Conmemorando oficiales coloniales: La escuela Martin G. Brumbaugh en Santa Isabel
Conmemorando oficiales coloniales: La escuela Martin Grove Brumbaugh de Santa Isabel
Por: Rafael V. Capó García
Una de las primeras tareas de la administración colonial estadounidense en Puerto Rico fue fundar escuelas para facilitar el control de los sujetos coloniales. En su informe al Secretario del Interior, el primer Comisionado de Instrucción, Martín Grove Brumbaugh observó como el pueblo de Utuado tenía 6 escuelas en 1900 mientras que en 1901 contaba con 26. En una carta a los maestros de la Isla, el Comisionado lamentó que no pudieron abrir 800 escuelas como habían deseado en un principio y cita la escasez de docentes como el factor determinante. No debe sorprender que casi todas las escuelas portaron los nombres de grandes figuras de la historia estadounidense. Según Brumbaugh,
every school is named in honor of the great Spanish explorers, Columbus and Ponce de Leon, or in honor of the great American statesmen. Schools are already named in honor of Washington, Lafayette, Franklin, Jefferson, Jackson, Adams, Lincoln, Grant, McKinley, Longfellow, Prescott, Webster, Hamilton, Garfield, Horace Mann, and Peabody. (p. 52)
Se inauguró la Lafayette Graded School en Aguadilla, McKinley Agricultural School en Ponce, Jefferson Rural School en Gurabo, Franklin Graded School en Coamo, Lincoln Graded School en Caguas, Columbus Graded School en Yauco, y la Washington Graded School en Guayama. Sin embargo, un día mientras manejaba por el pueblo de Santa Isabel en el sur de Puerto Rico, me sorprendió encontrar una escuela que lleva el nombre del ya citado Comisionado, inaugurada en 1906. Después de indagar sobre la historia de este oficial estadounidense me topé con otra escuela que lleva su nombre en la ciudad capital de San Juan en la comunidad de Puerta de Tierra. Me llamó la atención porque mi impresión siempre ha sido que los comisionados de instrucción de la primera mitad del siglo XX nunca gozaron del aprecio por parte de las elites políticas quienes veían con recelos sus nombramientos y sus campañas americanizadoras y lingüísticas.
Brumbaugh se benefició de la penumbra de la transición política y de la naciente formación de los partidos políticos en la Isla. Durante su incumbencia, la política criolla puertorriqueña se disputaba entre el Partido Republicano y el Partido Federal, ambos colectivos anexionistas. La historiadora Aida Negrón de Montilla (1998) argumenta que “la política de Brumbaugh sobre el idioma fue muy ‘benévola’” (p. 72). Además, documenta como el Puerto Rico Herald, periódico oficial del Partido Federal, publicó un artículo elogiando al Comisionado al día siguiente de finalizar su término en 1901. El periódico considera “que ha ganado para la nación afecto y simpatías, mientras que otros, en otras épocas, hicieron cuanto pudieron con sus injusticias y su crueldad para hacer odiosa la nueva soberanía” (p. 75). Resulta que la memoria colectiva sobre este oficial estadounidense es mas complicado de lo que sugiere su campaña americanizadora y las fuertes y válidas críticas que estos proyectos enfrentan hoy en día.
En este ensayo discutiré las políticas educativas de Brumbaugh tanto en Puerto Rico como en Filadelfia donde fungió como Superintendente de Educación Pública de 1906 a 1914. Este análisis transnacional me permitirá matizar a Brumbaugh dentro de sus respectivos contextos para así obtener una visión mas clara sobre su perspectiva de raza y currículo. Por ejemplo, un análisis del Comandante General de la invasión de Puerto Rico Nelson A. Miles sería incompleto sin considerar su participación protagónica en las guerras contra las comunidades indígenas en los 1870s, conflictos que le ganaron el apodo de “Indian Killer.” Otro ejemplo es el Col. Francis Riggs quien antes de convertirse en Comisionado de la Policía de Puerto Rico y autor de la Masacre de Río Piedras y de Ponce, ayudó a sofocar la revolución de Sandino en Nicaragua y establecer la dictadura de la familia Somoza. Para muchos de los oficiales militares y civiles estadounidenses, Puerto Rico fue solo un “pit stop” en una larga trayectoria de violencia colonial.
Primero me enfocaré brevemente en cinco áreas de su política educativa en Puerto Rico: (1) políticas de idioma, (2) currículo de Estudios Sociales, (3) reclutamiento docente, (4) americanización y (5) administración. Después discutiré su enfrentamiento con las comunidades negras de la ciudad de Filadelfia y su defensa de la segregación escolar. A diferencia de otros oficiales coloniales y comisionados subsiguientes, Brumbaugh demostró gran tolerancia y admiración por la cultura hispano-puertorriqueña, sin embargo, se dejó llevar por el determinismo geográfico y el etnocentrismo darwiniano que consideraba las razas anglosajonas superiores a las latinoamericanas.
