UP CLA (2)

FORENSICS TAUGHT under the English department, and history in zoology?

That’s what you’ll find in the first few editions of the University of the Philippines’ General Catalogue, together with a description of one of its oldest colleges where English forensics and zoological history were offered: “The College of Liberal Arts not only offers courses to those who seek culture and breadth of education, but gives courses preparatory to the work of the professional schools.”

I was reviewing old catalogues to prepare columns about CLA, which is celebrating its centennial this year (details at the end of this article).  The CLA no longer exists, having given rise to a College of Arts and Sciences, which then split into the College of Arts and Letters, College of Science and College of Social Sciences and Philosophy.

Thousands of UP students got their bachelor’s, master’s and doctorates from CLA, many of them taking a bachelor’s degree in preparation for law, medicine, engineering, agriculture.   Last Wednesday, I explained the initial BA degree in Liberal Arts, which you could get in two years.  In the early years of the CLA, there were no specific degrees like BA Anthropology or BS Biology.  The BA Liberal Arts could get you a job, or you moved on to a professional course like law or medicine.  Initially, too, the CLA offered a Master of Arts and Master of Science mainly intended for those who wanted to teach in secondary schools.

I looked up the specific courses offered by the CLA and realized it didn’t have that many.  For the social sciences, it was mostly economics and history, and one sociology subject.  No anthropology, political science, demography, linguistics or geography yet.  The courses that did exist did have some intriguing names, so I thought I’d name some of them today.

Courses

There was History 1 and 2, described as “English Constitutional History.”  History 3 and 4 were “Modern European History,” while History 6 was “Constitutional History,” this time specific to the United States. History 8 was “Oriental History.”

Yes, I noticed.  There was only History 7 dealing with “Philippine History” and the catalogue stated that “There is no adequate textbook on Philippine history” so students were assigned to read the encyclopediac 55-volume compilation of Spanish documents, “History of the Philippine Islands” by Blair and Robertson, as well as Montero y Vidal’s “Historia de Filipinas.”

Alas, the only other Philippine history course I could find was taught under zoology, and wasn’t quite exactly “history” in its more widely recognized form.  Zoology 4 was the “Natural History of Philippine Animals.”

This original history department was probably the mother to other social sciences we now offer at UP.  History 9 and 10 were “Historical Geography,” History 11 and 12 were “History and Theories of Government” (which would now be identified with political science), and History 13 and 14 were “History of Philosophy.”

Another relatively large department was English. They had English 1 and 2 or “Composition,” required for all first year students.  There were many other courses to survey prose and poetry but the readings were all from the United States or from England.

English 11 and 12 were “Forensic Logic and Argumentation,” the first semester devoted to “schools of logic, and of the techniques of proof, combined with practice in counter-argument.”  The second semester content was described as “analysis of great pieces of argumentation,” with each student required to deliver at least two original speeches.

So, there, forensics has an older meaning, which is that of looking for proof. These English courses were important, the heart really of liberal education, as it taught students to be critical in thinking, to look for evidence before believing in something, and to be able to defend the conclusions and  position they take after reviewing the evidence.

That is why I mentioned in my last column that a liberal education becomes all the more important today, as we are assaulted by prejudice, bigotry and intolerance under the guise of religion.  A UP education, especially its liberal arts component, was greatly feared by religious conservatives, who knew that UP graduates would question many of their teachings.

Perhaps their fears were exaggerated.  We’ve had our successes and failures around liberal education with UP graduates; and, in recent years, there have been fears that the liberal education began to be diluted when students were given a free choice of general education subjects.  Today, students can graduate without having taken courses in logic, or in communication (which includes argumentation and counter-argumentation).

I would have wanted to describe more of the courses, and what they reflected of the times, including what careers were probably more lucrative.  Chemistry and pharmacy, it seems, were some of the more favored career paths if we are to look at the number of courses offered around those fields.  There was even Math 10, which was “Business Methods and Arithmetic of Pharmacy.”  More on this arithmetic in the future.

Cost of a UP education

I did want to give a glimpse of the costs of a UP education at that time.  In terms of tuition, the College of Law charged P40 a semester.  If a student took less than 10 units, he or she was charged P4 a unit.

And in the other degree programs and colleges?  The Catalogue says: “There is no charge for tuition in other colleges.”

There were of course miscellaneous charges.  You paid P5 for each subject with laboratory work if it was a three-unit course, P10 if it was more than three units.  The only other fee was P1 for athletics.

The Catalogue estimates that textbooks and instruments would cost about P25 to P100 per year, and that the cost of living in Manila was P16 to P25 a month.  All said, the UP catalogue says that a fair estimate of studying for a year in UP would range from P250 to P500, “but much depends on the personal tastes of the student.|

So there you have it, UP in 1912.  Their early catalogues even had all the names of their students, 704 in total in 1912, which is only a third of the students I now have in the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy!

I’ll end with an invitation to graduates of “LA” for a general homecoming tomorrow, the reunion to be held at the lobby of the Palma Hall (“AS” or “LA” depending on how old you are), with the launching of a book, “Celebrating the Birth and Rebirth of the UP College of Liberal Arts” by Ricardo T. Jose, Laura L. Samson and Gianne Sheena Sabiao.  The book launch is at 9 a.m. and will be followed by fellowship and lunch.

* * *

Email: [email protected]