﻿ix. d, 2 Cain: History of the Spanish Normal School 147 



Of these, about a quarter secure positions as teachers, some go home satis- 

 fied with the education already obtained, some look for clerical positions, 

 some secure in a short time larger salaries with less work and responsibility 

 than would befall them as teachers, while some go on with their studies to 

 higher schools to secure a surveyor's or a commercial degree and thus rob 

 the schools of the best educated teachers. These causes would cease if the 

 pay of teachers were increased; they now receive less than other employees 

 of much inferior education, although they have more work and greater 

 responsibility. 



Another reason why Filipino teachers are not careful in the performance 

 of their duties is that they have little assistance. Some have no proper 

 schoolhouses and no suitable equipment and accommodations, while others are 

 confronted by the opposition of parents. Some spend most of their time 

 in lowering the standards of their profession and are unable to keep up the 

 position demanded of a teacher, until at last they possess little or nothing 

 but the name. If then there are poor teachers, this affords no reason why 

 the normal school should be characterized as useless. 



We might make complaints on similar grounds to the effect that Spanish 

 is little spoken. Fifty per cent of this criticism is exaggeration. Those 

 who have spent some years in the country agree that in the last fifteen to 

 twenty years they have noticed a remarkable increase in the number of 

 those who speak Spanish in the provinces. To hope for universal Spanish is 

 to disregard history and linguistics. The Basque and Catalan provinces of 

 Spain, Alsace-Lorraine in Germany, and Roussillon in France are examples 

 of the fact that, after a lapse of many centuries under a more advanced 

 civilization and with more compulsion, primitive dialects have not been 

 superseded by the official language. On this account, then, there is no 

 charge against the normal school. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GRADUATE 



Don Mariano Padilla, who graduated from the normal school 

 in 1888, furnishes the best description we have of the methods 

 of teaching practiced in the training department of the normal 

 school and in the public schools generally. 20 



The practice school, supervised by a graduate of the normal school, 

 furnished the students an illustration of how to teach, as well as how to 

 organize and manage a large school. Each pupil of the third year was 

 required to attend this school two weeks before graduating. The method 

 of teaching was also studied in the class. The pupil teachers were not only 

 required to master the lessons and practical exercises assigned, but were 

 also expected to be able to present and explain each subject in such a way 

 that it could be understood by the children. 



We studied four systems of teaching, which we called individual, simul- 

 taneous, mutual, and mixed. The individual system consisted in teaching 

 pupils one by one all the lessons they studied. This system was not appli- 

 cable to a large school, but for a few pupils it furnished excellent advan- 

 tages as the teacher could instruct according to the capacity and intelligence 

 of each. 



20 See No. 21 in the bibliography. 



126083—4 



