UP LA

DID YOU know that at one time you could get a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts in just two years of college?  And that this BA was also a preparatory degree for medicine, law, engineering and agriculture?

This system was first used at the University of the Philippines, with the College of Liberal Arts (CLA) playing a central role.  This college celebrates its centennial this week, an important anniversary considering the central role it has played—through all its transformations—not just for UP but for the nation, at the forefront of building liberal education for the country. The need for such liberal education has become all the more important today, with a growing tide of intolerance, bigotry and authoritarianism, all in the name of religion.

Although the CLA was first established in UP Manila, it has in the last half century or so been identified with Palma Hall, actually a large and imposing building which has been a kind of portal at UP Diliman through which all, and I mean all, students must go for their general education subjects in the social sciences and humanities. So iconic is Palma that after the Oblation statue, it is probably the most popular spot in UP used for Filipino movies.

I am writing about the UP CLA for several reasons.  First I want to publicize the centennial celebrations.  There’s a symposium on Liberal Arts scheduled today in Bulwagang Recto at the Faculty Center and on Saturday there is an alumni homecoming, with a book launch, at the lobby of Palma Hall (still known as “AS Building”).  More information is available from 920-5286.

I am writing about UP CLA also to help younger UP students and faculty to build an institutional memory.  But I don’t want today’s column to be exclusively UP.  What I want to do is describe the original offerings of CLA, which gives us an insight into what college education was like in the early part of the 20th century.

To do this, I had to do some historical research, including reading through the UP Catalogue of 1912-1913, the first to be issued after CLA was established.

LA’s evolution

Bear with me as I go through the alphabet soup of acronyms, to reconstruct CLA’s history. Before CLA  was established by the UP Board of Regents there was something called the Junior College of Liberal Arts, followed by the College of Philosophy, Science and Letters. After CLA was formed, it retained a Junior College offering a two-year Bachelor of Arts degree and a Senior College offering a Master of Arts. The two-year BA degree could stand on its own, or, more frequently, was used as a preparatory course for professional courses.

Fast forward to 1960.  The CLA  is still around, but it has three components: the University College, concentrating on general education courses; the College of Arts and Sciences (known simply as AS); and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. There are three divisions in AS:  Humanities, Social Sciences and Natural Sciences.

In 1983, “AS” was split into three: the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy (CSSP, which occupies much of Palma), the College of Arts and Letters or CAL (formerly the Division of Humanities) and the College of Science (formerly the Division of Natural Sciences).

With that history in place, let’s go back to CLA’s early days.  The UP Catalogue of 1912-1913 included a list of CLA faculty, which was predominantly American and totally male for the top positions and ranks.  The department heads occupying professor ranks were Lawrence Edmonds Griffin for Zoology, William Joseph Colbert for Mathematics, Dean Spruill Fansler for English, Harry Drake Gibbs for Chemistry, Elmer Drew Merrill for Botany, Alfred Ogle Shaklee for Pharmacology, James Remus Wright for Physics. There were only a handful of Filipinos, all instructors: Conrado Benitez for Economics, Timoteo Dar Juan and Jose Ignacio del Rosario for Chemistry, Felix Hocson for Pharmacology, Ambrosio Magsaysay for Graphics.

Note the small number of departments. Psychology, now the largest department in CSSP, was still non-existent, later to be born out of education. For the other social sciences, there was still no Political Science, Anthropology, Geography (which actually came from Geology) and Linguistics. The natural sciences have since diversified into all kinds of sub-fields; today, the departments are institutes, with highly specialized offerings. The Institute of Biology, for example, has separate buildings for programs like Molecular Biology and  Marine Biology.

The faculty composition has drastically changed as well.  The rare American teaching in UP is always a visiting professor, limited to one semester or a year.  Gender-wise, UP is practically a matriarchy, with women directors, deans, chancellors and until recently, president.

BA Liberal Arts

Let’s get back to CLA in 1912. At that time, to get a BA in Liberal Arts you only needed two years of college or 68 units.  It was a surprisingly flexible curriculum, similar to the current General Education system. Students got to choose what they wanted to take from “groups” of subjects, for example 6 units from Latin, French, German or Spanish, 6 units from Botany, Zoology, Chemistry, Geology or Physics and 6 units from Philosophy, History, Political Science, Economics or Sociology. The only prescribed courses were 6 units of English and 6 units of Math.

There were, however, more specific required courses if the BA was intended as a preparatory degree for a professional course. For those intending to go on to law, the requirements were 24 units of History and 24 units of English, with the remaining required units in Math, Economics and Sociology.

The two-year “pre-med” (the term was not used at that time) program at that time required 12 units of Physics, 12 units of Chemistry, 3 to 6 units of Math, 6 to 9 units of Botany and 6 units of Zoology. Also considered important was German, for which 12 units were prescribed, even more than the 6 units required for English. Students who did want more English had the option of taking 6 units more of that language—or Latin.

The preparatory course for engineering was heaviest with Math, requiring 20 units of such subjects. Other required subjects were Surveying (8 units), Physics (6 units), Chemistry (6 units), Drawing (6 units), History (6 units) and English (6 units). The students also had to take 12 units of either French or German.

There was also a BA program intended to prepare students for agriculture, with the following requirements: 12 units Chemistry, 12 units German, 6 units each of Math, Physics, Botany, Zoology, Animal Husbandry, History and English.

On Friday, I will write about the master’s program in this college, the costs of getting a UP education at that time and the number of students enrolled, all with a “then and now” comparison.

Email: mtan@inquirer.com.ph