The Hays free press. [volume] (Hays, Kan.) 1908-1924, 1909-04-10
CURB FILIPINO BOY
MARY n. FEE TELLS PECULIAR
MANNERISMS.
School Children Are Afraid Of Being
Laughed At, But They Never Con-
slider Themselves Ludi-
crous.
BY MARY HELEN FEE.


american Teacher in Philippines.)
Filipino children are far easier to
discipline than American, so long as
they find firmness and justice in the
teacher. At the first sign of weakness
in his personality, or in the govern
ment which is behind him, they are
infinitely more unruly and arrogant
than the children of our own race.
There is, even in the most truculent
American child, a sense of the eternal
fitness of things, which the Filipino
lacks. 1t is something which is not
altogether applicable by the hack
neyed allegation as to the Filipino's
inadequate conception of what consti-
tutes liberty. If anything, it would
seem to me to be based upon the
Americans fear OF making a fool of
himself. 1t is at that point exactly
that the great divergence between the
characters of the American and the
Filipino begins. Filipinos are dread
fully afraid Of being laughed at, but l
have yet to meet the one, child or
adult, who entertained the faintest
suspicion that he might, of his own
volition, make a fool of himself. He
is more suspicious of others and be-
lieves that people may laugh at him
from sheer wantonness, but he cannot
imagine that he may put himself in a
position where the laughter would be
justified.
The following anecdote may serve
to illustrate this characteristic: A
certain American teacher was training
a Filipino boy in an oratorical recita-
ton. The boy had adopted a plan of
lifting one hand in an impassioned
gesture, holding it moment, then let
ting it drop only to repeat the per-
Torrance with the other hand. After
he had prolonged this until he began
to look like fragment of the ballet
Of La Poupee," the teacher lost pa
thence.
Domingo" she said, don't saw the
air with those pointless gestures. They
are inappropriate and artificial and
they make you look foolish"
Domingo paused and contemplated
her for a moment with the large sym
pathy which FIlipinos so often display
for our artistic inappreciativeness
Madame" he replied, -"you surprise
and pain me. Those gestures are not
foolishness. They are talent.
thought they would please you
When a single American child goes
into conflict with the constituted au-
thorities he must have a great deal
of the best of the question in order
to enlist active partisanship on the
part of his fellow pupils. If they do go
with him it is usually for one of two
reasons. Either the teacher is weak
personally, and the children perceive
it, and despise the arrogance which
seeks a leaders position without hav-
ing a leaders courage; or recognizing
the impregnable strength of their
united efforts they set out in cold
blooded good humor to make life a
burden to that teacher, and give him
to understand that he rules by the
consent of the governed and must not
mistake their complaisance for his
own power. Filipino children follow
no such lines of reason. They do not
reason at all as matter of fact, but
they act on certain sub-conscious i'm
pulses which are harder to meet with
reason than the most able logic that
ever sprang from any brain. They
have not, for instance, the tradition of
natural enmity between pupil and
teacher which is almost a national in
heritance with us. On the whole their
attitude toward their teachers is a
very kindly one. But there is, in every
one of them, male or female, desire
to assert himself personally; to have
the center of the stage, as it were, and
speak the leading role. AS Mr.. Kip
ling would put it, there is too much
ego in their cosmos. The secret con-
seriousness of power is not enough for
them. They must flash it every sec
ond in your eyes, in order that you
may not forget to yield the adulation
which is due to power. This is femi-
nine quality and perhaps the shortest
way to put it would be to say that the
national temperament is a feminine
one, into which statement l hope my
readers will not project the meaning
effeminate. Filipino men are not lack
ing in manly qualities. They have the
physical courage, the relatively strong
er will and stronger passions as com
pared with women. but in both sexes
of the Filipino race there are en-
phasized certain mental and moral pc
culiarities which we are accustomed to
consider as feminine. In political, as
well as social matters, for instance,
they are ruled more by personal emo
ton and private ambition than by any
general moral or social code. They
are proud, but their pride is in their
personal influence or powers of at
traction, not in what they have ac-
complished. They rely upon intuition
to guide them, more than upon an