Note 21 — PRIMARY INSTRUCTION

Article 1. The object of the normal school is to serve as a seminary for religious, obedient, and instructed teachers, for the management of schools of primary instruction for the natives throughout the whole archipelago.

Art. 2. The scholars shall be resident, and subject to one and the same rule and discipline. For the present the number of day pupils fixed by the superior civil governor may be admitted, provided that their antecedents give hope that they can pursue their studies with advantage, and that their deportment corresponds to the good name of the institution.

Art. 3. In the same locality of the normal school, although with the fitting independence and separation, there shall be a school of primary instruction for non-resident boys, whose classes shall be managed, under the supervision of a teacher of the normal school, by the pupils of the same.

Art. 4. Education in the normal school shall comprise the following branches:

1. Religion, morals, and sacred history.

2. Theory and practice of reading.

3. Theory and practice of writing.

4. An extensive knowledge of the Castilian language with exercises in analysis, composition, and orthography.

5. Arithmetic, to ratio and proportion, elevation to powers, and extraction of roots, inclusive, together with the decimal metric system with its equivalent of local weights and measures.

6. Principles of Spanish geography and history.

7. Idem of Geometry.

8. Common acquaintance with physical and natural sciences.

9. Ideas of practical agriculture with reference to the cultivation of the products of the country.

10. Rules of courtesy.

11. Lessons in vocal and organ music.

12. Elements of pedagogy.

Art. 5. During the sessions of the normal school, the teachers shall speak only the Castilian language, and the scholars shall hold their classes and other literary acts in the same language. They shall be strictly prohibited from expressing themselves in any other language, even in their daily recreations and common intercourse within the precincts of the institution.

Art. 6. The studies mentioned in article 4 shall run for three years, and during the six months of the last term [curso], the scholars shall have practical exercise in teaching, by teaching in the classes of the primary school annexed to the normal school, which is established by article 3.

Scholars shall not pass from one course to another without proving their efficiency in the general examinations, which shall be held at the end of each year.

During the first four years of the installation of the school the studies shall be completed in two years.

Art. 7. The scholars of the normal school who shall have completed the courses of their studies and shall have obtained by their good deportment, application and knowledge, the mark of excellent [sobresaliente] in the final examinations for the three consecutive years shall receive a teacher’s certificate, in which shall be expressed their creditable mark, and they shall be empowered to teach schools of ascenso. Those who shall not have obtained the mark of excellent, but that of good [bueno], or fair [regular] in the above-mentioned examinations, shall also receive a teacher’s certificate with their corresponding mark expressed therein and they shall be able to teach schools of entrada. Finally, those who shall have failed in said examinations, if after they shall have repeated the exercise, shall have merited approval, shall only receive certificates as assistant teachers.

Art. 8. If any one of the scholars of the normal school shall desire to continue his studies for another year, in order to perfect himself therein, he may do so, on condition of paying from his own funds his annual board, if he shall be a resident student, and if, in the judgment of the director of the institution, no inconvenience arises from his remaining in it.

Art. 9. The resident scholars of the normal school shall be divided into regular [de número] and supernumerary22 resident pupils. Both those who aspire to the said classes and to the class of day scholars, so long as there shall be any of the latter, must have the following qualifications:

1. To be natives of the Spanish dominions.

2. To be fully sixteen years old, that requisite to be attested by certificate of baptism or any other equivalent public document.

3. To suffer from no contagious disease, and to enjoy sufficient health to fulfil the tasks suitable for the duties of teachers.

4. To have observed good deportment which shall be proved by certification of the chief of the province and the parish priest of the village of his birth or habitation.

5. To talk Castilian; to know the Christian doctrine and how to read and write well: proof of which shall be made in an examination held before the director and teacher of the school.

Art. 10. The regular resident scholars shall receive their education free, and shall pay nothing for their support, treatment, school equipment, and aid from the teaching force.23

Art. 11. The regular resident scholars shall be obliged to fulfil their duties for ten years as teachers in the schools of primary instruction for the natives, to which they shall be assigned by the superior civil government. In case of not fulfilling that obligation they shall be indebted to the state for the expenses incurred in their education and teaching. The same thing shall happen if they leave the normal school before the conclusion of their studies without legitimate cause and by their own will or that of their parents, or are expelled from it for lack of application, or bad conduct. The model for calculating the expenses caused by said scholars during a given period shall be the board paid during the same period by a resident supernumerary scholar.

Art. 12. Places as regular resident scholars shall be supplied by the superior civil government to natives of the provinces of the archipelago, in proportion to the respective census of the population. As the number of aspirants for the places of supernumerary resident scholars continues to increase, the class of regular resident scholars will continue to decrease, the reduction beginning with those belonging to the provinces nearest the capital. Said class shall be suppressed when it happens that there are among the supernumerary [resident] scholars enough teachers with whom to supply the schools of the archipelago. In any event, the regular [resident] scholar, who shall have entered the school, shall have the right to keep his place, and such place shall only be suppressed when his course shall have been ended.

