Of the many evils that afflict Spain, one of the gravest, for it lies at the root of most of the others, is the deplorably backward state of education. It is commonly said that 75 per cent. of the population cannot read or write. This figure may or may not be exaggerated, but it is certainly the exception to find a member of the working classes who can do either. And this ignorance is not confined to the working classes, but extends, in a relative degree, throughout all social ranks. People of good position, presumably educated, frequently cannot write and spell their own language correctly. I have even been told as a fact that there are, or were until quite recently, grandees of Spain who could not sign their names. And ignorance of the commonest facts of geography and history is astonishingly prevalent even in the middle classes. It would not in the least surprise any one who knows Spanish society to be asked whether Germany lies to the south of Switzerland, or if Berlin is the capital of London. Even in the universities things are no better. The course of study in any subject consists in the scholar getting up a textbook written ad hoc by the professor of that subject, in which alone he is examined for his certificate or diploma, and outside of which he is not expected to travel. Indeed, in some of the universities the students are actively discouraged from reading anything except the prescribed textbook of the subject they are studying, and the natural consequence is that a young man who has passed through the University with credit may be, and often is in fact, quite illiterate.

The administrative educational system in Spain is as follows:

At the head is the Minister of Public Instruction, assisted by a consultative Council, which includes the Rectors of the universities. Certain of the functions of the Minister are delegated to the sub-secretary, who is the second authority in the department.

The local administration is complicated. The whole country is divided into ten university districts, at the head of each of which is the Rector of the university. He, inter alia, exercises a general supervision over all the schools in his district, appoints teachers whose salary is below 1,000 pesetas per annum, and proposes to the Minister of Education the appointment of those of higher grade or salary. He is assisted by a consultative Council. The teachers are appointed after some sort of competitive examination.

The Civil Governor of each province is responsible for the fulfilment of all the obligations imposed by the law, but has no voice in the internal management, teaching, &c., of the schools and colleges. He, too, is assisted by a provincial consultative Council. Lastly, in the municipality, the Alcalde, the President of the Ayuntamiento, has the same functions in his district as those of the Civil Governor in the province.[23] The Alcalde also has his local consultative committee, whose functions are not unlike those of school managers in England.

The inspection of all schools except the elementary is the duty of the Rector of the university. The inspection of elementary schools is committed to an Inspector-General, under the immediate orders of the sub-Secretary of State, and forty-nine inspectors, one for each province.

Elementary education in Spain has been compulsory since 1857, and free, since 1901, to children whose parents “are unable to pay.” The compulsory school age is from 6 to 12. The provision of schools and the upkeep of the buildings is the duty of the Ayuntamiento, and a small sum is set aside in the annual Budget of the kingdom for grants in aid to poor districts.

The system under which the teachers are paid is peculiar. The locality finds the money and hands it to the Ministry of Education, which pays the salaries. The reason for this arrangement is characteristic. It was made because of the irregularities in the payment of the teachers which frequently occurred when the local authority administered the funds. The salaries of the teachers in the Elementary schools are from 500 to 3,000 pesetas—say £20 to £120 a year, with a house, and they are entitled after twenty years’ service or upwards, to a pension of from 50 to 80 per cent. of their salary. They also have a right to the fees of “children who can pay them.”

It is easy to see that this system of overlapping authorities and divided responsibility must necessarily lead to waste of time and general inefficiency, even assuming that every one concerned is genuinely anxious to do his duty and to work for the good of education, an assumption which it would be very rash to make.

The teachers in the Government schools have to hold a Government certificate, which is obtained after a two years’ course in a normal school. In the higher-grade schools a superior certificate is required, involving an additional two years’ training. Private schools are reckoned as part of the school supply, in a proportion to the total which varies with the population of the school district. The school supply is calculated, not on the basis of school places but of teachers; roughly speaking, one master and one mistress are allowed to each thousand of population. The total number of qualified teachers of both sexes is eventually to be brought up to 30,000. The private schools have to satisfy the inspector as to sanitary requirements only: no control seems to be exercised over the instruction, nor is any certificate of competence demanded of the teacher.

In addition to the elementary schools, the law provides for the establishment of infant and night schools, schools for the deaf and dumb, and all the machinery of a complete and comprehensive system of secondary and higher education.

So much for the theory: the practice is another matter.

