A Question of Illiteracy

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 30, 23 July 1903, Page 2

A Question of Illiteracy

Statistics, like razors, are dangerous weapons and require careful handling. An instance of this is furnished by the June number of the ' Contemporary Review.' It contains an article by a lapsed Catholic (now an avowed agnostic) which professes to show by the aid of scanty figures of ancient date, that, in the matter of education, Spain is in a very lamentable state The writer of the article in question has been for some years before the public as the author of some vitriolic no-Popery books and pamphlets. He has never been in Spain. And —perhaps for that reason— he, in the present instance, handles his second-hand information in the frenzied spirit with which the Malay uses his long, keen knife when he runs amuck. The writer's gorge ris.es at the thought that Spaniards should spend money on the service of God while their fleet is unable to blow their neighbors' fleets out of the water ; and a chief obicct of his envenomed article, with its misleading figures and its second-hand tittle-tattle, is, apparently, to make ie appear that, in some unexplained way, the Church is responsible for so much of illiteracy as exists in Spain We might admit his old-clo'-shop statements m matters of fact, and yet dispute or deny his conclusions In reality, his ' facts ' are false and'his conclusions are not true. The whole article is an exhibition of ignorance of the conditions which prevail in a country whose attachment to the ancient Faith is, in the eyes of assailants such as these, the head and front of its offending Such educational disadvantages as afflict Spain are due to economic and political, and not to religious causes St Teresa, in her day, thanked God for having bestowed

upon her country a rich soil and a glorious climate. She prayed to heaven to add to all this the gift of a good government. This crowning blessing, however, Providence did not bestow. And Catholic Spain's decay, like Protestant Denmark's and Sweden's, and mostly Protestant Holland's, is traceable in part to a succession of inept rulers and partly to other causes that have no more association with religious beliefs and practices than they have with the rise and fall of the tide in the Bay of Pundy. Briefly stated, the causes of Spain's political economic decline were the following :—

(1) The loss of population caused (a) by the expulsion of the Moors from the province of Granada and (b) by the rush of emigrants to the newly-discovered America. By the time of Philip IV. (1621-1665) the population had fallen to about six millions. (Ireland, in little over half a century, has lost nearly four millions of its population.) (2) Another contributing cause to Spain's decay was the serious disturbance of economic conditions created by this displacement of population. It resulted in the ruin of agricultural and industrial pursuits— a ruin that was hastened and aggravated by the heavy taxation and other blundering attempts of a succession of incompetent Governments during two centuries to cope with the economic revolution that had been brought about in a few years by the causes mentioned above. (3) Long-continued foreign and domestic wars exhausted the exchequer- «.nd impoverished the country. Without going farther back, between 1800 and 1898 Spain had more ' regular ' wars on hand than" any other country in Europe, with the possible exception of Turkey. She had two wars with England, two with France, two with Portugal, three with Prussia, and one with the United States, and spent thirty-three years out of the ninety-eight in cut-and-thrust and parry with her foreign foes. In addition to this, she had two Carlist civil wars that dragged their slow length along for eight or nine years, and a series of exhausting conflicts with her colonies. One of these (with Cuba) lingered in deadly strife for ten years (1868-1878) and another (also against Cuba) from 1895 to 1898. During the same period (1800-1898) France had only a total of 27 years' war, Russia 24, Prussia, 12 ; and although Great Britain was almost constantly burning gunpowder in some part of the earth, her struggles were neither so prolonged nor so costly and exhausting as those of Spain. (4) A reeling blow was dealt to Spain by the loss of her magnificent South American possessions, which followed fast upon the Peninsula war. Between 1810 and 1825 Spain lost practically the whole of South America. Such losses would be a deadly blow to the wealth, power, and prestige of any country. A nation hke a family, that has to struggle for bare existence cannot afford the heavy expenditure on education that hen within the means of its more fortunate neighbors. But it ought to be needless to say that religion has had nothing to do with producing the conditions enumerated above. On the contrary, some of the worst blows inflicted on that ill-starred land were inflicted by a succession of Masonic and anti-Catholic Ministries that, during the nineteenth century, brought her to the brink of financial ruin. The intensely Catholic Basque provinces were, happily, protected by their ' fueros ' (or ancient laws and customs) against excessive taxation, and by their mountain ramparts against the horrors of many a war. And their happy and prosperous condition is alone sufficient answer to the calumny that Spain's decay is to be laid at the door of the Catholic Church

