Part 11 (1/2)

Josh Billings, writing as ”Uncle Esek” in the _Century Magazine_ soo, made use of an expression which deserves to be frequently recalled He said: ”It is not so norance of mankind that s 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 A developed by scholarly historical research at the present tiinal documents and of first-hand authorities in the history of Spanish-American education has fairly worked a revolution in the ideas for out very forcibly how supre definite about a subject before writing about it, and yet how ent and supposedly educated s with an assu at all about theenerality 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 ele of what the Catholic Spaniards did for education in America and as a consequence the face of the history of education is being coed Every {302} advance in history in recent years has e of the Catholic Church Modern historical inal docuht 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 coht In no portion of human acco than with regard to education There was ht and the Catholic Church was always an i than with regard to education here in America in the Spanish-Aaylord 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 Transhteenth century the Lima University (Lima, Peru) counted nearly two thousand students and nuhty doctors (in its faculty) in theology, civil and canon law, medicine and the arts” Ulloa {303} 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 ”so the vast distance, gained the applause of the literati of Europe” ”The co of the Jesuits contributed much to the real educational work in Aes, one of which, the little Jesuit college at Juli, on Lake titicaca, beca” (Bourne)

He does not hesitate to elish Aard to education and culture, and thefeature of his comparison is that Spanish America surpassed the North completely and anticipated by nearly two centuries soress 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 e of studies and standard of attain in English America until the nineteenth {304} century Mexican scholars uished achievements in soery, but pre-ey Dictionaries and graes and histories of the Mexican institutions are an i proof of their scholarly devotion and intellectual activity Conspicuous are Toribio de Motolinia's 'Historia de las Indias de Nueva Espana,'

Duran's 'Historia de las Indias de Nueva Espana,' but reat work on Mexican life and religion”

Indeed, it is with regard to science in various for contributions frolish in A practically no attention to science, the Spaniards were deeply interested in it Dr Chanca, 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 tiard to Indian e of botany and of y, and the like, that shoide was the interest in science of this Spanish physician of over four hundred years ago

{305}

After reading paragraphs such as Professor Bourne has written with regard to education in Spanish A it is to reflect that one of the principal arguainst 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 lish-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 claiy they are triuets to work at the great probleains a position of authority or even a foothold of influence

Instead of needing to be ashanorantly 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-A 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 stea races in Aress above that of the Spanish-American countries Bourne says:

”If we compare Spanish Ao we nize that while in the North there was a sounder body politic, a purer social life and a eneral dissemination of elementary education, yet in Spanish Areater poverty,s, institutions of learning and hospitals, her attainment in certain branches of science No one can read Humboldt's account of the City of Mexico and its establishments for the pro that whatever may be the superiorities of the United States over Mexico in these respects, they have been e of steam”

While we are prone to think that a republican forress 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 Govern of the age of steam or well on into the nineteenth century, then the South American republics would have been serious {307} rivals of the United States and have been kept fro 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 see attention to it because it contains that ht that is entirely different from any thatthe first half-century after the application of steam to transportation Mexico weltered in doier, 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 rareat Spanish-Aht possibly have been created, capable of self-defense against Europe, and inviting co-operation rather than aggression froreat centre for education in South America, and Mexico, in Spanish North A of the steps of the development of education in Mexico emphasizes especially the difference between the Spaniards and the Englisha 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 nu as yet very se 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 Araduates of the University of Paris and of Salareatest 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 Aun, the founder of Ay, 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 coard to Mexican antiquities

Knowing this, it is not surprising that the curriculurammar and rhetoric, instruction was provided in Latin, philosophy, Mexican medicine, music, botany (especially with {309} reference to native plants), the zoology of Mexico, soes It is not surprising to be told that e became Alcaldes and Governors in the Indian towns, and that they didtheir co 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 ive 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 treatlish and the Spaniards is athe 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 fro of these children Strange as it irls is a irls All of these schools continued to flourish, and gradually spread beyond the City of Mexico itself into the villages of the Indians As a {310} 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 ele and parish work in the Indian villages was in charge of two or more friars, as a rule, and ell done The renificent 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 ht be least expected, and they show the influence for culture and education that gradually extended all over the Mexican country

In the course of tirowing nu 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 soly, the Spanish Croas petitioned to establish authoritatively a university Such a step would have been utterly out of the question in English America, because the Croas so little interested in colonial affairs In the Spanish country, however, the Croas deeply interested in h they were at a distance froovern 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-fashi+oned 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 Lianized as a university until 1553 In the light of these dates, it is rather a 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 A compared to the universities of Lima and Mexico, and indeed for a century after its foundation Harvard was scarcely ical school, with a hundred or so of pupils, soraduating ht 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 extreious 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 Refor 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 fro such an educational institution as the universities of Lima and Mexico so naturally became He says, in ”Ger 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 ithin 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-h stifled the intellectual life of the German people”

Because of this and the fact that the attendance {313} 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 laere established very early; indeed, before those of medicine Canon laas always an important subject in Spanish universities, and civil laas so closely connected with it that it was never neglected

When the charter of the University of Liranted by the Emperor Charles V, in 1551, the toas 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 Pilgrie 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 coe that led to the establishher 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 Liious orders, and it ith the idea of organizing the education as it was being given that the charter froard 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 onderful success In the middle of the seventeenth century it had hteenth 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, as the rector of the University of Lio, 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 a all the principal acts of civil and private society, for the all the institutions of the country to the coood” 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 shoell the purpose of an educational institution had been realized

The scholarly work done by some of these professors at Spanish-American universities still {315} 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 reenerations 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 A and classifying knowledge for after generations They did ht 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 a, as educated in Spain and wrote of the Inca Empire and De Soto's expedition; Sandoval, the author of the {316} first work on Africa and the negro written in Arapher, 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”

Of the University of Mexico more details are available than of Peru, and the fact that it was situated here in North America and that the culture which it influenced has had its effect on certain portions of the United States, has made it seem worth while to devote considerable space to it The University was called the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico, because, while it was founded under the charter of the King of Spain, this had been confirmed by a bull from the Pope, who took the new university directly under the patronage of the Holy See The reason for the foundation of the university, as thechapter of St John's Gospel, which is quoted as the preainning was the Word, and the Word ith God