In the universities all the elements of university education are lacking. The professors in many cases are ignorant and incompetent, and those who are properly qualified for their work—and some of them are men of scholastic and scientific attainments of no mean order, often acquired abroad—are isolated, working in unsympathetic and even hostile surroundings, and their knowledge is almost useless in the lecture-room, owing to the fact that the students are absolutely destitute of the grounding necessary in order to benefit by proper teaching. When by chance a group of professors with real knowledge and enthusiasm happens to be formed in an university, the results are surprising. This has occurred at Oviedo, where, thanks to the existence of such a teaching staff, an educational atmosphere was formed, the students were educated and not merely crammed with a few useless facts, and extension lectures were established with extraordinary success, especially among the working classes.

In addition to a body of competent professors, the universities, if they are to fulfil their function, need (a) a certain amount of autonomy—at present they are merely bureaus for conducting examinations and issuing diplomas; (b) reorganisation of studies, with some liberty of choice to the student; (c) reform of the examination system in the direction of substituting for the present examination by subjects either a certificate based on attendance and general proficiency or a final examination on leaving; (d) in scientific subjects, a good deal more practical work; and in all branches of study the abolition of the textbook, the committing of which to memory is now the sole demand made on the candidate for examination.

A professor at one of the universities has summed up to me the present state of these centres of learning in the following words:

“There is an absolute lack of any educational spirit, of any contact between teachers and pupils, of any feeling of solidarity among the students, of any organisation of games, excursions, &c., of any artistic refinement, and of any organised effort to raise the moral standard, to-day perhaps the most degraded in the world.”

When we turn to the administration of the elementary schools, the part of the educational system which more directly and immediately affects the working classes, we find the same general state of inefficiency and neglect.

A volume of school statistics was officially issued not long ago, of which a useful summary was published in the Heraldo de Madrid in November, 1909.

From this it appears that while four provinces have the full complement of Elementary schools required by the law, the supply in all the remaining 45 is deficient, the shortage per province being from 772 schools downwards, and the total deficiency amounting to 9,505 schools. The total increase of school supply between 1870 and 1908 is 2,150 schools, or an average of about 56 schools per year. At this rate it would take over 150 years to catch up even to the school provision required by the school law of 1857, without allowing for any increase of population.

But in another way, about two-thirds of the school districts of Spain, or some thirty thousand towns and villages, have no Government school. In Madrid about half the schools required by law are wanting. Barcelona has a somewhat similar deficiency. And be it remembered that the school supply is calculated in accordance with the law of 1857, the requirements of which are far below those which obtain in any other country in Europe, so that even in the very few districts where there is nominally sufficient school accommodation there is actually a serious deficiency according to modern standards of what is necessary. The consequence, as the Heraldo observes, is that some 12,000,000 of the population do not know their letters.

But the towns where there is a school are not really much better off, educationally, than those that have none. Save in very exceptional cases, no attempt is made to enforce school attendance, and though some of the parents send their children to school, the careless and indifferent do not. The Alcalde, whose business it is to see that the law is carried out, probably is—except in the larger towns—entirely uneducated himself, and is not going to stir up possible ill-feeling by enforcing a law which does not benefit him personally, and of which he does not see the necessity. The Civil Governor, who is over the Alcalde, and whose duty it is to see that the education laws are carried out, probably is equally indifferent, and in any case has not the time to supervise all the Alcaldes of the scores of towns and villages in his province. The schoolmaster naturally does not trouble himself; his salary does not depend on the number of his pupils, but on the population of the school district. And, lastly, any attempt to enforce the attendance required by law, were it made, must necessarily fail, simply for lack of school accommodation, for already most if not all of the elementary schools have many more children on the register than there is room for. Thus school attendance, although nominally compulsory, is in fact purely voluntary, with the usual results.

The supply of school material is the duty of the Central Government, as already stated. This duty the Government delegates, not to the local authority, but to the schoolmaster, who receives, in addition to his salary, an allowance to scale for providing books, &c. The natural result is that he looks on this allowance as an augmentation of salary, and reduces the supply of books to the barest minimum, or to zero. It is not to be expected that the schools should be liberally or even decently supplied with these necessaries when every penny that can be saved on them is so much clear profit to the teacher. The consequence—seeing that books cannot be altogether dispensed with—is that the children have to pay for them, and the intention of the law, that schooling should be free to the poor, is frustrated.