Política de idioma
Antes de la llegada de Brumbaugh, la administración estadounidense estableció el Inglés como único lenguaje de enseñanza, pero el nuevo Comisionado ignoró este mandato y promovió la educación bilingüe. Brumbaugh creía “that children in school will learn two languages in the formative years as rapidly as they will learn one, and each will be the better learned by reason of the mastery of the other” (CEPR, 1901, p. 65). El Comisionado demostró aprecio por la cultura Hispana y consideró que sería “a great injustice to the Spanish-American civilization to…remove the language of their native country, so rich in literature, so glorious in history” (p. 65). Incluso, le dio espacio a lxs maestrxs a escoger el lenguaje de sus libros de texto (Negrón, 1998). Citando al Dr. N. C. Schaeffer, Superintendente de escuelas del estado de Pensilvania, consideraba que “a man is as many times a man as he has languages in which to think and with which to express his thought” (p. 65). En Pensilvania, Brumbaugh, de ascendencia alemana, defendió el dialecto alemán que se hablaba en el estado y abogó por su incorporación en las escuelas para preservar la cultura alemana-americana (Donner, 2008). Por ende, es entendible que académicos consideren que Brumbaugh tuvo una visión “enlightened” (Donner) para su época en relación a las políticas de idioma. Su respeto por la diversidad cultural se extendía mas allá del mundo anglo-sajón y germánico, aun que era evidente que esta constituía la mas avanzada.
Currículo de Estudios Sociales
El currículo de Estudios Sociales ideado por Brumbaugh reflejaba su Eurocentrismo y afán por la americanización. El nuevo currículo establecía que en el quinto grado se estudiaría “explorations and discoveries in North and South America…(and) the white man’s struggle for occupation” (CEPR, 1901, p. 58). En sexto grado se abarcaría la historia de Estados Unidos y en séptimo grado la expansión colonial europea con un enfoque en Inglaterra y en la historia de las colonias de Norteamérica de 1763 hasta 1783. En la Model and Training School de San Juan, el currículo de cuarto grado, que eventualmente sería implementado en el resto de las escuelas de la Isla, se enfocaba en el estudio biográfico de figuras ilustres como Cristóbal Colón, Marco Polo, George Washington, John Smith, Walter Raleigh, Juan Ponce de León, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, Lafayette, Robert Fulton, Samuel Morse, y Ulysses S. Grant (p. 139). El civismo se integraba a lo largo de los años para familiarizar a lxs puertorriqueñxs con las instituciones gubernamentales federales y así fomentar “a democracy of substantial citizenship to whom the franchise may safely be entrusted” (Brumbaugh, 1907, p. 66). Brumbaugh quería encaminar a Puerto Rico hacia la estadidad y el currículo de Estudios Sociales sería instrumental para este proceso.
Reclutamiento docente
Brumbaugh promovió la emigración de maestros estadounidenses a Puerto Rico para facilitar la enseñanza del Inglés, pero solo como una medida temporera. El Comisionado afirmó que,
no people has ever risen to commanding influence who did not breed its leaders out of its own life. No amount of imported teaching power can permanently serve the highest interests of a people. The teacher from the United States may for a season, and should, set models of educational method and organization throughout these countries, but their presence should be distinctly understood as a temporary relation to the educational policy of these countries. (Brumbaugh, 1907, p. 66)
Brumbaugh cita el ejemplo de Japón como modelo a seguir ya que los maestros europeos y estadounidenses solo se mantuvieron en el país hasta lograr entrenar a los educadores japoneses y “the nation today gloriously carries on its reorganized system under native leadership and home-bred teaching” (p. 67). Aunque Brumbaugh privilegia los avances pedagógicos y por ende intelectuales de su país sobre otros, demuestra cierto respeto por la capacidad y soberanía intelectual de lxs puertorriqueñxs. Esta deferencia sigue estando marcada dentro de una relación colonial e informada por el determinismo geográfico que reconocía la superioridad de las razas anglosajonas.
Americanización
El apoyo de Brumbaugh a la incorporación de Puerto Rico como estado de la Unión Americana “facilitó una razón para usar el sistema escolar como medio de americanizar a Puerto Rico (negrón, 1998, p. 252). Según Negrón (1998), para el Comisionado de Instrucción la,
americanización significaba transmitir al pueblo puertorriqueño el espíritu e ideales del pueblo americano, y el inculcar un ‘patriotismo, una devoción, un entusiasmo por la República’ que no tuviese paralelo en la nación americana. (p. 253)
Brumbaugh relata las numerosas formas que los puertorriqueños celebraban la patria estadounidense en esos primeros años de colonización. Por ejemplo, durante el 4 de julio “the city was decorated profusely with American flags, and a banquet concluded the day's fiesta in honor of the…"Lincoln Graded School" (CEPR, 1901, p. 52). La simbología patriótica estadounidense fue una herramienta importante en la campaña americanizadora de Brumbaugh y los Estados Unidos:
In almost every city of the island, and at many rural schools, the children meet and salute the flag as it is flung to the breeze. The raising of the flag is the signal that school has commenced, and the flag floats during the entire sessions. The pupils then sing America; Hail Columbia, Star Spangled Banner, and other patriotic songs. (CEPR, 1901, p. 72)
Según el Comisionado, el natalicio de George Washington se celebró con gran entusiasmo y jolgorio, “these exercises have done much to Americanize the island, much more than any other single agency” (p. 73). Brumbaugh también resalta como el día de la bandera “was more generally observed than I have ever known it to be observed in the States, and more enthusiastically” (p. 73). La conmemoración de figuras históricas estadounidenses en las fachadas de los planteles, la celebración de “national holidays” de la Unión, y la proliferación de canciones y símbolos yankees en las escuelas, junto con la campaña lingüística, curricular, y docente, constituyeron el contenido ideológico del “sacred sacrifice for the Americanizing of the people of Porto Rico” (CEPR, 1901, p. 16).
