128 USEFUL PLANTS OF GUAM. 



to his assistant, and 48 pesos for the minor expenses attending the 

 education of "poor children." 



The education dispensed was of the most elementary nature. At 

 times it consisted of a course in "music and primary letters" and in 

 giving to a few boys sufficient instruction to serve as acolytes for the 

 priests. Man}^ of the governors disapproved of the higher education 

 of the natives. Don Francisco Villalobos suggested to the captain- 

 general that the college be abolished and that the funds be applied to 

 "general education, to repairs and ornaments of the churches, and to 

 the improvement of government buildings and priests' residences on 

 the island." He also recommended that the schoolhouse be converted 

 into an inn or guest house for the entertainment of strangers, and that 

 the fixed income therefrom be applied to government purposes. 



The uupils, it was asserted, were injured rather than benefited b}^ 

 their ed i cation and rendered unfit for future usefulness. On entering 

 'fche college they soon forgot the misery and poverty of their homes, 

 and during their stay of five or six y ears became accustomed to good 

 food, clothing, and lodging, without learning any trade by which they 

 might afterwards earn a living and without forming habits of industry <> 

 The discipline was declared to be bad, and everything tended to make 

 the students incompetent to earn their living, discontented with their 

 lot, and, the more quick-witted among them, thorns in the side of the 

 governor, who was often obliged to impose "correctional punish- 

 ments" upon them/' 



Another governor, Don Felipe de la Corte, recommended that the 

 education of the natives be limited to the merest rudiments, to avoid 

 their acquiring a superficial knowledge of the more advanced branches 

 of learning, which would lead to pretensions on their part to be men 

 of education. Such persons, he declared, gave more trouble to the 

 authorities than am r other class and were a disturbing element among 

 the natives. In spite of Don Felipe's recommendation the captain- 

 general at Manila did not see fit to divert the fund from its original 

 object. 



From these and other extracts from the archives it is easily seen 

 that the Spanish governors of the island of Guam discouraged the 

 higher education of the natives not because they thought them inca- 

 pable of receiving it, but because they believed the}^ would be more 

 tractable if they remained ignorant. 



SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS AND CUSTOMS. 



Marriage. — The natives marry at a comparatively early age, and 

 the young couple, though they ma} T continue to live with the family 

 of the bride or of the groom in the town residence, usually enter into 



a Don Francisco Villalobos, letters to the captain-general of the Philippines, inedited, 

 November 16, 1831, and February 9, 1833. 



