Spanish Period

Under Spanish rule there were established in these islands a system of primary schools. The Spanish regulations provided that there should be one male and one female primary school-teacher for each 5,000 inhabitants. It is clearly shown in the report of the first Philippine Commission that even this inadequate provision was never carried out. They say: “Taking the entire population at 8,000,000, we find that there is but one teacher to each 4,179 inhabitants.” There were no schoolhouses, no modern furniture, and, until the Americans came, there were no good text-books. The schools were and are now held in the residences of the teachers, or in buildings hired by the municipalities and used by the principals as dwellings.

In some of the schools there were wooden benches and tables, but it was not at all unusual to find a school without any seats for the pupils. In these primary schools, reading, writing, sacred history, and the catechism were taught. Except in a very few towns, the four elementary arithmetical processes were attempted, and in a few towns a book on geography was used as a reading book. Girls were taught embroidery and needlework. From the beginning the schools were entirely under the supervision of the religious orders, who were disposed to emphasize secondary and higher education for a few pupils rathe than to further and promote the primary education of the masses.

The result of this policy is that a few persons have stood out prominently as educated Filipinos, while the great mass of people have either not been educated at all or furnished only the rudiments of knowledge, acquiring merely the mechanical processes of reading and writing. The little school instruction the average Filipino has had has not tended to broaden his intelligence or to give him power of independent thought. One observes in the schools a tendency on the part of the pupils to give back, like phonographs, what they have heard or read or memorized, without seeming to have thought for themselves. As a rule, they possess mechanical skill, and they excel in writing and drawing.

The Spaniards made very little use of this peculiar capacity. …It is stated on good authority that when the Spaniards came here several of the tribes of the Philippine Islands could read and write their own language. At the present time, after three hundred years of Spanish domination, the bulk of the people cannot do his. The Spanish minister for the colonies, in a report made December 5, 1870, points out that, by the process of absorption, matters of education had become concentrated in the hands of the religious orders.

He says: “While every acknowledgement should be made of their services in earlier times, their narrow, exclusively religious system of education, and their imperviousness to modern or external ideas and influences, which every day become more and more evident, rendered secularization of instruction necessary.” …It has been stated that in 1897 here were in these islands 2,167 public schools. The ineffectiveness of these schools will be seen when it is remembered that a school under the Spanish regime was a strictly sectarian, ungraded school, with no prescribed course of study and no definite standards for each year, and that they were in charge of duly certificated but hardly professionally trained or progressive teachers, housed in unsuitable and unsanitary buildings.[33] hose numbers led some people to conclude that less than 6% of the population were attending schools.

However that assumption was completely misleading, because it takes into account all of the population, including babies and old people, when in reality public school systems are meant primarily for children and teenagers. To calculate the percentage of children on scholar age, it must be taken into account the number of children in Elementary School age (ages 5 through 13) and teenagers in High School age (ages 14 through 17). That would yield a total percentage of around 20% of the total population. Since the 1887 census yielded a count of 6,984,727,[34]20% would be approximately 1,4 million.

Also, by 1892 the number of schools had more than doubled to 2,137, 1,087 of which were for boys and 1,050 for girls, which means that the number of children attending school also did increase, to at least 500,000, by conservative estimates. That’s about 35% of the population in School age. Another claim commonly heard was that based on the official figures there couldn’t be a school in every village in the Islands, as Manuel L. Quezon declared years later before the Philippine Assembly. However, since those official figures branded by the Philippine Commission itself put the total number of municipalities in the archipelago at 900, and the number of public schools at 2,167, those numbers reveal that there was not only one school in every municipality in the Islands, but in most cases two or more.

Neither was taken into account that the schools maintained by Spain were closed and in many cases looted and badly damaged during the Spanish–American War and the Philippine Revolution. Although the free and compulsory elementary education system was temporarily reestablished by the Malolos Constitution, it was finally dismantled after the Philippine–American War, that also took a heavy toll upon the remaining educational infrastructures. Finally, the Philippine Commission made no reference to the fact that the pioneering public school education introduced by Spain in the Philippines was the first of its kind in all of Asia, and the first to be established in any European colony in the world.

