, for the English writers, the two issues would merge.
In these articulations of the 1920s, one finds a discourse concerned with demonstrating its
own learnedness and with exhibiting the proficient use of scientific methods. The writers, much
like Bocobo, Osias, and Pardo de Tavera, seem to view the nation as yet to be made with a
citizenry yet to be educated in the foundations of modern life and democracy. This framework,
within which these writers in English were bound, was a framework created by the American
colonial machinery. It is a framework that is based on the idea of the Filipino as children who are
still to be tutored. It thus puts a premium on the most efficient method of creating a citizenry that
will be “capable of self-government.”
The towering statement in defense of the vernaculars during this period came from, not a
Filipino, but from someone within the American colonial government. The Language of
Education if the Philippine Islands by Najeeb Saleeby, published in 1924, is a small pamphlet of
a book that later became a much referred to and cited source. Saleeby arrived in the Philippines
in 1900 and worked (as a medical doctor) with the United States Army and then later with the
Bureau of Non-Christian tribes. Through his visits to China, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon between
1919 and 1920, he became interested in what he saw was the growing attention given the question
of language in education in occupied territories. Saleebey’s was not the first critical articulation
of the language policy coming from an American but it probably was the first thorough critical
analysis of it to emerge from someone within the colonial bureaucracy. Saleeby’s sentiment,

210
premises, analysis, position, and recommendation would be reprised in 1931 by George C. Butte,

Vice-Governor and Secretary of Public Instruction. The press in 1931 dubbed Vice-Governor
Butte’s stand “The Butte Thunderbolt” as it seemed a surprising reversal of fortune that the
uncompromising language policy instituted thirty years before would be disavowed by one of the
highest ranking officials of the American colonial bureaucracy.
Saleeby’s argument centers on the idea that the medium of instruction in the primary
schools be the vernacular languages. He based his argument on statistics from over the past
twenty years that showed that a great majority (he cites 96%) of Filipino school children do not
get past elementary school. Since these children are in school for an average of just about four
years, the amount of English that they receive from this brief education is not enough to be of any
use to them in their future lives and is certainly not enough on which to pin hopes that English
will eventually replace the mother tongue and become the common language (as American
colonial officials had hoped). Learning through English, according to Saleeby, retards the whole
process of learning because students devote all their mental energy grappling with a foreign
language and therefore are unable to properly digest and develop the lesson (math, geography,
civics, etc.). His proposal is that the vernaculars be used instead as it is the best way to create a
popular citizenry knowledgeable in the basics of modern life (“some idea of health matters,
epidemics, infections, disease, plant life, improved agricultural methods, elementary geography,
business and commercial transactions, common laws, governmental and civic ideas, etc.”
560
) so as
to create a “civilization of non-English speaking people which is building up a representative
democratic form of government and aspires for independence.”
561

Saleeby does not condemn the whole language policy and he affirms the benevolence of
the American public education program. English, he affirms, “fosters a higher intellectual
development and a superior culture”
562
and thus he is quick to point out that he believes English
should be the medium of instruction for grades beyond the primary. He believes that, had

560
Najeeb Mitry Saleeby, The Language of Education of the Phlippine Islands, (Manila: n.p.,
1924), 38.
561
Ibid, 48.
562
Ibid, 13.

211
circumstances been ideal (at least one American teacher per school, more money for education,
more Americans in the Philippines) then English would also have been the ideal language to use
as the medium of instruction even for the primary grades. As such, however, Saleeby saw the
only practical, just and democratic alternative to be primary education in the vernaculars.
A year after the publication of Saleeby’s book, Cecilio Lopez, a lingustics professor at the
University of the Philippines, published an article in the Philippines Herald that echoed Saleeby’s
position but presented the issue in a more technical and scholarly fashion. In his article, Lopez
makes it clear that the issue of the national language and the medium of instruction are two
separate issues and that he would tackle only the issue of the medium of instruction. In this
article Lopez adopts Saleeby’s position (he quotes Saleeby twice) regarding the use of the
vernaculars in primary schools and regarding the important part English still plays in Philippine
education. The creation of a competent citizenry is also his objective and the use of the
vernaculars, he believes, is the best way to “combat ignorance and abolish illiteracy.” He asks,
rhetorically: “How can the plain rural Filipino villagers live, vote and function as free citizens if
they cannot use their native dialects?”
563

Lopez’s expertise as a linguist is best seen however in his discussion of the language
policies of other colonial states (Netherlands India or Indonesia and British Ceylon) and in his
citation of various linguists. It is also seen in his technical explanation of the vast difference

between English and the local languages that will make it extremely difficult, if not impossible
for Filipinos to learn in English. The morphology and the grammatical structure of the two
languages are different; Filipino languages, unlike English possess no gender (which is a cause of
infinite confusion to Filipinos trying to speak English); and whereas English is an “inflected
language,” Philippine languages are “agglutinative in nature.” This last difference may have been
understood by the lay reader had Lopez explained his terminology but he does not and the terms
“inflected” and “agglutinative” are left undefined as though they were self-evident.

563
Cecilio Lopez, “Proposed Solution of P.I. Language Tangle.” Philippines Herald, 1 March
1925, 16.