THE first legislature which convened in Porto Rico after the island came under American protection enacted a new school law, based upon the conditions in Porto Rico and in strict harmony with American ideals. Under its provisions at least ten and not more than twenty per cent of all municipal funds are set aside as a school fund. Thus the schools were lifted absolutely out of politics and placed upon a sound financial basis.

The legislature also voted the department of education in 1900-1901 $400,000, in 1901-1902 $501,000, besides a fund of $15,000 to maintain young men and women in schools in the United States. It is, perhaps, fair to say that Porto Rico is voting now a larger percentage of its revenues to education than is any state of the federal union.

The teacher problem was a grave one. The old Spanish teachers were educated to believe that a school is a vested right,—that the school exists for the teacher. It was no light task to inculcate the idea that the school exists for the pupil, that the tenure of the teacher is not for life, but for such time as results in good to the child.

The teaching body is now almost wholly freed from politics. Education is on practically a non-partisan basis in Porto Rico. A necessary weeding out of incapables caused a great scarcity of teachers, and in the mean time the number of schools to be opened was increased two hundred per year. One of two courses was open,—either to import teachers from the States or make them. It was decided not to bring from outside more than a minimum number of American teachers. No people make substantial or permanent progress unless their leaders are raised up from their own number. Hence a normal school became a necessity.

With no stronger appeal than that it was the patriotic duty of the best young men and women to devote their time to teaching, a summer normal for ten weeks was projected. It was felt by the optimistic that we could enroll about one hundred pupils. The school opened with eight hundred and six, and many were refused because no room could be had for their instruction. It was a magnificent response. Old social lines were broken. Young women who never appeared in public without a chaperon came to the normal and studied most faithfully. The examination at the close gave us almost two hundred additional teachers.

The department at once began the erection of a normal school building, at a cost of $40,000, including land and equipment. This is located on a beautiful campus of seventy acres at Rio Piedras, convenient to all the island, and capable of training at least three hundred teachers. It is in every way a successful training school.

American teachers to the number of one hundred and twenty-six are at work teaching English in the schools. Through them many native teachers have learned the best methods and have acquired the English language. To-day almost every teacher in the island speaks and teaches English. There are fully forty thousand children using the English language and singing our national hymns in the tongue of the great republic.

Porto Rico, two years ago, did not have a single schoolhouse. Spain in four hundred years erected not one. The United States military government erected one poor frame structure which fire destroyed. The department of education announced that it would erect school buildings if the municipalities would donate suitable ground. In every case this was done. The sites are in each case large, usually one acre, and convenient. To-day more than fifty first class brick, stone, and concrete buildings are in use. No one act of our government did more to hasten the Americanizing of Porto Rico than this campaign of school extension.

The dedication of these fine structures was always an occasion of great rejoicing. On one occasion, when a rural agricultural school was to be dedicated, the pupils of Bayamon were hauled three miles in ox-carts. Half a hundred boys and girls standing in a small cart drawn by four oxen, would wave their small American flags under the palms and cheer the American republic and sing its national airs. It was a splendid spectacle. Eight of these carts formed a great procession.

In twenty-two of these new buildings school is supplemented by actual work in agriculture. Each pupil spends part of each day cultivating the soil on the school grounds. The enthusiasm for this practical training is boundless.

Over twelve hundred youths are learning practical agriculture. When a pupil carries home to his "shack" the beans, peas, tomatoes, etc., which he himself has cultivated, and the family gets a meal therefrom, they have a substantial argument in favor of the new system of education.

The poor people of Porto Rico are making unusual sacrifices to educate their children. No compulsory law is necessary. Attendance is higher in percentage than in any state of the Union except Massachusetts, which state exceeds Porto Rico only by one per cent. Hundreds of children carry their shoes and stockings to and from school and in their arms. It is a common experience to see the pupils at dismissal leave the school, sit down by the roadside, remove shoes and stockings, and climb rugged and jagged mountain trails barefooted to save the shoes and thus prolong their use. I know women who sit on the river rocks all day and every day washing clothes to keep their children in school.

In the mountain district above Corozal a boy was found in school wearing a peculiar shirt,—at least four times his size. Upon inquiry it was learned that the boy had only one shirt and that one was being washed. That the boy might not miss a day in school his father gave the son his only shirt. The father that day, naked to the waist, carried a case of merchandise on his head over the mountains, under the palms, in a fierce tropic sun, a distance of twenty miles and return, that his boy might learn. And the father's shirt on his son's back bore the legend, "Pillsbury's XXX"!

At Juncos I saw a boy in school who was unusually self-conscious, and who, in moving about from class to seat, never turned his back to me. Inquiry of the teacher told the story. The boy was finally to pass to another room, and my teacher-friend's explanation led me to watch. As the boy passed out I saw that all the shirt he had in this world was on the front of his body! Hiding the shame of his poverty, there he was in school; dressed only in a pair of tattered trousers and half a shirt, he was to me a genuine little patriot, pressing his face to the light and pushing his half-naked body forward in the movement for the uplift of himself and his beautiful island home.

I wish from the bottom of my heart that many American boys might learn from this poor boy the great lesson once told me by a boy in a Porto Rican school who modestly admitted he could speak some English. He said, "I am learning many things in this school. I like best the story of Abraham Lincoln. He was a poor boy like me, and lived in a log cabin as poor as mine. But he was honest and earnest, and became the saviour of his country. I mean to work hard that I may become of use to my country."

These are but types of a zeal that is almost a frenzy on the part of the people of this island to become educated. These are the only people who have come to us with enthusiasm and without coercion as a result of the late war. They are a credit to us, a worthy addition to the complex forces that make up the newer republic.

Let us welcome and work for these children of the nation. They are trying by education, by industry, and by obedience to law to prove their right to a place in the sisterhood of states. They are learning what we must all learn with deeper meaning, that the door to statehood in the federal union is the door of the free public school.

From an article in The Congregationalist by Prof. M. G. Brumbaugh, Commissioner of Education for Porto Rico.