Administración
Aunque la historiografía puertorriqueña ha tendido a enfocarse en la campaña americanizadora de los Comisionados de Instrucción, Lanny Thompson (2013) argumenta que este fue solo un elemento dentro del ejercicio de poder imperial. Según Thompson, la centralización de la administración escolar por parte de Brumbaugh facilitó la construcción de planteles modernos con relojes en cada uno de los salones para seguir los itinerarios estrictos de disciplina norteamericana. Se colocaron filas uniformes de escritorios que limitaban el movimiento de los niños y “water clossets” para asegurar las condiciones sanitarias de los cuerpos coloniales. También se distribuyeron libros de textos que ordenaban el conocimiento que debían adquirir según los estándares estadounidenses. Todos estos factores de control forman parte de lo que Thompson, basándose en su lectura de Foucault, considera como el ejercicios de bío-poder que aseguraba el control imperial y la formación de sujetos coloniales. En palabras de Aida Negrón (1998), “el sistema escolar centralizado…sirvió como un instrumento efectivo en los designios del ‘conquistador sobre el pueblo conquistado’” (p. 250).
Es importante destacar que durante el periodo colonial español el sistema educativo también estuvo centralizado. Según Brumbaugh,
under the old system of education prevalent in Porto Rico before American occupation all the power was centralized and the schools were wholly under the control of the Spanish Government. Under ideal conditions, from the American point of view, the very reverse of this should be followed. The law just passed is a compromise between these two extremes. It aims to place the largest measure of control with the local authorities consistent with the efficient administration of schools. (CEPR, 1901, p. 10)
Brumbaugh sugiere de la misma manera que la introducción de docentes estadounidenses constituía un mecanismo transitorio, la centralización educativa abriría paso a mayor participación local. El Comisionado defendió la creación de juntas escolares municipales elegidas por el pueblo con diversos poderes como la selección de planteles y la nominación de maestros, sin embargo, estos tendrían que ser aprobados por el Comisionado para “prevent partisan politics from entering into the selection of teachers” (CEPR, 1901, p. 11). Brumbaugh buscaba limitar la influencia de los alcaldes (Thompson, 2013; Negrón, 1998) y garantizar el control de su oficina sobre todos los asuntos educativos del país.
Como Superintendente de escuelas públicas en Filadelfia
En An African American dilemma: A history of school integration and civil rights in the North, Zoe Burkholder (2021) discute brevemente a Brumbaugh y su enfrentamiento con la sociedad civil negra de Filadelfia. Al terminar su término como Comisionado de Instrucción de Puerto Rico en 1901, Brumbaugh regresó a Pensilvania para presidir Juaniata College en la ciudad de Huntington y a continuar su cátedra como el primer profesor de pedagogía en la Universidad de Pensilvania. En 1906 fue nombrado Superintendente de escuelas en Filadelfia donde protagonizó un conflicto sobre la segregación escolar de la ciudad.
Para Brumbaugh, la integración escolar en Filadelfia era un problema tanto para blancos como para negros. Según el Superintendente, las escuelas mixtas ocasionaban la huida de la población blanca y la reducción de fondos para las escuelas debido al descenso en matrícula. Brumbaugh entendía que la segregación escolar,
has given to the colored child a better opportunity to move at his own rate of progress through the materials of the curriculum, which rate of progress is in some respects different from the rate of progress of other children. (Burkholder, 2021, p. 60 )
Citando el supuesto bajo coeficiente intelectual de los niños negros, Brumbaugh alegaba que la segregación era pedagógicamente saludable para todos. El Superintendente fomentó que las comunidades negras le solicitaran escuelas segregadas para así poder justificar políticas de “separate but equal,”; solo así podría circunvalar las leyes estatales que prohibían la segregación escolar en Pensilvania. Brumbaugh consiguió el apoyo de diversos sectores, en específico la First African Baptist Church. En conjunto con estos sectores, Brumbaugh promovió la educación industrial y vocacional de los negros en instituciones segregadas, en vez de fomentar la integración escolar y la educación intelectual del negro. Para Zurkholder (2021),
A reform- minded man, Brumbaugh expanded industrial training and reduced academic coursework in the “colored” schools to better design schools to educate Black children for the jobs available to them, a strategy that was popular in other cities like Chicago. These progressive era educational reforms increased racial segregation and inequality in urban public schools. (p. 63)
Como veremos ahora, no todos los miembros de la comunidad Afroamericana estaban de acuerdo con estas prácticas.
