Education: How Old The New

ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION

"Libenter homines id quod volunt credunt."

–-Caesar, Bell. Gall., iii:8.

[Men believe readily what they want to.]

"Great additions have of late been made to our knowledge of the past; the long conspiracy against the revelation of truth has gradually given away .... It has become impossible for the historical writer of the present age to trust without reserve even to the most respected secondary authorities. The honest student finds himself continually deserted, retarded, misled by the classics of historical literature." –Preface of "Cambridge Modern History."

ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 19

Here in the United States we have been somewhat amazingly ignorant of our brother Americans of Mexico and of South America. Our ignorance has been so complete as to have the usual result of quite intolerant bigotry with regard to the significance of what was being done in these Spanish-American countries. A distinguished ex-president of one of our American universities said in his autobiography, that a favorite maxim of his for his own guidance was, "The man I don't like is the man I don't know." If we only know enough about people, we always find out quite enough about them that is admirable to make us like them. Whenever we are tempted to conclude that somebody is hopelessly insignificant then what we need to correct is our judgment by better knowledge of them. For most Americans, for we have arrogated to ourselves the title of Americans to the exclusion of any possible share in it of our South American brethren, Spanish America has been so hopelessly backward, so out of all comparison with ourselves, as to be quite undeserving of our notice unless it be for profound deprecation.

Fortunately for us in recent years our knowledge of Spanish America has become larger and deeper and more genuine, and as a consequence there has been less assumption of knowledge founded on ignorance. Every gain in knowledge of Spanish America has raised Spanish America and her peoples in our estimation. Not long since at a public dinner the president of a great American university said, "We have only just discovered Spanish America." This is literally true. We have thought that we knew much about it, and that that much showed us how little deserving of our attention was Spanish America, while all the while a precious mine of information with regard to the beginnings of the history of education, of literature, of culture, nay, even of physical science on this continent, remained to be studied in these countries and not our own. Our scholars are now engaged in bringing together the materials out of which a real history of Spanish America can be constructed for their fellow-Americans of the North, and their surprise when it is placed before them is likely to be supreme. In the meantime there are some phases of this information that, I think, it will be interesting to bring together for you.

Josh Billings, writing as "Uncle Esek" in the Century Magazine some twenty-five years ago, made use of an expression which deserves to be frequently recalled. He said: "It is not so much the ignorance of mankind that makes them ridiculous as the knowin' so many things that ain't so." We have a very typical illustration of the wisdom of this fine old saw in the history of education here in America as it is being developed by scholarly historical research at the present time. The consultation of original documents and of first-hand authorities in the history of Spanish-American education has fairly worked a revolution in the ideas formerly held on this subject. The new developments bring out very forcibly how supremely necessary it is to know something definite about a subject before writing about it, and yet how many intelligent and supposedly educated men continue to talk about things with an assumption of knowledge when they know nothing at all about them.

Catholics are supposed by the generality of Americans to have come late into the field of education in this country. Whatever there is of education on this continent is ordinarily supposed to be due entirely to the efforts of what has been called the Anglo-Saxon element here. At last, however, knowledge is growing of what the Catholic Spaniards did for education in America and as a consequence the face of the history of education is being completely changed. Every advance in history in recent years has made for the advantage of the Catholic Church. Modern historical methods insist on the consultation of original documents and give very little weight to the quotation of second-hand authorities. We are getting at enduring history as far as that is possible, and the real position of the Church is coming to light. In no portion of human accomplishment is the modification of history more striking than with regard to education. There was much more education in the past centuries than we have thought and the Catholic Church was always an important factor in it. Nowhere is this truth more striking than with regard to education here in America in the Spanish-American countries.

Professor Edward Gaylord Bourne, professor of history at Yale University, wrote the volume on Spain in America which constitutes the third volume of "The American Nation," a history of this country in twenty-seven volumes edited by Professor Albert Bushnell Hart, who holds the chair of history at Harvard University. Professor Bourne has no illusions with regard to the relative value of Anglo-Saxon and Spanish education in this country. In his chapter on "The Transmission of European Culture" he says: "Early in the eighteenth century the Lima University (Lima, Peru) counted nearly two thousand students and numbered about one hundred and eighty doctors (in its faculty) in theology, civil and canon law, medicine and the arts." Ulloa reports that "the university makes a stately appearance from without and its inside is decorated with suitable ornaments." There were chairs of all the sciences and "some of the professors have, notwithstanding the vast distance, gained the applause of the literati of Europe." "The coming of the Jesuits contributed much to the real educational work in America. They established colleges, one of which, the little Jesuit college at Juli, on Lake Titicaca, became a seat of genuine learning." (Bourne.)

