Note XXX-6 — Chapter XXX · INTELLECTUAL ADVANCEMENT. 1800-1887.

Early in 1872 the university of Leon, the former Colegio Tridentino, had but three chairs and 66 alumni, and four classes of secondary instruction attended by 102 pupils; that of Granada had only a chair of law, and seven classes of secondary instruction attended by 160 pupils. In primary instruction, there were at that time only 92 schools for boys and 9 for girls, a number of them private, and one missionary in Cuapa, attended by 3,871 boys and 532 girls, out of a population of 205,500, or say 20 children out of 1,000 inhabitants; only 532 girls out of 18,000 of school age, and 4,000 boys out of 12,000, were receiving instruction. Lévy, Nic., 360-3. Teachers of pub. schools are paid $12 a month and a little extra in larger towns. That state of things was due mainly to the neglect of parents. The funds appropriated for education were constantly tampered with and defrauded; this was acknowledged by the minister of instruction. There were no schools for adults, no professional institutes. As a rule, wealthy families sent their sons to be educated abroad, or at least in Guat. There was in 1873 no scientific course provided with the requisite materials, no laboratories, no museum, no public or private collections, no observatory, nothing; not even a small library. The conclusion to be drawn from the above is that the general intellectual level could not be high.