Uno de los críticos mas audaces de Brumbaugh y su expansión de las escuelas vocacionales segregadas en Filadelfia fue W. E. B. Du Bois. El sociólogo y activista, considerado como uno de los intelectuales y escritores mas importantes en la historia de los Estados Unidos criticó las políticas educativas de Brumbaugh:
They know that if their children are compelled to cook and sew when they ought to be learning to read and cipher, they will not be able to enter the high school or go to college as the white children are doing. (Zurkholder, 2021, p. 64)
Previo a este conflicto, Du Bois (1899) había publicado The Philadelphia negro, un estudio socioeconómico pionero sobre las comunidades negras de Filadelfia. En este estudio, Du Bois argumenta que aún en una ciudad del norte donde la segregación es ilegal, las comunidades afrodescendientes continuaban siendo marginadas por el acceso desigual a empleos calificados y viviendas asequibles. Du Bois explora las intersecciones de raza y clase para proveer una perspectiva innovadora y holística sobre “the negro problem.” En 1903 publicó The souls of black folk, donde elaboró sobre el tema de la educación. Sin descartar los beneficios económicos de la educación industrial en el Sur, Du Bois cuestionó si la vida era “more than meat, and the body more than raiment?” (p. 75) y concluyó que estas escuelas “alone are not enough” (p. 75).
A Du Bois se le sumaron varios líderes comunitarios como el Dr. Mossell quien “noted that Black youth were often refused admittance to certain schools and that even in integrated schools Black children were seated apart from whites, denied the use of textbooks, or assigned to a ‘badly located, unsanitary and overcrowded’ separate annex” (Burkholder, 2021, p. 62). Diversos grupos de la sociedad civil alegaban que la segregación privilegiaba los blancos y criticaron la inequidad de la distribución de recursos escolares. La justificación de Brumbaugh continuaba sustentándose sobre las supuestas diferencias intelectuales entre los blancos y los negros y las consecuencias demográficas de la integración escolar. En vez de promover una educación humanística del negro y luchar por su formación intelectual, Brumbaugh se enfocó en preservar el status quo y mantener a lxs negrxs en los márgenes de la sociedad. En 1914 Brumbaugh dejó su puesto como Superintendente de escuelas de Filadelfia y se postuló exitosamente como Gobernador del estado de Pensilvania (1915-1919).
Comentarios finales
Como hemos visto, las políticas educativas de Martin Grove Brumbaugh como Comisionado de Instrucción de Puerto Rico fueron orientadas hacia el control y dominio bio-político de lxs puertorriqueñxs y la formación de sujetos coloniales (Thompson, 2013). Su respeto por la puertorriqueñidad emanó de su apreciación eurocéntrica de nuestra identidad nacional. Para Brumbaugh, las “razas Latinas” sufrían de muchas limitaciones que solo la influencia anglosajona podría remediar:
There is, of course, apparent on all sides the inevitable concomitants of tropical peoples and of the Latin races. These will remain in spite of the vigor and the energy of the Saxon influences. The school will recognize these, will steadily press against them, will find them only partly susceptible of modification, and will in time be modified by them. Thus we shall have in this island for the first time a new product in education, a system that is democratic in its entire genesis, and that will gradually be recast by the attempt of a free Republic to transform a tropical Latin race. (CEPR, 1901, pp. 65-66)
Brumbaugh percibió a lxs puertorriqueñxs como seres inherentemente inferiores, plagados no solo por la degeneración de España sino también por el calor de los trópicos. Para Brumbaugh (CEPR, 1901) el problema no es
the absence but the kind of civilization that impairs our progress. The forms of the civilization developed here under Spanish domination are so thoroughly fixed, so inelastic, that the real difficulty is not so much to impart a new as to break the fetters of the old civilization. (p. 64)
El legado de Martin Grove Brumbaugh no debe limitarse a su tiempo como Comisionado de Instrucción en Puerto Rico sino debemos contextualizarlo dentro de su carrera como administrador educativo. Su defensa de la segregación en Filadelfia y promoción de escuelas vocacionales para los negros, en conjunto con su legado en Puerto Rico, claramente reflejan un patrón de paternalismo condescendiente. Justificó su apartheid educativo como estrategia pedagógica para asegurar la mejor posible educación del negro como trabajador en los márgenes de la economía estadounidense. Honrar a Brumbaugh con el nombre de una escuela ignora sus posturas geo-raciales sobre lxs puertorriqueñxs y lxs negrxs estadounidenses, e ignora el rol importante que jugó éste en el establecimiento del bio-poder imperial en la colonia. Aunque Brumbaugh gozó del respeto de diversos líderes políticos de la Isla, su trayectoria demuestra que fue un agente imperial que ordenó el andamiaje ideológico y administrativo que le serviría al imperio por mas de un siglo después.