Spain, however, has, in proportion to her opportunities and means, done wondrously well for education and year by year steady progress is being made Mulhall credits Spain, in 1896, with 105 pupils per 1000 of its population, as against 95 per 1000 for Europe generally 125 per 1000 for Canada, 137 per 1000 for the United States, and 160 per 1000 for France. Bavaria (which is seven-tenths Catholic) makes the world's record with an enrolment of 212 pupils per 1000 of its

population. About one-fourth of all the. primary schools in Spain are provided by, and under the aegis of, the Church. In the higher education, which is a good test of a nation's culture, Spain and Belgium easily lead the world. Spain, with a population of 18,000,000, has ten universities with about 17,000 students. England, with a population of 32,500,000, has fewer students in its six universities. As to the term ' illiteracy ' : it is a tricksome word, and, in its controversial use, is commonly taken to be synonymous with ' ignorance.' But anybody who has ever travelled (as we have) among the delightful peasantry of Spain will realise how a not infrequent lack of mere book-lore is easily consistent with an exquisite refinement of thought and manner, with a strong mental grasp of deep truths, and with a moral and religious sense of extreme delicacy. An unlettered Spaniard is far from being either rude or ignorant. Caedmon, the first religious poet of the Teutonic race, could neither read nor write when he composed his historic 4 Paraphrase.' And the middle ages furnish several instances of poets who, though unable to read or write, rose to the highest rank in the realm of literature. We need only mention the name of Wolfram von Eschenbach, the sweet twelfth and thirteenth century minnesinger, whose great epic, ' Parzival,' is one of the finest literary productions that have been bequeathed to us by the past. Moreover, in the case of Spain, mere statistics of illiteracy are wholly misleading unless accompanied by a fair statement of the manner in which thety are compiled. There are in Spain four different languages (not mere dialects) : Castilian, Galician, Basque, and Catalan. The national and official language is Castilian, and every person unable to read and write it is returned as illiterate. And yet over forty per cent of the population of Spain do not speak Castilian. Catalan, Basque, and Galician have each its own literaturebooks, newspapers, etc. Great numbers of persons are able to read and write in them, and yet, unless they are able to do likewise in the official tongue, they figure in the statistical returns as illiterate.

But what, in its last resort, is education ? Surely it is to discipline the natural powers, to gradually combine them in the system of fixed habits or principles which we call character. True education begins at the mother's knee, and school books are no more an essential and indispensable requisite for it in the twentieth century than they were in the days of Eve or Plato. The most unlettered Spanish peasant receives in his home and in the village church the elements of the highest and best education, that which teaches him to ' seek first the kingdom of God and His justice '—the art of living holily and dying well ; and, with his courtly manners, his flowing hospitality, his simple tastes, his comparative freedom from grosser vices, he is placed on a much higher plane, mentally, socially, and morally, than his fellows of the farther north. A curious and instructive comparative instance was furnished in an interview to the New York • Sun ' in April, 1895, by the noted inventor, Sir Hiram Maxim. He has a factory among the Basques in Spain and another at Crayford, in England. ' I have never,' said he, ' seen so high a grade of morality among any people as the Basques at Placencia. There is absolutely no dishonesty or immorality in the town. If anyone should purchase a loaf of bread and not pay for it, it would be the talk of the town. The factory which we purchased was open, so that anyone who liked might enter, for years before we bought it, and not a scrap of steel or brass was stolen. Had this factory been at Crayford or Enth, it would have been completely gutted the first night that it was left unlocked.' The simpleton Bertoldino, in the old Italian peasant story vented his inane spite upon the frogs and fishes in the pond by pelting them with handfuls of coins and bags of flour. And the Bertoldino who has been flinging misunderstood statistics and inept anonymous tales at Spain in the ' Contemporary ' will find that he will thereby suffer only in his own reputation without in any way injuring the object of his wrath.