Note 11 — THE COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS

Of the Moret decree, Tomás G. del Rosario, writing on education in the Philippines, in Census of Philippines, iii, p. 637, says: “This decree, countersigned by the eminent colonial minister, Don Segismundo Moret, introducing modern advances in Philippine legislation, secularizing instruction and giving it all kinds of guarantees and liberties, this long-awaited provision, caused a great outburst of enthusiasm throughout the archipelago, as it signified the manumission of the popular conscience from a slavery bound with the chains of fanaticism and inimical irreconcilability. In many provinces and in the city of Manila, this never-to-be-forgotten resolution of the Spanish government was received with signs of evident joy. Later, under various pretexts, all those who had expressed joy were cruelly persecuted, and put in jail, or deported as insurgents, masons, filibusters, etc., these measures extending even to those who were merely suspected. This is the history of all theocratic or despotic governments. It is true that some residents and parents of families protested against this provision, together with the corporations, the bishops, and the clergy, but these residents and fathers of families did so either through fear or because they were debtors to or members of the families of the friars. Some did so for fear of being discovered, but most of them to carry out ambitions; no one made a protest with sincerity and in good faith. Everything was hypocrisy, as is the case, and must be the case, among all nations oppressed by absolutism.” R. L. Packard’s article, “Education in Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines” included in the Report of the Commissioner of Education 1897–98, i, pp. 909–983, gives (pp. 976, 977), the plan of studies of the Moret decree of November 6, which is as follows: Spanish and Latin grammar; elements of rhetoric and poetry; elements of physical geography; elements of descriptive geography in general and the Philippines in particular; universal history—history of Spain and the Philippine Islands; arithmetic and algebra; geometry and plane trigonometry; elements of physics and chemistry and of natural history; psychology, logic, and moral philosophy; general outline of anatomy, physiology, and hygiene. The studies for the industrial profession included: mercantile arithmetic; bookkeeping and accounts; political economy and mercantile and industrial legislation; geography and commercial statistics; French, English, Tagálog, and Visayan; surveying; spherical trigonometry; cosmography, pilotage, and maneuvers; theoretical and applied mechanics; physics and chemistry applied to the arts; topographical drawing and hydrography; lineal and ornamental drawing—landscape, figures, and painting. The university of Santo Tomás, which changed its title to that of the university of the Philippines by this decree was organized as to its faculties of law and medicine, and the latter contained the following studies: descriptive and general anatomy, two courses; exercises in osteology and dissection, two courses; physiology, one course; public and private hygiene, one course; general pathology, with clinics and pathological anatomy, one course; therapeutics, materia medica, and writing prescriptions, one course; surgical pathology, with operations, bandaging, etc., one course; medical pathology, one course; obstetrics and special pathology of women and children, with clinics, one course; medical and surgical clinics, two courses; legal and toxicological medicine, one course. The pharmaceutical course was also reorganized by this decree. The same minister had proposed October 2, 1870, “that instruction should be given at the university of Madrid in Tagálog and other studies which would give information about the Philippines and the English and Dutch East India possessions and their methods of government, especially for the benefit of those who intended to enter the colonial service.” December 5, 1870, in an exposition of the history, conditions, and needs of public instruction in the Philippines, he recites the early activity of the Augustinians, Dominicans, and Jesuits, in education. He points out that by the process of absorption by the religious orders, education became concentrated in their hands, and while they had done much good in early times, their narrowness and conservatism rendered secularization of instruction necessary. ↑