“Destiny Has Thrown the Negro and the Filipino Under the Tutelage of America”: Race and Curriculum in the Age of Empire

Abstract

The article brings together the fields of curriculum studies, history of education, and ethnic studies to chart a transnational history of race, empire, and curriculum. Drawing from a larger study on the history of education in the Philippines under U.S. rule in the early 1900s, it argues that race played a pivotal role in the discursive construction of Filipino/as and that the schooling for African Americans in the U.S. South served as the prevailing template for colonial pedagogy in the archipelago. It employs Michel Foucault’s concept of archaeology to trace the racial grammar in popular and official representations, especially in the depiction of colonized Filipino/as as racially Black, and to illustrate its material effects on educational policy and curriculum. The tension between academic and manual-industrial instruction became a site of convergence for Filipino/as and African Americans, with decided implications for the lived trajectories in stratified racialized and colonized communities.

Notes

Notes

Research for this article was supported by an AERA/Spencer Pre-Dissertation Fellowship and grants from The Ohio State University, Otterbein College, and Miami University. Much appreciation goes to Ken Goings, Cynthia Dillard, Judy Wu, Joe Ponce, and the Lakeside Collective for their comments on earlier versions. I also thank Dennis Thiessen and the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback.

1 See Miller (1982) and Kramer (2006) for historical accounts of the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars, which spanned from 1898 until the early 1910s.

2 See Paulet (2007) for the transfer of American Indian educational lessons to the Philippines.

3 In my observation, U.S. education scholars working on issues of race primarily draw on the traditions and priorities of ethnic studies, multicultural education, culturally relevant/responsive teaching and, more recently, critical race and postcolonial theories. A few engage and affiliate with the field of curriculum studies as it is currently constituted.

4 A recent study that exemplifies this direction is James D. Anderson’s (2007) deconstruction of the “mythology of a color-blind Constitution” through a multiethnic history that intertwines “Blacks and Whites in the Confederate states” with “Native Americans on the Plains and Chinese on the Pacific Coast” (pp. 257, 250).

5 An examination of the official documents of the U.S.–controlled Bureau of Education indicates an awareness of the cultural diversity in the Philippines. In his 1902 annual report, Fred Atkinson included extracts from division superintendents (Bureau of Education, 1902/1954). For instance, in the northern Ilocano provinces, the majority of the inhabitants were deemed to belong into three classes: pure-blood natives, Spanish-mestizo, and Chinese mestizo. Much smaller in number were indigenous ethnic groups, such as Igorrotes and Negritos (pp. 73–74). The report also referenced socioeconomic class distinctions (a small upper-class elite, a slightly larger middle-class constituency, and a predominantly peasant and laboring class), and various religious and spiritual sectors (primarily Christian; a smaller Muslim community, mostly located in the southern part of the country; and pagan/animist believers among the indigenous ethnic groups). The Bureau of Education was originally constituted as 17 school divisions that spanned across the country’s over 7,100 islands and over 100 languages and dialects.

6 The use of education by the U.S. government as a tool to pacify Filipino/as can be gleaned from General Arthur MacArthur’s support for a substantial financial appropriation for school purposes: “This appropriation is recommended primarily and exclusively as an adjunct to military operations calculated to pacify the people and to procure and expedite the restoration of tranquility throughout the archipelago” (in Constantino, 1966/1987, p. 45).

7 In Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault (1972) highlights the speaking subject, the institutional site, and the subject’s position or status as legitimating factors in discursive formations (pp. 50–53).

8 Further research is needed to fully understand the experiences and perspectives of African Americans in the Philippines during this period.

9 A fuller treatment of the perspectives of Filipino/as during this time period will be the focus of a separate article.

10 Here I begin to point out the use and export of colonized labor and goods for foreign consumption, rather than for local sustainable development. More research is necessary to study the long-term development of manual-industrial education in the Philippines, especially as a component of U.S. imperialism and contemporary neocolonialism.