He does not hesitate to emphasize the contrast between Spanish America and English America with regard to education and culture, and the most interesting feature of his comparison is that Spanish America surpassed the North completely and anticipated by nearly two centuries some of the progress that we are so proud of in the nineteenth century. What a startling paragraph, for instance, is the following for those who have been accustomed to make little of the Church's interest in education and to attribute the backwardness of South America, as they presumed they knew it, to the presence of the Church and her influence there.

"Not all the institutions of learning founded in Mexico in the sixteenth century can be enumerated here, but it is not too much to say that in number, range of studies and standard of attainments by the officers they surpassed anything existing in English America until the nineteenth century. Mexican scholars made distinguished achievements in some branches of science, particularly medicine and surgery, but pre-eminently linguistics, history and anthropology. Dictionaries and grammars of the native languages and histories of the Mexican institutions are an imposing proof of their scholarly devotion and intellectual activity. Conspicuous are Toribio de Motolinia's 'Historia de las Indias de Nueva España,' Duran's 'Historia de las Indias de Nueva España,' but most important of all Sahagun's great work on Mexican life and religion."

Indeed, it is with regard to science in various forms that one finds the most surprising contributions from these old-time scholars. While the English in America were paying practically no attention to science, the Spaniards were deeply interested in it. Dr. Chança, a physician who had been for several years physician-in-ordinary to the King and Queen and was looked upon as one of the leaders of his profession in Spain, joined Columbus' second expedition in order to make scientific notes. The little volume that he issued as the report of this scientific excursion is a valuable contribution to the science of the time and furnishes precious information with regard to Indian medicine, Indian customs, their knowledge of botany and of metals, certain phases of zoology, and the like, that show how wide was the interest in science of this Spanish physician of over four hundred years ago.

After reading paragraphs such as Professor Bourne has written with regard to education in Spanish America, how amusing it is to reflect that one of the principal arguments against the Catholic Church has been that she keeps nations backward and unprogressive and uneducated–and the South American countries have been held up derisively and conclusively as horrible examples of this. Even we Catholics have been prone to take on an apologetic mood with regard to them. The teaching of history in English-speaking countries has been so untrue to the realities that we have accepted the impression that the Spanish-American countries were far behind in all the ways that were claimed. Now we find that instead of presenting grounds for apology they are triumphant examples of how soon and how energetically the Church gets to work at the great problems of education wherever she gains a position of authority or even a foothold of influence. Instead of needing to be ashamed of them, as we have perhaps ignorantly been, there is a reason to be deservedly proud of them. Their education far outstripped our own in all the centuries down to the nineteenth, and the culture of the Spanish-Americans, quite a different thing from education, is deeper than ours even at the present time. It is hard for North America to permit herself to be persuaded of this, but there is no doubt of its absolute truth.

It is only since the days of steam that the English-speaking races in America have come to possess a certain material progress above that of the Spanish-American countries. Bourne says:

"If we compare Spanish America with the United States a hundred years ago we must recognize that while in the North there was a sounder body politic, a purer social life and a more general dissemination of elementary education, yet in Spanish America there were both vastly greater wealth and greater poverty, more imposing monuments of civilization, such as public buildings, institutions of learning and hospitals, more populous and richer cities, a higher attainment in certain branches of science. No one can read Humboldt's account of the City of Mexico and its establishments for the promotion of science and the fine arts without realizing that whatever may be the superiorities of the United States over Mexico in these respects, they have been mostly the gains of the age of steam."

While we are prone to think that a republican form of government is the great foster-mother of progress and that whatever development may have come in South American countries has been the result of the foundation of the South American republics, Professor Bourne is not of that opinion and is inclined to think that if the Spanish Colonial Government could have been maintained at its best until the coming of the age of steam or well on into the nineteenth century, then the South American republics would have been serious rivals of the United States and have been kept from being so hampered as they were by their internal political dissensions. His paragraph on this matter is so contradictory of ordinary impressions, here in the United States particularly, that it seems worth while calling attention to it because it contains that most precious of suggestions, a thought that is entirely different from any that most people have had before. He says:

"During the first half-century after the application of steam to transportation Mexico weltered in domestic turmoils arising out of the crash of the old régime. If the rule of Spain could have lasted half a century longer, being progressively as it was during the reign of Charles III; if a succession of such viceroys as Revilla Gigedo, in Mexico, and De Croix and De Taboaday Lemos, in Peru, could have borne sway in America until railroads could have been built, intercolonial intercourse ramified and a distinctly Spanish-American spirit developed, a great Spanish-American federal state might possibly have been created, capable of self-defense against Europe, and inviting co-operation rather than aggression from the neighbor in the North."