The working classes, who, as has been said, honestly desire that their children may receive some rudiments of education, do not as a rule like the Government schools, because, they say, nothing is taught in them. It is not at all uncommon for the teacher to absent himself altogether from school during school hours. He may or may not set the children some lesson—for instance, a passage to repeat over and over again—and he may or may not lock the door after him when he goes away, but very often the children are left entirely alone during the hours when the school is open and they are supposed to be receiving instruction. Parents say, and no doubt with truth, that the moral consequences of this lack of supervision are exceedingly bad, and that a great deal of harm is done to the majority by uncontrolled association with a few demoralised children. A working man in a small provincial town complained to me that a whole school had been corrupted by the evil influence of one boy older than the rest.

It will naturally be asked why such a state of things is tolerated. The answer is easy. It is the duty of the Alcalde to see that the schoolmaster does his work and does not absent himself without leave. But the Alcalde may be a friend or relative of the schoolmaster, or may have other reasons for not worrying him by pedantically insisting that he do his duty. Besides which, it is quite probable that the schoolmaster is not being paid. His salary may not have been sent to the Ayuntamiento, or if sent may not have reached him. According to the article in the Heraldo above referred to, the Ayuntamientos are now in debt to the school teachers for arrears of salary amounting to 7,000,000 pesetas—say £280,000. Therefore the negligent schoolmaster is not unlikely to have a conclusive answer to any remonstrance that the Alcalde might be inclined to make: “Pay me my wages and I’ll do my work.”

The parents dare not complain. The Alcalde or the teacher, or both of them, would make things unpleasant for the audacious parent who hinted that either of them was not doing all he should, and there is further the tradition of hopeless submission to misrule of all kinds, from long experience of the uselessness and danger of protesting, which in itself makes the working man reluctant to take any steps against those in authority.

As far as can be gathered, the working classes seem on the whole to prefer the private schools, in spite of the fee charged, on the ground that in these schools the children are under some sort of supervision and do learn something, if only, a little. But the fee, even where quite low, is a serious obstacle to a labourer with a large family, who is only earning some ten or twelve pesetas a week, and, as has been already said, it often happens that only one child can be sent, who in the evenings passes on what he has learnt to the rest of the family. But in these schools it is the custom for the children to bring presents to the master on certain occasions, and it is said that a child who does not bring his present is neglected. “Only the children of those who have money get any teaching,” the parents say.

In many towns most of the private schools are kept by nuns. These schools, generally speaking, have not a good name. It is said that the children who attend them are taught nothing but catechism and needlework, and that the punishments given are often cruel and sometimes disgusting. There was a great scandal lately in a town in the south, on account of a punishment of a nature impossible to describe, inflicted on a little girl in one of these schools. The father took steps to bring an action against the convent in question, but the Civil Governor interfered, and compensation was paid in order to have the matter hushed up.

There are schools, both public and private, where a better state of things prevails, where the master is more or less of an enthusiast, and where in consequence the children get decent elementary teaching; indeed, in one village I was told that “the master of the Government school taught very well, when he was sober.” Nevertheless it is a fact that most of those few of the working classes who can read and write do so badly; indeed, to decipher a letter, say from a domestic servant, or a workman or small tradesman, is a labour of great difficulty, not only owing to the bad writing, but to the extraordinary spelling, although Spanish is the easiest of languages to spell correctly.

Still, in spite of all the obstacles created by administrative incompetence, neglect, and corruption, some progress is being made—enough at least to prove that the people would take immediate advantage of a decently efficient school system. If any members of a family can read, it is usually the children. I have often seen little groups of older people seated round some child who reads the paper to them.

The desire of the working classes for education has brought about a remarkable change in their attitude towards the conscription. This change is the growth of recent years, and is the result of personal efforts on the part of certain distinguished officers. Their feeling in the matter may be summed up in the words of Colonel IbaÑez Marin, who met his death in the early days of the Melilla War: “My ambition is that no conscript shall return to his home, after serving his first three years, without being able at least to read and write.”

I am continually asked about the education of the working classes in England.

“They say that in your country every one is taught to read. Is it possible that that is true? But you have a different kind of Government from ours. Over there it seems that they attend to the interests of the poor. Here you must be able to pay if you wish to learn anything.

“England must do something for us now that our King has married your King’s daughter. If things here were conducted as they are over there, Spain would be the happiest country in the world. But England will take our part in everything now, so matters will improve.”

If the connection between King Edward and the Queen of Spain is explained, and it is observed that one nation cannot interfere with the internal affairs of another on the sole ground of relationship between their respective rulers, the speaker will reply:

“You say that because Governments talk in that way, but we know better. Are not kings human beings like ourselves? And if the Spanish Government knows that Don Alfonso asks the King of England for advice, will they not have to respect the advice he gives? It is not possible that England should take no interest in our affairs when our Queen is your King’s niece.”