Such system was even ahead of most of United States at the time, where by 1900 only 34 states had any kind of compulsory schooling laws requiring attendance until age 14.[35] As a result, the average American at the time was less educated than the average Filipino, something that was specially true among the troops that fought in the Philippine–American War, since most of the soldiers generally were of humble social origins.[36] The Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade was the main source of income for the colony during its early years. Service was inaugurated in 1565 and continued into the early 19th century.

· The Galleon trade brought silver from New Spain and silk from China by way of Manila. This way, the Philippines earned its income through buy and sell – that is, they bought silk from China for resale to New Spain and then bought American silver for resale to China.

· The trade was very prosperous. But It neglected the development of the colony’s local industries which affected the Indios since agriculture was their main source of income. In addition, the building and operation of galleons put too much burden on the colonists’ annual polo y servicio, resulted in cultural and commercial exchanges between Asia and the Americas that led to the introduction of new crops and animals to the Philippines notably tobacco that gave the colony its first real income which benefit extended to the common Indio.

· The trade lasted for over two hundred years, and ceased in 1821 with the secession of American colonies from Spain.

Royal Society of Friends of the Country

· Jose de Basco y Vargas, formally established the Real Sociedad Economica de Amigos del Pais composed of leading men in business, industry and profession.

· The society was tasked to explore and exploit the island’s natural bounties.

* The society led to the creation of Plan General Economico of Basco which implemented the monopolies on the areca nut, tobacco, spirited liquors and explosives. * It offered local and foreign scholarships and training grants in agriculture and established an academy of design. * It was also credited to the carabao ban of 1782, the formation of the silversmiths and gold beaters guild and the construction of the first papermill in the Philippines in 1825. * It was introduced on 1780, vanished temporarily on 1787-1819, 1820-1822 and 1875-1822 and ceased to exist in the middle of the 1890s. Royal Company of the Philippines

· March 10, 1785, Charles III created the Royal Philippine Company with a 25 year charter.

· It was granted exclusive monopoly of bringing to Manila, Philippines; Chinese and Indian goods and shipping them directly to Spain via the Cape of Good Hope.

· It was stiffly objected by the Dutch and English who saw it as a direct attack on their trade of Asian goods.

· It was also vehemently opposed by the traders of the Galleon trade who saw it as competition. This gradually resulted into the death of both institutions: The Royal Philippine Company in 1814 and the Galleon trade in 1815. * The buwis (tribute), which could be paid in cash or kind (tobacco, chickens, produce, gold, blankets, cotton, rice, etc., depending on the region of the country), was initially was fixed at 8 reales (one real being 12.5 centavos) and later increased to 15 reales, apportioned as follows: ten reales buwis, one real diezmos prediales (tithes), one real to the town community chest, one real sanctorum tax, and three reales for church support

* Also collected were the bandalâ (from the Tagalog word mandalâ, a round stack of rice stalks to be threshed), an annual enforced sale and requisitioning of goods such as rice. * Custom duties and income tax were also collected. By 1884, the tribute was replaced by the Cedula personal, wherein colonists were required to pay for personal identification. Everyone over the age of 18 was obliged to pay. Principalia – nobility class was the social and educated class in the towns of colonial Philippines composed of the Gobernadorcillo (Town Mayor), or the Cabeza de Barangay (Chief of the Barangay) who governed the districts and the awardees of the medal of Civil Merit.

Exempted from forced labor during the colonial period

1. Were allowed to vote, be elected to public office and be addressed by the title: Don or Doña 2. Given certain roles in the Church, such as assisting the priest in pastoral and religious activities

Disclaimer
-This article is not mine. I just shared this research paper product of searching the google.