Lima was the great centre for education in South America, and Mexico, in Spanish North America, was not far at all behind. The tracing of the steps of the development of education in Mexico emphasizes especially the difference between the Spaniards and the Englishmen in their relation to the Indian. Bishop Zumaraga wanted a college for Indians in his bishopric, and it was because of this beneficent purpose that the first institution for higher education in the New World was founded as early as 1535. At that time the need for education for the whites was not felt so much, since only adults as a rule were in the colony, the number of children and growing youths being as yet very small. Accordingly, the College of Santa Cruz, in Tlaltelolco, one of the quarters of the City of Mexico reserved for the Indians, was founded under the bishop's patronage. Among the faculty were graduates of the University of Paris and of Salamanca, two of the greatest universities of Europe of this time, and they had not only the ambition to teach, but also to follow out that other purpose of a university–to investigate and write. Among them were such eminent scholars as Bernardino de Sahagun, the founder of American anthropology, and Juan de Torquemada, who is himself a product of Mexican education, whose "Monarquia Indiana" is a great storehouse of facts concerning Mexico before the coming of the whites, and precious details with regard to Mexican antiquities.

Knowing this, it is not surprising that the curriculum was broad and liberal. Besides the elementary branches and grammar and rhetoric, instruction was provided in Latin, philosophy, Mexican medicine, music, botany (especially with reference to native plants), the zoology of Mexico, some principles of agriculture, and the native languages. It is not surprising to be told that many of the graduates of this college became Alcaldes and Governors in the Indian towns, and that they did much to spread civilization and culture among their compatriots. The English-speaking Americans furnished nothing of this kind, and our colleges for Indians came only in the nineteenth century. It is true that Harvard, according to its charter, was "for the education of the Indian youth of this country in knowledge and godliness," but the Indians were entirely neglected and no serious effort was ever made to give them any education. It was a son of the Puritans who said that his forefathers first fell on their knees and then on the aborigines, and the difference in the treatment of the Indians by the English and the Spaniards is a marked note in all their history.

During the next few years schools were established also for the education of mestizo children, that is, of the mixed race who are now called Creoles. In fact, in 1536 a fund from the Royal Exchequer was given for the teaching of these children. Strange as it may seem, for we are apt to think that the teaching of girls is a modern idea, schools were also established for Indian girls. All of these schools continued to flourish, and gradually spread beyond the City of Mexico itself into the villages of the Indians. As a matter of fact, wherever a mission was established a school was also founded. Every town, Indian as well as Spanish, was by law required to have its church, hospital and school for teaching Indian children Spanish and the elements of religion. The teaching and parish work in the Indian villages was in charge of two or more friars, as a rule, and was well done. The remains of the monasteries with their magnificent Spanish-American architecture, are still to be seen in many portions of Mexico and of the Spanish territories that have been incorporated with the United States, in places where they might be least expected, and they show the influence for culture and education that gradually extended all over the Mexican country.

In the course of time the necessity for advanced teaching for the constantly growing number of native whites began to be felt, and so during the fifth decade of the sixteenth century a number of schools for them came into existence in the City of Mexico. The need was felt for some central institution. Accordingly, the Spanish Crown was petitioned to establish authoritatively a university. Such a step would have been utterly out of the question in English America, because the Crown was so little interested in colonial affairs. In the Spanish country, however, the Crown was deeply interested in making the colonists feel that though they were at a distance from the centre of government, their rulers were interested in securing for them, as far as possible, all the opportunities of life at home in Spain. This is so different from what is ordinarily presumed to have been the attitude of Spain towards its colonies as to be quite a surprise for those who have depended on old-fashioned history, but there can be no doubt of its truth. Accordingly, the University of Mexico received its royal charter the same year as the University of Lima (1551). Mexico was not formally organized as a university until 1553. In the light of these dates, it is rather amusing to have the Century Dictionary, under the word Harvard University, speak of that institution as the oldest and largest institution of learning in America. It had been preceded by almost a century, not only in South America, but also in North America. The importance of Harvard was as nothing compared to the universities of Lima and Mexico, and indeed for a century after its foundation Harvard was scarcely more than a small theological school, with a hundred or so of pupils, sometimes having no graduating class, practically never graduating more than eight or ten pupils, while the two Spanish-American universities counted their students by the thousand and their annual graduates by the hundred.

