The American teachers are trying to close these little barrio schools in which only the native dialect is taught, to train up assistants able to speak English and teach according to our ideas, and to concentrate the pay upon the really efficient teachers.
The American teacher has many discouraging conditions to contend with. He has difficulty in finding a house, and more difficulty still in finding food upon which he can live. He must try to persuade the town to build and equip a suitable schoolhouse. He must train his native teachers, and use all sorts of devices to get the children to attend after the novelty has worn off.
That the teachers have, as a class, gone at their work with characteristic enthusiasm and resourcefulness is unquestionable. That they are generally regarded by the natives in a very different light from the army people is likewise true. But that some out of the large body have fallen below the accepted standards of morality is equally true. One teacher owned his fighting cocks, and was a leading abettor of this favorite Filipino pastime. He was often seen coming from the pits of a Sunday afternoon—the usual time for the combats—with his clothes bespattered with blood. He contended that his conduct did not lessen his standing in the community; on the contrary, it heightened it—when his cock won. He also got drunk, but, it was said, "never ungentlemanly so." The division superintendent thought best, nevertheless, to drop him.
There is another case, that of a young woman whose indiscretion led an army officer to acts for which he was court-martialed and dismissed from the service. To send unmarried girls into towns in which they were the only white women, and in which they could not have the commonest conveniences, was all a mistake. The leavening effects, however, of the schoolmistress are beginning to be apparent, and there is no other agency doing more to win the people to our ideas than the school system.
