The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-05-15
SCHOOL EXERCISES AT MANILA

An American Editor Gets Some Livel,
 Impressions From Seeing Them.
 We have before us d most extraordi
 nary editorial article which appeared
 in the Manila Times of the 18th O
 March last. It gives the writer's i'm
 pressions of our educat tional methods if
 the Philippines, as rerived by him from q public commencement ceremony he had attended few evenings previous ly. He speaks of the event as sue cess, regarded as q school entertain
 ment. The children acquitted them
 selves exceedingly well, and were cor respondingly applauded, while the au-
 dience, composed of the elite of Mani
 las, Filipino society, displayed a most 1 gratifying degree of wealth, culture and refinement The gathering was repre- | sentative of the best of Filipino life.
 But the editor of the Times finds much
 material for uneasiness in the deeper
 suggestions and revelations of the af- l fair He recognizes in our system the
 seed of disappointment, if not disaster, 1 r UT Olle lHtllS, we tlO Ilpl dpIIOdCl llic l Fflipinos with sympathy or teach them with intelligence The debate referred l to in the article was conducted in Eng l fish, but what English The commen- tator says the children had been so taught that they used 1t as our high school pupils use dead language-an item in curriculum to be discarded af-
 ter graduation They clearly did not
 consider 1t as intended for future use.
 It had not been presented to them IS
 thing of real significance. They carried
 on the debate as our Harvard students
 sometimes produce Greek plays; in the spirit in which little Washington girls in the public schools rnemorize the pons utterly failed to interest them in the English language. Their precepts had been as perfunctory and as lifeless as the digestion of the Filipino pupils.
 Our Manila contemporary contem- plates the situation with concern He tells us that these children whose school exercises he witnessed are of the aris- tocracy They will be the leaders of their people. For generations to come they and their descendants will exert dominant influence upon the thoughts, the feelings and the purposes of their people. He says
 But what of these young Filipinos? What of the spirit which animates them toward America and Americans? It needs no deep scrutiny to see that they tolerate. rather than accept, the new conditions. Their lot is one of sur ference. Outwardly, they recognize the American sovereignty; inwardly, they despse it. They did not seek the new sovereignty and new civilization; it sought them. If they can help it, they will have none of it. They regard themselves as prisoners, and as such, submit. There is no inclination to &C., eept and identify themselves with the new regime. They regard it as a thing alien and foreign to l hem. They are really growing up in l our midst as strange and indifferent to IS and ours as the wild savage of Thi- pet or far away Kamchatka."
 Nor. bad as it is, is this all The el- lers of the upper class are no more at- racted to us than are the youth On he contrary, they are drifting away, heir sympathies are gradually with Irawing, coldness is taking the place if cordiality. If it be our purpose to make friends of the ruling element, we ave sorrowfully failed. If, on the oth- r hand, we propose to dragoon them nto subjection, our policy seems to ave thoroughly paved the way for that ostie expedient. One more quotation:
 ITO remedy matters, we have two olicies open before us. We can either ersuade or coerce, lead or drive. We lust either go among these people and how them that it is to their best inter- st to identify themselves with our merican institutions, or we can by leg 1 ,lation force our customs upon them. tut one way or another something { lust be done. They are too large and angerous an element to leave alone. { is no exaggeration to say that four l fths of the insurrectionary spirit Hes l ght among this same educated and 1 lltured mestizo class in Manila. It is ! ot only expediency, but necessity, g hich recommends a change in our ! i resent policy. $ Meanwhile, it will pay LIS to keep our c yes and thoughts on the college youth p hey are grave menace. , ' We know nothing of this gentleman r 4yond the fact that he edits, and edits i V
 excellent literary style, a newspaper q
 Manila. That he speaks with force a Il directness and with every appear . ice of authority, no one can deny, To \ " claim that he speaks ignorantly or lsely, the student of our history in the 1ilippines will instinctively reply that a cannot possibly be as ignorant or as staken as those civil and military au- si critics who, during the past two c ars have repeatedly and confidently = oclaimed the paeification of the is- Luzon-and the re- me of law and order. Unless We have