Art. 13. The supernumerary resident scholars shall pay the institution eight pesos per month for their board, and their rank in the school and other things will be equal to that of the regular scholars.

Art. 14. Only those young men shall be admitted as day scholars who, besides possessing the requirements demanded from the resident scholars, shall live in Manila or in its neighborhood, under the charge of their parents or in charge of a guardian and under such conditions that it can be assumed that they will find in their domestic hearth examples of virtue and morality. Such class of scholars shall receive school equipment free, and if they are poor, their textbooks.

Art. 15. The normal school shall be directed and governed by the fathers of the Society of Jesus. At the head of the same there shall be a director to whose authority shall be subordinate the teachers, scholars, and inferior employes, and such director shall have the duty of directing the education and teaching, presiding at the literary ceremonies, visiting the rooms, watching over order and domestic discipline, correcting those who infringe the rules, and expelling pupils in the cases and under the conditions expressed in the interior regulations of the school, and he shall inform the suitable authority of the extraordinary measures and determinations of a serious nature which he believes it necessary to take.

Art. 16. Under the director’s authority there shall be at least four teachers, one of whom must be at the same time spiritual prefect of the school, charged with directing the consciences of the scholars, with presiding at religious ceremonies, and with distributing the food of the divine word. Under his peculiar charge also shall be lessons in sacred history, morals, and religion. Another of the teachers shall fill the special post of prefect of customs, and his principal occupation will be to accompany the scholars and to have care of them in the ceremonies of the inner life of the institution. The other two teachers shall be occupied principally in the teaching of other matters.

Besides the director and teachers, the school shall have the brother coadjutors who shall be considered necessary. There shall also be one porter, and the other indispensable subordinates.

Art. 17. The salaries to be received by directors, professors, coadjutors, and subordinates, as well as the allowance for expenses of materials, shall be fixed by the superior civil governor by agreement with the right reverend archbishop of Manila, information of which shall be given to the government for its approval.

Art. 18. At the end of each month in each one of the classes of the normal school, there shall be a private examination in all the subjects studied during that period. A like exercise shall be held at the end of the first semester each year, in regard to the branches studied during that time. At the end of the course, a general examination shall be held. This exercise shall be public and in the presence of the authorities and persons of distinction in the capital, and shall be terminated with the announcement and distribution of prizes.

Art. 19. The holidays of the normal school shall be Sundays, feast days, Ash Wednesday, the day set aside for the commemoration of the faithful dead,24 and also the saint’s days and birthday anniversaries of their Majesties and the prince of Asturias, and the saint’s day of the superior civil governor.

The shorter vacations shall extend from Christmas eve to Twelfth-night, during the three carnival days,25 and from Holy Wednesday until Easter. During said vacations, the resident scholars shall remain in the institution.

The longer vacations shall last one and one-half months, and shall be during the time of the greatest heat. The resident scholars may pass to the bosom of their families for the period of the longer vacations.

The scholars may go once a month to the house of their parents or guardians.

Art. 20. The degree of excellence of the scholars shall be recompensed by honorable marks, which shall be kept in the book of the institution; and by annual prizes, whose solemn distribution shall take place at the termination of the public examinations.

Art. 21. Punishments shall be: public censure; deprivation from recreation and the walk; banishment and separation from the other scholars; and if these are not sufficient, the definitive punishment shall be expulsion from the school. Expulsion shall irremissibly take place because of any contagious disease, for notable laziness and lack of application, for serious lack of respect to the teachers, and for bad conduct or depraved morals.

Art. 22. As a reward shall also be the public reading of the marks of good deportment, application and progress; and as punishment the reading of the contrary marks. That shall be done monthly for that purpose, assembling in one place all the scholars with their teachers, in the presence of the director.

Art. 23. An interior regulation for the school shall be made, which shall specify the daily distribution of time on the part of the scholars, the order of their studies, and the division of classes, religious and literary exercises, conduct, food, and clothing, as well as the duties of the scholars respecting the teachers, and those of their parents and guardians in respect to the institution.

Art. 24. The director of the normal school shall propose at the approval of the superior civil government, a list of books which can be used as textbooks by the scholars, to which the masters shall subject their explanation. Such list shall be revised according as is advised by circumstances.

The teachers shall give their lessons in the courses of which it is advisable for this system to make use, under the authority of the director.

Art. 25. Examinations shall be held in the normal school every six months, to choose those who shall be given certificates as assistants. Those who present themselves at said examinations shall have the qualifications described in article 9, for those who aspire to enter the school. They shall be conversant with the matters prescribed in article 4; and their examinations shall be public and held before the director and teachers of the normal school.

Art. 26. There shall be no other mark in such examinations than those of passed or failed.

Art. 27. The superior civil governor shall have the right to issue certificates as teacher and assistant at the proposal of the director of the normal school.

Art. 28. Certificates as teachers shall contain the mark which shall have been obtained and the class of schools for which such persons are qualified.

Madrid, December 20, 1863. Approved by her Majesty.26

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