The Lumbayao Settlement Farm School

Media

Part of Philippine Craftsman

Title
The Lumbayao Settlement Farm School
Creator
Kindley, George C.
Language
English
Rights
In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
Fulltext
THE LUMBAYAO SETTLEMENT FARM SCHOOL. By Gto<liiGI: C. Kl:<O~I:'t', SuL>trvlsing T~acher. THIS settlement of Bukidnon and Manobo people is on the south bank of the Pulangi River, where it enters the grassy highland of Bukidnon from the timbered hills. By horse trail it is about four hours' travel east of the Mailag Agri· cultural School. So secluded is the settlement that it has only one trail leading into it that can be traveled on horseback, and a part of the year this is not passable on account of flooded dvers. To the east, a dim foot trail winds around the foothills up the Pulangi River to the country known as Tigua, the country of the famous old dato, i\landicoonlay. Very few white people have ever entered this part of the country and those few went with guards. In 1910 the people of this Tigua country raided the Barton Ranch at Mailag and destroyed it. l\Iany of the raiders were killed by the Constabulary. Previous to this, these people did little but rove about seeking their enemies on whom they wished to be revenged. Feuds were common and murders frequent. Lieutenant-Governor Fortich induced a small number n~ boy w::u:;:wm~: •. ~~~:; ~:"~~'" 0 " 100 of them to settle at Lumbayao. Since that time they have been leading a very peaceful life, devoting less time to their ancient practices and more to agriculture. In 1912 the settlers petitioned for a teacher and a school. Sec.!· retary Worcester and Lieutenant·Governor Fortich, acting on the request, recommended that the matter be investigated and, if advisable, the school be given them. I made a trip up there, 560 THE /...UMBAYAO SETTLEMENT FAR.ll SCHOO/;. 561 partly for the purpose of locating the school and partly in behalf of the 1\Iailag Agricultural School, in the way of purchasing supplies. After looking the town over, I told the presidente that in my opinion there were not enough children there to justify us in sending them a teacher. He replied that on the following morning he would show me the children, and he did. Next day he lined up 26 children on the town plaza, some of whom had on clothing, and stated that there were many more, in the near-by "caiii'gins," that would attend. On December 25, 1912, Mr. Santos Cudal, of Agno, Pangasinan, opened school in the municipal building, a small grass-covered bamboo house, with an attendance of 26-19 boys and 7 girls. Co>n ~ut up for seed. l\lr. Cudal made a temporary transfer of school supplies from the Linabo school, including a chart, some garden implements, a Chinese bullock, and a Luzon plow. About the same time the lieutenant-governor sent up some other bullocks and one of the Bureau of Education disk plows, requesting that the teacher instruct the grown up people how to handle them. After the children had cleared some of the land of the underbrush and stumps, the teacher gave practical plowing lessons to all upon the school plot, and, as a result, within a very short time he had put into cultivation 1} hectareg of fine agricultural land. The teacher did not tell these simple people at first that there is a difference in the work for the boys and for the girls, so that they all worked together, and during one visit which I made to the 562 THE PHILIPPINE CRAFTSMAN school, I saw girls handling the grub ax with as much ease and as much effectiveness as the boys. When the teacher opened the register for enrollment of the pupils, he met with another unthought of difficulty. No priest had ever been in this part of the country and the children had not been baptized. A few had been to Linabo and had been baptized and named there. As they had no names (some had one name and some admitted that they had none at all), Mr. Cudal set about to give them names of personages that he had known or read of. To-day the register runs something like this: Woodrow Wilson, James Scott, Henry H. Boyle, David McKay, Frederic W. Taylor, George C. Kindley, Rip Van Winkle, Manuel Quezon, William Howard Taft, John Maynard, Theodore Roosevelt, etc. The people are at present building one of the best schoolhouses in the district of i\lalaybalay. It is 9 by 14 meters front, with an L for teachers' qU<lrters. It is made of strong material and will, when completed, be a credit to most small towns. It stands on the school farm very near the town A Bvkidnon b• seb•ll t-.m. plaza. On April 25, 1913, :\ir. Cudal was succeeded by Mr. Simplicio S. Ipanag, of Bohol, who has managed the school very satisfactorily. His attendance rarely drops below 95 per cent and much of the time it is 100 per cent. The bullock was taken back to Linabo, so the pupils have continued the cultivation of the farm, which is now more than ~hectares, with hoes and bolos. In March some of the land was planted to camotes and other garden products, while 13,540 square meters were planted to rice and corn, mixed, as is the custom among these people. (Here I might say that I did not approve of this plan when I first came to Bukidnon and have experimented with the two crops the past year together and separate, in order to determine the better method. As a result I am persuaded to favor the mixed method. The mixed methotl has advantages which would not be so obvious where grasshoppers are le~s a pe~t than they are in Bukidnon.) THE LUMBAYAO SETTLEMENT FAR.