The reason for the success of these South American universities above that of Harvard is to be found in the fact that Harvard's sphere of usefulness was extremely limited because of religious differences and shades of differences. This had hampered all education in Protestant countries very seriously. Professor Paulsen, who holds the chair of philosophy at the University of Berlin, calls attention to the fact that the Reformation had anything but the effect of favoring education that has often been said. The picture that he draws of conditions in Germany a century before the foundation of Harvard would serve very well as a lively prototype of the factors at work in preventing Harvard from becoming such an educational institution as the universities of Lima and Mexico so naturally became. He says, in "German Universities and University Studies": "During this period [after Luther's revolt] a more determined effort was made to control instruction than at any period before or since. The fear of heresy, the extraordinary anxiety to keep instruction well within orthodox lines, was not less intense at the Lutheran than at the Catholic institutions; perhaps it was even more so, because here doctrine was not so well established, apostasy was possible in either of two directions, toward Catholicism or Calvinism. Even the philosophic faculty felt the pressure of this demand for correctness of doctrines. Thus came about these restrictions within the petty states and their narrow-minded established churches which well-nigh stifled the intellectual life of the German people."

Because of this and the fact that the attendance at the college did not justify it, the school of medicine at Harvard was not opened until after the Revolution (1783). The law school was not opened until 1817.

This is sometimes spoken of as the earliest law school connected with a university on this continent, but, of course, only by those who know nothing at all about the history of the Spanish-American universities. In the Spanish countries the chairs in law were established very early; indeed, before those of medicine. Canon law was always an important subject in Spanish universities, and civil law was so closely connected with it that it was never neglected.

When the charter of the University of Lima was granted by the Emperor Charles V, in 1551, the town was scarcely more than fifteen years old. It had been founded in 1535. Curiously enough, just about the same interval had elapsed between the foundation of the Massachusetts colony by the Pilgrims and the legal establishment of the college afterward known as Harvard by the General Court of the colony. It is evident that in both cases it was the needs of the rising generation who had come to be from twelve to sixteen years of age that led to the establishment of these institutions of higher education. The actual foundation of Harvard did not come for two years later, and the intention of the founders was not nearly so broad as that of the founders of the University of Lima. Already at Lima schools had been established by the religious orders, and it was with the idea of organizing the education as it was being given that the charter from the Crown was obtained. With regard to both Lima and Mexico, within a few years a bull of approval and confirmation was asked and obtained from the Pope. The University of Lima continued to develop with wonderful success. In the middle of the seventeenth century it had more than a thousand students, at the beginning of the eighteenth it had two thousand students, and there is no doubt at all of its successful accomplishment of all that a university is supposed to do.

Juan Antonio Ribeyro, who was the rector of the University of Lima forty years ago, said in the introduction to "The University Annals for 1869" that, "It cannot be denied that the University of Peru during its early history filled a large role of direct intervention for the formation of laws, for the amelioration of customs and in directing all the principal acts of civil and private society, forming the religious beliefs, rendering them free from superstitions and errors and influencing all the institutions of the country to the common good." Certainly this is all that would be demanded of a university as an influence for uplift, and the fact that such an ideal should have been cherished shows how well the purpose of an educational institution had been realized.

The scholarly work done by some of these professors at Spanish-American universities still remains a model of true university work. It is the duty of the university to add to knowledge as well as to disseminate it. That ideal of university existence is supposed to be a creation of the nineteenth century, and indeed is often said to have been brought into the history of education by the example of the German universities. We find, however, that the professors of the Spanish-American universities accomplished much in this matter and that their works remain as precious storehouses of information for after generations. Professor Bourne has given but a short list of them in addition to those that have already been mentioned, but even this furnishes an excellent idea of how much the university professors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Spanish America were taking to heart the duty of gathering, arranging and classifying knowledge for after generations. They did more in the sciences than in anything else. It is often thought that our knowledge of the ethnology and anthropology of the Indians is entirely the creation of recent investigators, but that is true only if one leaves out of account the work of these old Spanish-American scholars. Professor Bourne says:

"The most famous of the earlier Peruvian writers were Acosta, the historian, the author of the 'Natural and Civil History of the Indies'; the mestizo Garciasso de la Vega, who was educated in Spain and wrote of the Inca Empire and De Soto's expedition; Sandoval, the author of the first work on Africa and the negro written in America; Antonio Leon Pinelo, the first American bibliographer, and one of the greatest as well of the indefatigable codifiers of the old legislation of the Indies. Pinelo was born in Peru and educated at the Jesuit College in Lima, but spent his literary life in Spain."