Los alumnos de “la Brumbaugh” siempre recordarán su nombre con cierto cariño y aprecio como todos recordamos nuestros años de escuela elemental. Sin embargo, esta nostalgia oculta el racismo y la borradura a manos del Destino Manifiesto del imperio estadounidense. Ciertamente Santa Isabel debe tener otrxs hijos e hijas dignxs de conmemoración como por ejemplo Luis “Luigi” Texidor, cantante y compositor de la Sonora Ponceña y autor del clásico Nací Moreno. Seguramente existan muchas otras personas aparecidas localmente por los santa isabelinos que podrían otorgarle a la escuela un mayor sentido de pertenencia, prestigio, integridad, y autoestima.
Commemorating colonial officials: The Martin Grove Brumbaugh School in Santa Isabel
By: Rafael V. Capó García
One of the US’ first tasks in its colonial administration of Puerto Rico was the establishment of a school system in order to facilitate control over their new colonial subjects. In his Report to the Secretary o the Interior (CEPR, 1901), Puerto Rico’s first Commissioner of Education, Martin Grove Brumbaugh noted how the municipality of Utuado had six schools in 1900 while the following year it already possessed 26. In a letter to the teachers of Puerto Rico, the Commissioner lamented that they failed to open 800 schools as originally intended and he cites the lack of qualified teachers as the determining factor. It should come as no surprise that almost every newly established school on the Island adopted the names of great historical figures in the US’s history. According to Brumbaugh (CEPR, 1901),
every school is named in honor of the great Spanish explorers, Columbus and Ponce de Leon, or in honor of the great American statesmen. Schools are already named in honor of Washington, Lafayette, Franklin, Jefferson, Jackson, Adams, Lincoln, Grant, McKinley, Longfellow, Prescott, Webster, Hamilton, Garfield, Horace Mann, and Peabody. (p. 52)
Some examples of schools opened during this time were the Lafayette Graded School in Aguadilla, McKinley Agricultural School in Ponce, Jefferson Rural School in Gurabo, Franklin Graded School in Coamo, Lincoln Graded School in Caguas, Columbus Graded School in Yauco, and the Washington Graded School in Guayama. There are still numerous schools that presently bear the names of US Presidents on the Island, yet one day as I was driving through the town of Santa Isabel in southern Puerto Rico, I was surprised to find a school that openes in 1906 named after the already cited Commissioner. After researching the history of this colonial official, I found another school that bears his name in the capital city of San Juan in the community of Puerta de Tierra that was inaugurated around 1913. It struck me because my initial impression was that Puerto Rico’s Commissioners of Education in the first half of the 20th century never enjoyed much respect from local elites who consistently critiqued their Americanizing linguistic campaigns.
Brumbaugh benefited from the uncertainty of the early colonial period and the nascent formation of political parties on the Island. During his term, creole politics were disputed between the Republican Party and the Federal Party, both pro-statehood collectives. Historian Aida Negrón de Montilla (1998) argues that Brumbaugh’s language politics was rather “benevolent” (p. 72). Furthermore, she documents how the Puerto Rico Herald, the official newspaper of the Federal Party, published an articled praising the Commissioner at the end of his term in 1901. The newspaper considered “que ha ganado para la nación afecto y simpatías, mientras que otros, en otras épocas, hicieron cuanto pudieron con sus injusticias y su crueldad para hacer odiosa la nueva soberanía” (p. 75). It thus seems that the collective memory over this Usonian official is more complicated than what his Americanizing campaign along with the strong and valid opposition this project garnered suggests.
In this paper I will discuss the educational policy of Brumbaugh in Puerto Rico and in Philadelphia where he served as Superintendent of public schools from 1906 to 1914. This transnational analysis will allow me to frame Brumbaugh withing a larger context and potentially obtain a clearer vision of his perspectives on race and curriculum. This holds true for many other colonial officials. For example, an analysis of Nelson A. Miles, the General Commander of the invading US forces of Puerto Rico in 1898, would be incomplete if we did not consider his leading role in the war against the Indigenous Peoples of North America in the 1870s, conflicts that earned him the nickname “Indian Killer.” Another example is Col. Francis Riggs who before becoming Puerto Rico’s Police Commissioner and authoring the Río Piedras and Ponce Massacres, helped suffocate Augusto César Sandino’s revolution in Nicaragua and establish the Somoza family’s dictatorship. For many military and civilian US officials, Puerto Rico was just another stop in a lifelong career full of colonial and racial violence.
First I will briefly focus on five areas of Brumbaugh’s educational policy in Puerto Rico: (1) language politics, (2) Social Studies curriculum, (3) teacher recruitment, (4) Americanization, and (5) administration. I will then discuss his confrontation with black communities in Philadelphia and his defense of racial segregation. Unlike other colonial officials and subsequent Commissioners, Brumbaugh demonstrated great tolerance and even admiration for Hispanic culture in Puerto Rico, but he was highly influenced by geographic determinism and Darwinian ethnocentrism that considered Anglo-Saxons superior to the Latin races.
