WALA LANG
Even before the last galleon sailed in 1815, the Spanish colonial government had begun to explore ways to achieve economic growth. Spain itself had fallen behind other European countries and was seeking ways to stimulate economic and intellectual development. Among other things, the private sector was encouraged to improve agriculture, husbandry, industry, the professions, and the arts. The formation of autonomous economic associations was encouraged in towns and cities not only of the motherland but also in the colonies.
In Manila, the Real Sociedad Economica de los Amigos del Pais was founded in 1781, composed of key people in commerce, industry, and the professions. Its focus was to study possibilities for the exploitation of the colony’s natural resources. Their efforts contributed to the Plan General Economico of Governor-General Jose Basco y Vargas. One of the more progressive Spanish governor-generals, Basco was in office from 1778 to 1787. King Carlos IV created him Conde de la Conquista de las Islas Batanes.
The Real Compañia de Filipinas, a private corporation, was organized in 1785 to engage in export trade, competing with Manila merchants engaged in the galleon trade and with trading houses of other European countries and the United States that had begun to engage, illegally, in Philippine trade. The company did not do well. It existed for about 50 years and was liquidated in 1834.
THE BEGINNINGS OF COMMERCIAL AGRICULTURE Portrait of Governor-General Jose Basco y Vargas and Francisco Goya’s, ‘The Annual Meeting of the Real Compañia de Filipinas.’ (Google Images)
These early moves, however, led to the growth of commercial agriculture. Sugar, coffee, tobacco, abaca, indigo, and even ylang-yang flowers as perfume base became major export products. This also meant the rise of a native and mestizo agriculture-based Filipino elite class, joining the ranks of the Spanish and Chinese who were the major beneficiaries of the galleon trade.
Government organized technical schools to support economic development objectives. With emphasis on agriculture. Governor-General Fernando Norzagaray (1857-2860) ordered the establishment of a school of botany and agriculture at Arroceros (in the former Parian quarter). The plan was to establish similar schools throughout the archipelago.
A Real Cedula of 1889 created a school of arts and crafts to produce machine operators, electricians, construction, engraving, lithography, printing, and carpentry. Courses were offered in machine operation, electricity, masonry, retail merchandising, engraving, lithography, carpentry, cabinetmaking, masonry, foundry, even conservation of museum objects.
One might consider the school as the ancestor of today’s Technological University of the Philippines and the Polytechnic University of the Philippines. Strictly speaking the former was established during the American Regime as the Philippine School of Arts and Trades while the latter was originally the city government’s Manila Business School that successively became the Philippine School of Commerce, Philippine College of Commerce, before a Republic Act made the college a university.
A short-lived Academia de Dibujos was created in 1820. It closed in 1824 for lack of funds but was revived in 1849 as the Escuela de Dibujo y Pintura. It grew and in 1890 became the Escuela de Dibujo, Pintura, Escultura y Grabado. Among its graduates are Juan Luna and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo.
The Escuela Nautica de Manila, created by Real Cedula in 1820, exists to this day as the Philippine Merchant Merine Academy. It was initially located at Intramuros’ Calle Cabildo and is now in San Narciso, Zambales. Renamed the Philippine Nautical School during the American Regime, it was converted in 1963 by R.A. No. 3680 into the Philippine Merchant Marine Academy. It has produced master mariners, chief engineers, shipping executives, naval officers, educators, and trainors now serving in marine and maritime related industries here and abroad.
Recent innovations in vocational and technical training include the Dual Training System formalized by R.A. No..7686. The system was initiated in the 1980s by the Southeast Asian Science Foundation and Germany’s Hans Seidel Foundation with the pioneering Dualtech Training Center. The center offered courses in machine shop, aircraft maintenance, and related technical skills. Students spend part of their time in formal schooling and part in actual work with cooperating companies, thus getting practical skills training and assured jobs after graduation.
Escuela Taller de Filipinas Foundation, Inc. was conceptualized along parallel lines. Organized as a project of Spain’s Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacionál para el Desarollo (AECID) and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), Escuela Taller trains young people in the conservation and maintenance of heritage structures through courses including masonry, woodworking, metalcraft, plumbing, and related skills, through classroom, workshop, and actual restoration work.
Philippine technical and vocational education has a distinguished past. With computers, information technology, artificial intelligence, robotics, ahead is a bright future.
Notes: (a) Information on the early schools was drawn from Encarnacion Alzona, “El Legado de España a Filipinas” in Filipinas: Su Glorioso Pasado (Manila: Department of Education, 1963); and (b) Your columnist was chairman of Dualtech Training Center in the 1990s and of Escuela Taller de Filipinas Foundation, Inc. in the 2010s.
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