When  the  Americans  arrived  there  were  only  18,000  pupils  nominally
attending  the  schools  of  Santo  Domingo.  There  were  no  rural  schools
whatever.  Many  "  teachers "  never  taught  at  all,  but  were  merely
political  henchmen  who  drew  salaries,  some  of  them  wholly  illiterate.
Some  of  them  farmed  their  "  pupils  "  out  or  worked  them  in  their
own  fields.  Superintendents  and  inspectors  rarely  did  either,  and
kept  no  records  whatever.  Listen  to  a  passage  from  a  novel  by  a
sworn  enemy  of  the  occupation:

The  average  Dominican  woman  frequented  —  the  word  is  well  chosen  —  a
ichool  of  first  letters  sustained  and  directed  by  a  priest,  where  she  learned  to
read  and  write  after  a  fashion,  the  barest  rudiments  of  arithmetic  and  geog-
•aphy,  and  a  world  of  prayers  which  the  good  priest  made  special  effort  to  teach
ler.  She  had  the  catechism  at  her  fingers'  ends,  but  except  for  the  forms  of
levotion  she  was  a  complete  ignoramus  who  took  seriously  any  nonsense  told
ler  by  those  who  happened,  falsely  or  otherwise,  to  have  her  confidence.
There  was  not  even  a  basis  on  which  to  build  an  educational  system.
Those  charged  with  the  task  had  to  begin  from  the  ground  up.  The
peculiar  status  of  Santo  Domingo  gives  it  an  American  Minister  of
Public  Instruction  and  a  native  superintendent,  the  reverse  of  the  case
in  Haiti.  Both  are  earnest  men,  but  pedagogy  is  not  on  the  curriculum
at  Annapolis.  No  attempt  has  been  made  to  Americanize  the  schools,


248          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES

as  in  Porto  Rico  and  the  Philippines,  which  is  proper  enough  politically
but  questionable  educationally.  Every  man  has  been  made  personally
responsible  for  the  men  under  him,  clear  down  through  the  system.