Perhaps one ought to explain that the only influence that England could exert in their favour is that of public opinion, and that England is too busy with her own affairs to have time to form an opinion about those of Spain, far less to express it in a convincing manner. But it would be cruel to deprive these people of the gleam of hope which has come to them through the King’s marriage, so perhaps I say, “In the meantime here are a few little reals for teaching,” and get the reply: “May God repay you! My second boy can go to the night school for a month for seven reals.”

A movement which has in it great promise for the future was started a few years ago by certain able young university professors, who fully realise how much of the backwardness of their country is due to lack of education, with its resultant narrowness of mind and outlook, and ignorance of the modes of life and thought of other nations.

The fundamental idea of this movement, as described to me by its originator, is to create an organic body, independent of political changes, which shall endeavour little by little to promote contact between the teachers of all grades in Spain and their foreign colleagues, and to form within the country small nuclei of workers to diffuse in Spain the ideas brought from abroad, and to create an atmosphere of sympathy and enthusiasm, without which scientific work cannot flourish. On these lines two Committees were formed by Royal Decree in January, 1907. One of these was charged with reforms in elementary teaching, to be carried out by the establishment of classes for teachers, by school inspection on modern lines, by sending selected teachers abroad (the Government gives a grant for this purpose, the administration of which was entrusted to the committee) and by grouping and grading the schools, and encouraging and supervising holiday resorts for teachers, school games, &c.—the whole of the reforms to be introduced gradually, as circumstances might permit. To the other body then created, a “Committee for the development of studies and scientific research,” was entrusted the gradual formation of a staff of competent teachers and professors for higher education generally and for scientific studies.

But the work of these Committees, which, if steadily pursued, offers the best hope for the intellectual regeneration of Spain, was paralysed in the first year by Government interference. Between the formation of the Committees and the issue of their first Annual Report a change of Government took place, and the Ministry of SeÑor Maura, true to the traditions of Clericalism, did their best to bring all effective work to an end. They suppressed altogether the Committee charged with reforms in elementary education, and set up in its place a mere official bureau, powerless and useless. And though they did not actually abolish the Committee for Higher Education, they succeeded in putting an end to all effective work, by overriding its statutory constitution and curtailing its freedom of action, by stopping supplies, and by delaying or refusing the necessary official consent to measures proposed by the Committee. For instance, whereas the Committee had made arrangements with the French Ministry of Public Instruction for the disposal of the teachers who held grants for study abroad, the Government refused to recognise these arrangements unless they were made officially through the ambassadors, with the result that in the year 1908 none of these teachers were sent abroad. In the Budget for that year the sum set aside for foreign study was reduced by 110,000 pesetas (about £4,400), although in the previous year a quite exceptional number of applicants for these grants had come forward. These instances are sufficient to show the attitude of the Clericalists towards education, but the whole Report of the Committee shows how at every turn their work was checked and hampered after SeÑor Maura took office. With the return of a Liberal Ministry to power it is hoped that the work will be once more effectively taken up.

Since the above chapter was written a Report on the present condition of education, addressed to the Cortes, has been prepared by the Minister of Education, and summarised in the Spanish Press. The following quotations from this summary throw a lurid light on the actual state of affairs.

“More than 10,000 schools are on hired premises, and many of these are absolutely destitute of hygienic conditions. There are schools mixed up with hospitals, with cemeteries, with slaughterhouses, with stables. One school forms the entrance to a cemetery, and the corpses are placed on the master’s table while the last responses are being said. There is a school into which the children cannot enter until the animals have been taken out and sent to pasture. Some are so small that as soon as the warm weather begins the boys faint for want of air and ventilation. One school is a manure-heap in process of fermentation, (sic) and one of the local authorities has said that in this way the children are warmer in the winter. One school in CataluÑa adjoins the prison. Another, in Andalusia, is turned into an enclosure for the bulls when there is a bullfight in the town.

“The school premises are bad, but most of the Town Councils do not pay the rent, for which reason the proprietors refuse to let their houses. Ninety per cent. of the buildings in which the schools are held are the worst dwellings in the town.

“In Lucena the salary of a mistress is held back because she guaranteed the school rent. The Municipality did not pay it, the school was going to be evicted and the teaching to be interrupted, and that mistress, in order to prevent this, pledged her miserable pay.”

Comment is needless: the facts, vouched for by the Minister of Education, speak for themselves.