WALA LANG
Traditionally, men are supposed to be the breadwinner, decision maker, defender of home and family while women are supposed to be pious and obedient wives, accomplished mothers, household managers, and cooks. Elite women spent their time reciting the rosary, embroidering barò sleeves and pañuelos, practicing on piano or harp. Little more than prayer books, novenas and romances (think Florante at Laura and Mills & Boon) taxed their eyesight.
Many women ran farms and businesses, but men spoke for the household. For the longest time only propertied men were citizens and voters in the US and other western countries. The same was true in Spanish Philippines. Gobernadorcillos were chosen mainly by past and present cabezas de barangay who were necessarily landed and rich. Humans were like lions—males roared and frightened everyone while females hunted.
WOMEN AND PATRONESSES Santa Potenciana and Santa Isabel de Ungria (Google Images)
In the US, only men could vote until 1920 when its Constitution was amended to allow women suffrage. It took 17 more years before the same happened here. The Jones Law provided that our women could vote if 300,000 of them voted “yes.” They did so on April 30, 1937.
Under the circumstances, girls didn’t have to be learned. Children were taught by tutors but as more Spaniards arrived, schools were organized for the sons of peninsulares and insulares, never mind indio boys.
Daughters finally had their day from beaterios, religious houses organized by pious women, both Hispanic and indio. Beata as they were called, lived as nuns and received religious and basic instruction. In time beaterios organized schools for girls initially of Spanish families and eventually also of indios.
Established in 1589, Colegio de Santa Potenciana was our first school for girls. It was apparently a combination orphanage and boarding school for orphans of soldiers killed while the archipelago was being colonized. Its facilities were sequestered by the governor-general after the 1863 earthquake that ruined the Palacio del Gobernador and Santa Potenciana students moved to Colegio de Sta. Isabel. Eventually absorbed by Sta. Isabel, it is now remembered on Santa Potenciana Street behind San Agustin.
Colegio de Sta. Isabel itself was founded in 1632 also to educate Spanish orphans. Named after Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, it is our oldest surviving girls’ school. In 1733, the colegio received royal recognition and became the Real Colegio de Santa Isabel. It is now Santa Isabel College, located on Taft Avenue adjacent to Philippine Normal University.
Colegio del Beaterio was established in 1725 by the Beaterio de la Compañia de Jesus that was founded in 1684 by Mother Ignacia del Espiritu Santo. The colegio’s building in Intramuros was destroyed in 1945 during the Battle of Manila and reopened in a house on Aragon Street, Santa Cruz. It is now the flourishing St. Mary’s College in Quezon City.
Beaterio de Santa Catalina was founded in 1696. Soon after, in 1706, the beatas opened Colegio de Santa Catalina, intended for native women. Originally in Intramuros near Colegio de San Juan de Letran, it moved after World War II to Sampaloc, to its present campus on Legarda Street.
Santa Rosa College originated from the Beaterio y Casa de Segunda Enseñanza that was created in 1750 by the Beaterio de Santa Rosa. The college was founded in 1866 under the patronage of Santa Rosa de Lima by a pious lady, Mother Paula de Santissima Trinidad. In addition to its original place in Intramuros across the narrow plaza from the original University of Santo Tomas, Santa Rosa College has branches in Makati (near Rockwell) and in Trece Martires, Cavite.
Colegio de Santa Isabel of Naga was founded by the Archbishop of Nueva Caceres in 1868 and in 1872 became the first normal school for girls.
On Pedro Gil Street in Santa Ana is Colegio de la Corcordia founded also in in 1868, on property donated by Dona Margarita Roxas de Ayala, ancestor of the Zobel and Zobel de Ayala families. The place was her weekend home.
The Hijas de San Vicente de Paul or Hermanas de la Caridad (Sisters of Charity) arrived in 1863 to run the Escuela Municipal, newly organized by the city of Manila. The Sisters subsequently organized their own girls’ schools in Jaro, Iloilo, Cebu, and Calbayog, Samar, as well as Manila’s Asilo de San Vicente de Paul in Looban, Paco.
The Sisters’ curriculum was as follows:
- First Level: catechism, reading and writing, grammar, Spanish, arithmetic, and trades for women;
- Middle level: Spanish grammar, catechism, sacred history, arithmetic, geography and history of Spain and the Philippines, hygiene, good manners and conduct, and trades for women;
- Superior level: religion, grammar and composition, geography and history, arithmetic and geometry, hygiene, conduct, pedagogy, natural science, and trades for women. Students also had lessons in piano, solfeggio, drawing, and painting.
Hermanas de la Caridad were also asked by other religious orders to run their own girls’ schools, e.g., Sta. Catalina and Beaterio de la Compañia de Jesus in Manila, Colegio de Sta. Rita in Pasig, Colegio de Nuestra Senora del Rosario in Vigan, and Colegio de Sta. Imelda in Tuguergarao (Cagayan).
The highest institution for women was the Escuela Normal Superior de Maestras de Manila organized in 1892 under the Congregation of the Augustinian Religious of the Assumption. The founders of Centro Escolar de Senoritas (the present Centro Escolar University) were graduates of Escuela Normal.
More schools for girls were founded during the American Regime, including La Consolacion College (1905), St. Paul Colleges, and universities run by the Sisters of St. Paul de Chartres, initially in Dumaguete (1905), Saint Scholastica’s College (1906), College of the Holy Spirit (1913), St. Theresa’s College (1915), and Stella Maris College (after 1912). Non-sectarian women’s schools were also organized, the first ones being Centro Escolar University (1909) and Philippine Women’s University (1919). Most of them are now co-educational schools, accepting both male and female students.
Filipinas have gone a long way in the 85 years since they began voting. We’ve had two women presidents and in two weeks’ time, Leni Robredo and Sara Duterte are up for election to the two highest posts in the land.
Notes: (a) References are the websites of still existing schools and Encarnacion Alzona,“El Legado de España a Filipinas” in Filipinas: Su Glorioso Pasado (Manila: Department of Education, 1963); (b) Santa Potenciana was the Patroness of the Philippines in the 16th century. She is also protector against storms and inclement weather; (c) Sor Asuncion Ventura’s brother Valentin financed the publication of Rizal’s El Filibusterismo. The Ventura hacienda covered much of Clark Field; and (d) schools graduating future schoolteachers are called “normal schools” from the École Normale of France referring to the aim of institutions to train their students in teaching their future charges ideal norms of behavior and values.
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