Language politics
Before Brumbaugh arrived on the Island, the US administration decreed English as the primary language of instruction, but the new Commissioner ignored this mandate and promoted bilingualism. Brumbaugh believed “that children in school will learn two languages in the formative years as rapidly as they will learn one, and each will be the better learned by reason of the mastery of the other” (CEPR, 1901, p. 65). The Commissioner appeared to appreciate Hispanic culture and considered that it would be “a great injustice to the Spanish-American civilization to…remove the language of their native country, so rich in literature, so glorious in history” (p. 65). Furthermore, he allowed teachers to choose the language of their classroom textbooks (Negrón, 1998). Citing Dr. N. C. Schaeffer, state Superintendent of schools in Pennsylvania, he believed that “a man is as many times a man as he has languages in which to think and with which to express his thought” (p. 65). In his home state, Brumbuagh, of German ancestry, defended the German-Pennsylvania dialect spoken in different regions and championed its incorporation into schools in order to preserve German-American culture (Donner, 2008). Thus, it is understandable that academics consider that Brumbaugh possessed an “enlightened” (Donner) view on language politics for his time. His respect for cultural diversity extended beyond the Anglo-Saxon and Germanic world, though it was evident that for him these did constitute the most advanced and intellectually gifted of all civilizations.
Social Studies curriculum
The Social Studies curriculum ideated by Brumbaugh reflected his Eurocentrism and belief in the redeeming qualities of Americanization. The new curriculum established that during the fifth grade students would focus on “explorations and discoveries in North and South America…(and) the white man’s struggle for occupation” (CEPR, 1901, p. 58). The sixth grade would cover the History of the United States and the seventh grade would explore European colonial expansion with a focus on England and the history of the American colonies from 1763 to 1783. At the Model and Training School in San Juan, the fourth-grade curriculum, which would eventually be implemented in the rest of the school system, focused on the biographical study of illustrious figures such as Christopher Columbus, Marco Polo, George Washington, John Smith, Walter Raleigh, Juan Ponce de León, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, Lafayette, Robert Fulton, Samuel Morse, and Ulysses S. Grant (p. 139). Notably absent from this list are non-white and female historical figures. Civics lessons were integrated throughout the years in order to familiarize Puerto Ricans with the workings of the Federal government and promote “a democracy of substantial citizenship to whom the franchise may safely be entrusted” (Brumbaugh, 1907, p. 66). Brumbaugh believed his duty was to pave the way for Puerto Rican statehood and the Social Studies curriculum became an instrumental cog in this lofty goal.
Teacher recruitment
Brumbaugh promoted the emigration of American teachers to Puerto Rico to facilitate the teaching of English, but only as a temporary measure. The Commissioner believed that,
no people has ever risen to commanding influence who did not breed its leaders out of its own life. No amount of imported teaching power can permanently serve the highest interests of a people. The teacher from the United States may for a season, and should, set models of educational method and organization throughout these countries, but their presence should be distinctly understood as a temporary relation to the educational policy of these countries. (Brumbaugh, 1907, p. 66)
Brumbaugh cites the example of Japan as a model worth emulating since European and American teachers only remained in the country for the duration of their training of Japanese educators and “the nation today gloriously carries on its reorganized system under native leadership and home-bred teaching” (p. 67). Though Brumbaugh privileged the pedagogical advances and consequently intellectual capacities of his country over others, he demonstrated admiration for the intellectual capacity and sovereignty of the Puerto Rican people. Unfortunately, this deference is still framed around colonial conquest and informed by geographic determinism that recognized the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon races.
Americanization
Brumbaugh’s support for Puerto Rican statehood “facilitó una razón para usar el sistema escolar como medio de americanizar a Puerto Rico (p. 252). According to Negrón (1998), for the Commissioner,
americanización significaba transmitir al pueblo puertorriqueño el espíritu e ideales del pueblo americano, y el inculcar un ‘patriotismo, una devoción, un entusiasmo por la República’ que no tuviese paralelo en la nación americana. (p. 253)
Brumbaugh emphasized the numerous ways Puerto Ricans celebrated US patriotism in those early year of US occupation. For example, during the 4th of July “the city was decorated profusely with American flags, and a banquet concluded the day's fiesta in honor of the…"Lincoln Graded School" (CEPR, 1901, p. 52). The patriotic symbols of Empire were an important tool in Brumbaugh’s and the US’s Americanization campaign:
In almost every city of the island, and at many rural schools, the children meet and salute the flag as it is flung to the breeze. The raising of the flag is the signal that school has commenced, and the flag floats during the entire sessions. The pupils then sing America; Hail Columbia, Star Spangled Banner, and other patriotic songs. (CEPR, 1901, p. 72)
According to the Commissioner, George Washington’s birthday was celebrated with great enthusiasm, as “these exercises have done much to Americanize the island, much more than any other single agency” (p. 73). Brumbaugh also writes about how Flag Day “was more generally observed than I have ever known it to be observed in the States, and more enthusiastically” (p. 73). The commemoration of US historical figures on the facade of buildings, the celebration of the Union’s national holidays, and the proliferation of songs and Yankee symbology in schools, together with the linguistic, curricular, and teacher recruitment campaigns discussed above, constituted the ideological content used in the “sacred sacrifice for the Americanizing of the people of Porto Rico” (CEPR, 1901, p. 16).
