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The “School Question” in an Imperial Context: Education and Religion during and following the Occupations of Cuba and Puerto Rico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2022

Lisa Jarvinen Open the ORCID record for Lisa Jarvinen [Opens in a new window]
Lisa Jarvinen*
Affiliation:
Department of History, LaSalle University, PhiladelphiaPA, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: jarvinen@lasalle.edu
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Abstract

The United States occupations of Cuba and Puerto Rico following the War of 1898 instituted immediate reforms to the educational systems of the islands. The imposition of public school systems modeled on those of the United States and a concurrent wave of Protestant schools established by American missionaries are well-known features of the imperialist project. Yet American reforms were shaped by what was known in the nineteenth century as “the school question,” or the controversy over the appropriate relationship between schooling, religion, and the government that had pitted the Protestant majority against Catholics and resulted in a consensus that religious-affiliated education should be permitted but relegated to the private sphere. The implementation of this consensus as the basis of occupation policy in Cuba and Puerto Rico, majority Catholic societies, contributed to the significant growth of a system of private Catholic schools and sparked debate about the relationship between religion, education, and nationalism. In an imperial context, “the school question” led to political polarization in the face of persistent US hegemony.

Keywords

School questionCubaPuerto RicoUS occupationprivate education
Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 62 , Special Issue 1: Special Issue on International and Comparative Education , February 2022 , pp. 84 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © 2022 History of Education Society

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References

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17 Translation (by author): “mentally dominated and enslaved by an intellectual regime that cares for nothing but at any cost to sicken and satiate the youthful understanding [of the colonized]. Hostos quoted in Ángel R. Villarini, “La enseñanza orientada al desarrollo del pensamiento según Eugenio María de Hostos,” in Hostos: Sentido y proyección de su obra en América. Ponencias presentadas en el Primer Encuentro Internacional sobre el Pensamiento de Eugenio María de Hostos, celebrado en Puerto Rico del 2 al 7 de abril de 1989 (San Juan: Instituto de Estudios Hostianos; Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1995), 312.

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36 See, for instance, the letters to and from the Cuban American League in December of 1898 in General Classified Files, Bureau of Insular Affairs, Container 4, Record Group 365, National Archives of the United States, College Park, MD.

37 Quoted in Martínez-Fernández, Protestantism and Political Conflict, 164.

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43 Epstein, “The Peril of Paternalism,” 2.

44 Tzortzaki, “Los colegios católicos en La Habana,” 219. For a complete overview of Catholic schools established in Cuba from the colonial era through 1961, see Soneira, Teresa Fernández, Cuba: Historia de la educación católica, 1582–1961 (Miami: Ediciones Universales, 1997)Google Scholar.

45 Tzortzaki, “Los colegios católicos en La Habana,” 228.

46 Tzortzaki, “Los colegios católicos en La Habana,” 215–16.

47 Tzortzaki, “Los colegios católicos en La Habana,” 228–30. Private school students were largely White, especially at the most prestigious schools, and it was widely recognized that one reason wealthy families chose private education was to avoid the racial integration of the public school system. However, while Afro-Cubans had better access to public schools, they sometimes faced informal exclusion or had little access to schools due to the largely White neighborhoods where they were built. For a case study, see Lucero, Bonnie A., “The Great Equalizer? Education, Racial Exclusion, and the Transition from Colony to Republic in Cienfuegos, Cuba,” Cuban Studies 49, no. 1 (2020), 153–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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58 Translation (by the author): “based on the most advanced pedagogical thought,” “disorganization and decadence.” Montori, Arturo, “El problema de la educación nacional [The Problem of National Education],” Cuba Contemporánea 14, no. 96 (Dec. 1920), 330Google Scholar.

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62 Tzortzaki, “Los colegios católicos en La Habana,” 27–44; Rolando Buenavilla Recio et al., Historia de la pedogogía en Cuba (La Habana: Editorial Pueblo y Educación, 1995), 59–75.

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64 Super, “Interpretations of Church and State in Cuba,” 525–27. See also Lisa Jarvinen and Conrad Gleber, “Leaving Cuba,” Revolution, Diaspora and Return: The Journey of the Cuban De La Salle Brothers, https://www.revolution-diaspora-return.com/.

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70 Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo, “The Catholic Worldview in the Political Philosophy of Pedro Albizu Campos: The Death Knoll of Puerto Rican Insularity,” U.S. Catholic Historian 20, no. 4 (Fall 2002), 55–56.

71 For a succinct overview of the imposition of English on Puerto Rico's public school system, see Solsiree Del Moral, “Language and Empire: Elizabeth Kneipple's Colonial History of Puerto Rico,” Centro Journal 31, no. 1 (Spring 2019), 60–62. For a detailed account of each commissioner's language policies, see Negrón de Montilla, La americanización en Puerto Rico y el sistema de instrucción pública.

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78 Sister Miriam Therese O’Brien, “Puerto Rico's First American Bishop.” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 91, no. 1/4 (Mar.-Dec. 1980), 14.

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81 “Bishop Gives the Lie,” New York Times, June 28, 1900, 1; “The Recent Teacher's Conference at San Juan,” Christian Advocate, 75 (September 1900), 1534.

82 Aníbal Colón-Rosado, Crisis de la identidad de la educación católica en Puerto Rico (Santurce, PR: Distribución Cultural Puertorriqueña Inc., 1981), 28.

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85 David Maldonado Riviera, “‘A Perfect, Irrevocable Gift’: Recognizing the Proprietary Church in Puerto Rico, 1898–1908,” in At Home and Abroad: The Politics of American Religion, ed. Elizabeth Shakman Hurd and Winnifred Fallers Sullivan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021), 37–50.

86 Stevens-Arroyo, “The Catholic Worldview in the Political Philosophy of Pedro Albizu Campos,” 54, 69–70. Translation of the quotation found on page 70 is by Stevens-Arroyo.

87 Silva Gotay, Catolicismo y política en Puerto Rico, 264–85.

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92 Martínez-Fernández, Protestantism and Political Conflict, 163–64.

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