\! SCHOOL 563 After the corn had been harvested from the field and the rice had begun to head, rats took to the field all about Lumbayao and entirely destroyed some small fields. One man planted 3 cavans and harvested only 6 gantas of palay. The teacher at this settlement had the children make 160 Bukidnon rat traps. (See picture.) These he set in the paths of the rats, along the fence. He reports having caught 441 rats and 9 birds within less than a month. From his It hectares he harvested 63 cavans of fine palay. The school is now 10 months old. The first three months were devoted to preparation of the land. After the first land was planted some time elapsed before the harvest could be made. From June to October 31, 1913, garden and farm products to the value of 1~326.65 have been taken from the farm. This included 63 cavans palay, 45 cavans corn, 10 cavans camotes, eggplant, cowpeas, mangos, radishes, and a few other vegetables. The land where the palay was harvested is now all planted to cowpeas. The Bukidnon people are very fond of the cowpea when very tender and cooked like green beans. They are the most prolific crop in Bukidnon and the children at some schools carry home the green beans almost daily. It is the rule among the settlement farm schools to distribute the products to the pupils of the schools from day to day as they may be harvested. This rule, however, has some variations. At this settlement the people are very poor, live far from the sea coast, and have very little of anything to sell. It is a very hard scramble for them to get clothing, so they decided to sell some of their corn for this purpose. I bought their corn from 564 THE PHILiPPINE CRAFTSMAN them, in behalf of the Government, for food stuff in the l\Iailag Boarding School, allowing them '1"2.40 per cavan, shelled. In return I managed the purchase and delivery of the clothing, to protect them from the high-priced traders. I estimate that by so doing I saved them at least 50 per cent on their puJ'Chases. The~· sold enough to buy each boy cloth for two shirts, two trousers, and a red bandana handkerchief; each girl two calico dresses, with buttons, and a string of beads; each pupil also received one composition book and two lead pencils. While this exchange of food stuff for clothing was a great fayor to the children of the school and their parents, it was also a saYing to the Government to get the corn for the boys at the boarding school. One cavan of the corn takes the place of one sack of rice as food at the school. This rice imported, by purchase through the Insular Purchasing Agent, cost about 1~14 to 1"15 per sack, including transportation on the backs of animals from Cagayan to ~failag, a distance of 150 kilometers. The cor n costs 1"2.40, or about t•'2.50 delivered at the school, a saving of 'Jl.ll to ll"12.50 per sack to the Government. If we have reasonable success with these settlement school farms we will nenr have to imp01t any more breadstuff. Three cavans of the palay have been stored away for future planting and the 60 cavans distributed to the 30 pupils who did the work. Lumbayao won second prize at :\'Iailag for the second best exhibit on Farm and Garden Day, October 18, 1913. The Indian should be encouraged to build a better house; but the house must not be too different from his present dwelling, or he will, as a rule, neither build it nor live in it. The boy should be taught what will be of actual use to him among his fellows, and not what might be of use to a skilled mechanic in a big city, who can work only with first-class appliances; and the agency farmer should strive steadily to teach the young men out in the field how to better their stock and practically to increase the yield of their rough agriculture. The girl should be taught domestic science, not as it would be practiced in a first-class hotel or a wealthy private home, but as she must practice it in a hut with no conveniences, and with intervals of sheep-herding. If the boy and girl are not so taught, their after Jives will normally be worthless both to themselves a"M to others. If they are so taught, they will normally themselves rise and will be the most effective of home missionaries for their tribe. (Theodore Roosevelt.)