Administration
Although Puerto Rican historiography has focused mostly on the politics of Americanization of the early Commissioners of Education, Lanny Thompson (2013) argues that this was only one element of a larger exercise in imperial power. According to Thompson, Brumbaugh’s centralization of school administration facilitated the construction of modern schoolhouses with clocks in each classroom to help the Puerto Rican people follow the strict itineraries of North American discipline. Uniform rows of desks that limited the corporal freedom of the students were lined up and water closets installed to ensure the sanitary conditions of colonial bodies. Textbooks were distributed in every school to ensure control over the proper treatment of the curriculum according to US standards. All of these controlling factors form part of what Thompson, through her reading of Foucault, considers to be the exercise of bio-power aimed at ensuring imperial control and the formation of colonial subjects. In the words of Aida Negrón (1998), “el sistema escolar centralizado…sirvió como un instrumento efectivo en los designios del ‘conquistador sobre el pueblo conquistado’” (p. 250).
It’s important to highlight that during the Spanish colonial era education was also highly centralized. According to Brumbaugh,
under the old system of education prevalent in Porto Rico before American occupation all the power was centralized and the schools were wholly under the control of the Spanish Government. Under ideal conditions, from the American point of view, the very reverse of this should be followed. The law just passed is a compromise between these two extremes. It aims to place the largest measure of control with the local authorities consistent with the efficient administration of schools. (CEPR, 1901, p. 10)
Brumbaugh suggests that in the same way that the introduction of American teachers constituted a transitional mechanism, the centralization of educational administration would pave the way for greater local participation. The Commissioner defended the creation of municipal boards of education, elected by the people, with diverse powers such as selecting schoolhouses and nominating teachers, though these would have to be approved by the Commissioner in order to “prevent partisan politics from entering into the selection of teachers” (CEPR, 1901, p. 11). Brumbaugh attempted to limit the influence of mayors (Thompson, 2013; Negrón, 1998) in order to guarantee his office’s control over every educational issue on the Island.
As Superintendent of public schools in Philadelphia
In An African American dilemma: A history of school integration and civil rights in the North, Zoe Burkholder (2021) briefly discusses Brumbaugh and his confrontation with black civil society in Philadelphia. Upon finishing his term as Commissioner of Education in Puerto Rico in 1901, Brumbaugh returned to Pennsylvania to his post as President of Juniata College in the city of Huntington and continued teaching at the University of Pennsylvania as its first ever appointed professor of pedagogy. In 1906 he was named Superintendent of Philadelphia public schools where he played a leading role in a crisis over racial segregation.
For Brumbaugh, school racial integration in Philadelphia was a problem not only for whites but also blacks. According to the Superintendent, mixed institutions motivated white families to leave the schools which resulted in a reduction of funds due to the decrease of the student population. Brumbaugh believed that school segregation,
has given to the colored child a better opportunity to move at his own rate of progress through the materials of the curriculum, which rate of progress is in some respects different from the rate of progress of other children. (Burkholder, 2021, p. 60 )
Citing the supposedly lower IQ tests of black children, Brumbaugh argued that segregation was pedagogically healthy for all. The Superintendent urged black community members to solicit segregated schools in order to justify “separate but equal” public policy; only through this process could he bypass state laws that prohibited segregation in Pennsylvania. Brumbaugh garnered the support of diverse sectors, such as the First African Baptist Church. Together with these groups, Brumbaugh shifted educational policy towards the industrial and vocational training of negroes in segregated institutions, instead of fomenting school integration and the intellectual development of black communities. For Burkholder (2021),
A reform- minded man, Brumbaugh expanded industrial training and reduced academic coursework in the “colored” schools to better design schools to educate Black children for the jobs available to them, a strategy that was popular in other cities like Chicago. These progressive era educational reforms increased racial segregation and inequality in urban public schools.” (p. 63)
As we shall see now, not everyone in the black community agreed with these segregationist practices.
One of Brumbaugh’s and his segregationist campaign’s most recognized critic was W. E. B. Du Bois. The sociologist and activist, considered to be one of the most important intellectuals and writers in the history of the United States critiqued Brumbaugh’s educational policies:
They know that if their children are compelled to cook and sew when they ought to be learning to read and cipher, they will not be able to enter the high school or go to college as the white children are doing. (Burkholder, 2021, p. 64)
Prior to this conflict, Du Bois (1899) had published The Philadelphia negro, a pioneering socioeconomic study of black communities in Philadelphia. Du Bois argued that even in northern cities where segregation had been outlawed, black communities continued to be marginalized through unequal access to skilled jobs and affordable housing. Du Bois explored the intersections of race and class in order to provide an innovative and holistic perspective of “the negro problem.” In 1903 he published The souls of black folk, where he elaborated on topics related to education. Without discarding the economic benefits of industrial education in the South, Du Bois questioned whether life was “more than meat, and the body more than raiment?” (p. 75) and concluded that these schools “alone are not enough” (p. 75).
