More 1908 arithmetic

The Thomasites’ first school year wasn’t all rosy. They had arrived in Manila mid-1901 in the midst of squabbling about the directions of Filipino mass education. Priests were resisting the relegation of religion to only after classes. Caciques were sending their children to private sectarian schools, totaling 1,329 with enrolment of 90,023 in early 1903. By contrast, 200,000 peasant kids were packed in 1,633 public schools. And even that number dropped significantly during harvest time or disruptions by US Army pacification drives. Still the Thomasites persisted with industrial education, alternately praised as liberating and derided as training for cheap labor in American companies.

Morale was low. The Thomasites had been promised monthly wages of $75-$125, enticing compared to 1900 rates of $54 for males and $40 for females in rural America, and $138 and $62 respectively in urban. But they received their pay in Mexican pesos, the local currency that was fast slipping in value. They had many complaints against the education bureau, some of which they aired in newspapers because there was no grievance system. They were supposed to teach only English reading, and spend most of the day training local teachers. But Filipino hires, mostly teachers from the Spanish rule, fell back to the old method of memorization. Desiring to develop individual expression and analytical thinking, the Thomasites thus had to take over most of the teaching load.

Dedication varied, wrote historian Glenn May in Social Engineering in the Philippines (The Aims, Execution and Impact of American Colonial Policy, 1900-1913). Different motives had induced the Thomasites to sail to Islas Filipinas. Most were fired with missionary zeal. Some just needed a job, wanted reunion with a spouse or fiancé, or searched for adventure. Of the first batch of 509 arrivals on transport ship Thomas, 31 had only high school education, 121 had normal school training, and the rest had finished college – but 107 had no teaching experience. One special fellow, who rose to be division superintendent for Zambales, so despised his pupils in Moncada, Tarlac, that he called them "170 wriggling, squirming, talking barbarians." His Filipino assistants were "brown half-savages." But he stayed in Luzon, lured by mining prospects.

Dr. David Barrows, anthropologist, educator, barrister, changed all that when he became general superintendent of schools in 1903-1909. For him, if the caciques were shooing their offspring from public schools, that was their lookout. Early on he stressed the "importance of educating the child of the peasant." Barrows feared that an uneducated peasantry would always be subordinate to the principalia: "The race lends itself naturally and without protest to the blind leadership of the aristocracy." So he mixed industrial with literary education, emphasized emancipation from tenancy, and injected it into Arithmetic. "Two years of instruction in arithmetic given to every child will in one generation destroy that repellent peonage or bonded indebtedness that prevails throughout this country," he wrote.

Barrows also commissioned new books with Filipino characters and settings, and such sample questions as: "Gil’s mother has sent him to the store for 2 spools of thread costing 8 centavos each. He has a 20-centavo piece to pay for the thread. How much change should he receive?" Barrows shortened the four-year primary course to only three years, to maximize the use of classrooms and teachers’ time.

Here again, from Mabel Bonsall and G.E. Mercer’s Primary Arithmetic: Part III (New York, 1908), are sample exams given during Barrow’s time:

Exercise 139.

1. Pedro is a tenant on Mr. Santos’ farm. He has rented 4 hectares of rice land. After the cutting is paid for, Mr. Santos is to have for the use of the land one-half of what rice is left, and Pedro will take the other half for himself. If 45 cavans grow on each hectare, and one-sixth is given for cutting, how many cavans will the cutters get? How much will be left? What will be Mr. Santos’ share? What will be Pedro’s share?

2. Last year, before harvest time, Pedro borrowed 20 cavans of rice from Mr. Santos, and for each cavan he promised to give in return 1-1/2 cavans after the harvest. How many cavans would Mr. Santos get? How many would Pedro have left?

3. If Pedro needs 30 cavans to feed his family during the year, how much rice will he have left at the end of the year?

4. Pedro lets Mr. Santos have all the rice he has left at P1.30 a cavan. This goes to pay the debt he owes at Mr. Santos’ store. He got each month: fish, P1; feed for his carabao, P1.50; and other things, P1.50. What were his expenses for 12 months? Which man is in debt to the other at the end of the year, and how much?

(Note to teachers: Explain to the class what a tenant is, how crops are divided, why tenants do not always get the same share, etc. Let the pupils make similar problems, using the actual figures and the customary shares given in your locality.)

Exercise 140.

1. Sixto has rented of Mr. Santos 12 hectares of land for sugarcane. He is to give Mr. Santos 1/2 of the crop and keep 1/2 for himself. If he gets 60 piculs of sugar from each hectare, how many piculs will Sixto have when the crop is divided?

2. If sugar is worth P4.20 a picul, what will Sixto get for his share of the crop?

3. During the year, Sixto paid for the following things: 40 sacks of rice at P4 a sack; 8 men working on the farm, P40 each; plowing, P60; hauling, P30; carabao feed, P40; meat and fish, P100; clothes and other things, P200; and for grinding the cane, P352. What did he pay for all? What was his profit for the year?

4. If Sixto had borrowed P1,000 to begin with, and had agreed to pay it back at the end of the year plus 1/10 for interest, how much could he now pay? How much would he still owe?

(Note to teachers: Under Land Act No. 926, any native of the Philippine Islands over 21 years of age, who does not already own 16 hectares of land, has the right to take up 16 hectares of government farm land for his own use and cultivation. Any person wishing to take up government land must make application to the local land officers or to the Chief of the Bureau of Public Lands in Manila. He must give the location and description of the land desired and show that he has the right to take up government land. He must reside upon the land taken up and cultivate it for five years. If then he pays the government a small fee, he is given a patent which makes him the owner of the land.)

* * *

The life and times and incomes of the independent farmer was what Exercise 141 is about (Gotcha, 18 Nov. 2005).

There were typos in Question 2, due to word-processing defaults that the proofreader didn’t spot. It should have read: "(Juan) planted 1/2 of it in sugarcane, 1/4 in corn, 1/8 in rice, and the rest in tobacco. How many hectares had he in each kind of crop? How many more hectares did he plant in sugarcane than in tobacco?"

Some readers thought Question 11 was incomplete, and thus couldn’t be answered. Nope, it was complete. Still it could have been a bonus (trick?) question, as most Item 11s are in usual 10-point exams: "A railroad company built a line of railroad through the corner of Juan’s farm. They paid him P1.20 an ar for a strip of land 200 meters long and 12 meters wide. How much did he receive?"

Most dictionaries don’t have entries for "ar" except as prefix or suffix; short for Arabic, argon, or arrival; or acronym for Army Regulation, annual return, or Arkansas. But American Heritage Dictionary (1991) had it: ar, noun, variation of are, "a metric unit of area equal to 100 square meters." So there.

* * *

E-mail: [email protected]