U.S. colonial education has largely been depicted as a benevolent policy of U.S. colonialism, where American teachers brought progressive values and modern knowledge to the Philippines and the Filipinos were eager students of this education. The present article describes an aspect of colonial education that would interrogate this logic of benevolence. In history books and official documents, there have been a few vague references to the mass walkout of students--generally described as “school strikes”. The present study of social history explains the most serious school strike in detail by analyzing official publications, newspaper articles, internal documents and poems.
The most serious of the school strikes took place in 1930. There was a series of rallies between February and March of 1930. The fiasco was initiated by the racial slurs of an American teacher. In one Thursday morning, having heard one more time of her calling them names and insulting the Filipinos as a whole, high school students of Manila North High School walked out of the classroom. Along with students from nearby high schools and colleges, they held meetings and petitioned to get rid of this teacher. After an investigation, Director of Education decided to dismiss her by demanding her to submit resignation. He also decided to expel four student leaders for inciting the strike. In order to rescue the four students, who had stood up for their national pride in the eyes of the fellow students, a second strike took place. It became a serious crisis in the history of the colonial education. At one time, a few thousand students were on the streets. It was no longer an issue solely of the students. The school strike was supported not only by their parents and local politicians but also by ardent nationalists and emerging communists. This strike, however, came to an end rather abruptly. To end the school strike, Director of Education decided to close the high schools in Manila. A mass of students went back to the schools to apply for grades and, as a requirement, they submitted retractions that their participation was coerced.
This school strike puts the colonial order in a new perspective. Against religious millenarianism and armed rebellions, the colonial state wielded a heavy hand on those who opposed. The student strike did not pose such an intense conflict and, in the end, most of the students assented that they participated in the strike due to coercion. The case of the 1930 school strike shows that, in the extremes of ideological control, the colonial state forced the colonizers and the colonized to feign willingness to cooperate with each other. In this way, the logic of benevolence was preserved.