Many other community members joined Du Bois in standing up against racial segregation, such as Dr. Mossell who “noted that Black youth were often refused admittance to certain schools and that even in integrated schools Black children were seated apart from whites, denied the use of textbooks, or assigned to a ‘badly located, unsanitary and overcrowded’ separate annex” (Burkholder, 2021, p. 62). Diverse groups within Philadelphian civil society alleged that segregation privileged whites and critiqued the inequitable distribution of school resources. Brumbaugh continued to substantiate his justifications around the supposed intellectual differences between whites and negroes and the demographic consequences of school integration. Instead of promoting the humanistic education of blacks and advocating for their intellectual development, Brumbaugh focused on preserving the status quo and maintaining blacks on the margins of society. In 1914 Brumbaugh left his post as Superintendent of public schools in Philadelphia and successfully ran for Governor of Pennsylvania (1915-1919).
Final comments
As we have seen, Martin Grove Brumbaugh’s educational policies as Commissioner of Education in Puerto Rico were oriented towards the control and bio-political domination of Puerto Rican bodies and the formation of colonial subjects (Thompson, 2013). His respect for Puerto Rican culture emanated from his Hispanicist Eurocentric appreciation of our national identity. For Brumbaugh, the “Latin races” suffered many limitations that could only be remediated through Anglo-Saxon influences:
There is, of course, apparent on all sides the inevitable concomitants of tropical peoples and of the Latin races. These will remain in spite of the vigor and the energy of the Saxon influences. The school will recognize these, will steadily press against them, will find them only partly susceptible of modification, and will in time be modified by them. Thus we shall have in this island for the first time a new product in education, a system that is democratic in its entire genesis, and that will gradually be recast by the attempt of a free Republic to transform a tropical Latin race. (CEPR, 1901, pp. 65-66)
Brumbaugh perceived Puerto Ricans as inherently inferior people who were plagued not only by the degeneration of Spanish ancestry but also by the harsh tropical climate. For the Pennsylvanian, the problem wasn’t,
the absence but the kind of civilization that impairs our progress. The forms of the civilization developed here under Spanish domination are so thoroughly fixed, so inelastic, that the real difficulty is not so much to impart a new as to break the fetters of the old civilization. (p. 64)
An analysis of the legacy of Martin Grove Brumbaugh can not be limited to his time as Commissioner of Education in Puerto Rico rather he must be contextualized through his career as an educator and administrator. His defense of racial segregation in Philadelphia and promotion of vocational training for negroes, in conjunction with his legacy in Puerto Rico, clearly reflect a pattern of condescending racist paternalism. He justified educational apartheid as a pedagogical strategy that sought to ensure the best possible education of the negro as a worker on the margins of the US economy. To honor Brumbaugh with the name of a school ignores his geo-racial stances about Puerto Ricans and black Americans, and obfuscates the leading role he played in establishing the bio-power of the US Empire in its new possession. Although Brumbaugh enjoyed the respect of many and diverse political leaders on the Island, his trajectory demonstrates that he was an agent of Imperialism tasked with organizing the ideological and administrative structure that would serve the Empire for over a century.
The alumni of “la Brumbaugh” will always remember his name with certain care and warmth as we all remember our youthful primary school days, but this nostalgia hides deep-seated racism and imperial erasure brought on by the US’s Manifest Destiny. The municipality of Santa Isabel must have other sons and daughters worthy of commemorating, such as Luis “Luigi” Texidor, singer and composer of the Sonora Ponceña and author of the classic song Nací Moreno. Surely there are many other locally admired figures who could grant the school a better sense of pertinence, prestige, integrity and self-worth.
Referencias y lecturas sugeridas / References and suggested readings
Brumbaugh, M. (1907). An educational policy for Spanish-American civilization. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/000271620703000107
Burkholder, Z. (2021). An African American Dilemma: A History of School Integration and Civil Rights in the North. Oxford University Press.
Commissioner of Education for Porto Rico (CEPR). (1901). Report of the Commissioner of Education for Porto Rico to the Secretary of the Interior, U.S.A. Government Printing Press.
Donner, W. D. (2008). “Neither Germans nor Englishmen, but Americans”: Education, assimilation, and ethnicity among nineteenth-century Pennsylvania Germans. Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 75(2), 197-226.
Du Bois, W. E. B. (2007a). The Philadelphia negro. Oxford University Press.
Du Bois, W. E. B. (2007b). The sould of black folk. Oxford University Press.
Jerniga, J. A. (2014). Civics education policy and americanization in Puerto Rico, 1900-1904. American Educational History Journal 41(1), 93-110.
Navarro, J. M. (2002). Creating tropical Yankees: Social science textbooks and U.S. ideological control in Puerto Rico, 1898-1908. Routledge.
Negrón de Montilla, A. (1998). La americanización en Puerto Rico y el sistema de instrucción pública 1900-1930 (2nd. ed.). Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico.
Thompson, (2013). Espacios coloniales, dispositivos de poder, cuerpos disciplinados: El nuevo orden escolar en Puerto Rico, 1898-1907 (Esbozo de una investigación en proceso). Op Cit. (21), 189-212.
